An unpopular profession still proving to be popular

MORE interviews this week and once again I’ve been thoroughly cheered up by the hope and energy of candidates both young and old who are keen to come and join the ranks of the Fourth Estate.

Considering the low esteem in which my profession is held by most people I’m always surprised that reams upon reams of people still cherish the dream. According to Google – that font of all knowledge – journalists rank only behind politicians in the least trusted professions table. We rank marginally above car salesman, well above telesales operatives, and knock bankers, paparazzi and estate agents into a cocked hat.

That’s some achievement and I’ve always felt a bit of a disservice to some of the very excellent colleagues I have worked with in the regions.

Let’s be frank, some elements of the press didn’t do the profession any favours in the 80s and 90s, and anyone in the game will know we are still carrying a fair bit of that baggage. The press is far from perfect, even here in the regions, and it never will be. The very nature of news, of cherishing freedom of speech, maintaining the principle of open justice, and of holding truth to power – and doing all of that at pace – means that mistakes will be made.

There was a time when many of the handwritten letters we received were about standards of grammar and spelling in our titles. One of my very first editors used to employ a very clever origami trick at “readers’ forums” when he would fold a newspaper so that it was exactly the same size as a paperback novel. He would then point out that most novels took several years to produce, while newspapers were produced every day, six days a week, and while that didn’t excuse the odd grammatical error, he asked readers to let it mitigate.

Anyway love it or hate it, journalism still remains a career of choice for many. This week I was wondering who was inspiration for the young hopefuls of today. My generation had Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman – effortlessly cool as Woodward and Bernstein – to set them off. My boarding school career adviser was dead set against me joining the Fourth Estate, and his final words in our three-month argument still make me smile: “You will never make any money. What will your father say?”

I reckon Dad feigned a bit of horror. muttered something about ‘not the Guardian’, but was secretly chuffed when I started down the road at the Tiverton Gazette. As a student I discovered ‘new’ journalism through Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Michael Herr and Lester Bangs. Wolfe’s anthology The New Journalism is the only book I keep in my office other than the deadly dull, but vitally important, McNae’s Essential

Law for Journalists. After that, the real inspiration for me was newspapers themselves. I love them as things. I’ve always felt newspapers can encapsulate so much of what a place is about – even in the title or ‘masthead’. I look out for them wherever I go, and have always had a soft spot for the Boston Globe, The Age, The Daily Gleaner and the Falmouth Packet.

I had to hold firm in my early student days when Jason Donovan wrecked my cool career choice by announcing that his Neighbours character Scott Robinson wanted to be a trainee ‘journo’. As most of first (and maybe second) year at uni involved hanging around and watching both daily episodes of the soap, this was quite a blow. Fortunately the dream did not die there.