Can One Learn Journalism?

Earlier this week I was invited to speak to a group of young people who aspire to be journalists, or otherwise to write in other ways. Actually, it was more of a Q&A session, and as I told them, my career has hardly been typical. Whereas most aspirant journos would leap at the chance of a job for a mainstream media organisation, I shied away of being anyone’s employee, leaving Reuters news agency after only one year and heading off down the freelance road. In fact, that’s where I started, as my very first published articles were for the Manchester Evening News and the Geographical Magazine, written in Vietnam during the war, between school and university. I went into Reuters as a graduate trainee and I did learn shorthand during my time there, as well as how to write a story in pyramid style, so essentially it makes sense no matter how far down you cut it. But otherwise I wasn’t taught how to write; I learned on the job. The same was true with writing my books. So I am always a little sceptical when I hear of media studies courses at university, though some, for example at London’s City University, have a good reputation. Can one really learn journalism, I wonder? Or is it more a question of having some sort of innate wish and talent to find out things and then to put them into words? My advice to the young people I spoke to this week was to identify what they are really passionate about and then to start writing. They are unlikely to be able to just ring a newspaper editor and get articles commissioned straight away, which is what happened with me at age 18, but then I chose a “hot topic”. But young people today have the great advantage that there are so many more platforms available now than when I first began, and both blogging and vlogging (which anyone with a modicum of tech-savviness can get into) are just two ways of getting one’s material out there. Whether that can lead to some paid employment or commissions is another matter. And of course it is important that people don’t always give away content for free, even if occasionally that can be good as a “taster”. But as I advised one young man, many years ago, who asked me if he ought to become a writer: if something inside you drives you to express yourself through writing, do it. If that drive’s not there. don’t.

Adventures in the Gardens of Democracy

Kevin d’Arcy worked freelance for many of Fleet Street’s best-known titles, as well as doing stints at the Economist and Tatler and radio programmes and interviews for the BBC and CBC. So he has been, if not exactly at the heart of events in Britain and the wider world, at least in one of the inner circles. I first met him through the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), of which he was Executive Secretary of the British Section for many years, organising briefings from the great and good from UK and European politics and beyond. But it turned out that we were — and indeed, still are — neighbours, in the borough of Tower Hamlets, where he has put in sterling service as a Chair of School Governors and related activities. Freelancers never truly retire, of course, but now that he has a somewhat less hectic lifestyle, and has notched three exotic marriages on his belt, he has taken to writing books, the latest of which, Reflections in the Gardens of Democracy (Rajah Books, £11), is a pot pourri of journalistic memories and political musings, on everything from working with the late, great Alastair Burnet, to speculating why the EU Referendum was so imperfect in formulation, let alone in outcome. Many of the chapters are short and are rather like listening the the author reminiscing over a glass of wine on a sunny afternoon in Bow — and nothing wrong with that. His style is both slick and engaging. AEJ members and other journalistic colleagues will find many tidbits of gossip. But anyone with an interest in politics and the media should also find something to amuse, if only the roll-call of famous hacks and politicos, past and present.

Brooks Newmark and Media Hypocrisy

The resignation of the Tory Minister for Civil Society, Brooks Newmark, after he sent a sexually explicit photo of himself to an undercover reporter from the Sunday Mirror has produced a salacious backdrop to today’s opening of the Conservative Party conference, but I feel Mr Newmark deserves more sympathy than condemnation. He says himself that he has been very foolish, but the Mirror journalist — who posed as a flirtatious Tory PR woman — effectively stitched him up in a deliberate sting operation. Had he been a blackmailer, he would have committed a criminal act. Had he been a policeman, it would have amounted to entrapment. But because he is a journalist and Mr Newmark is a politician the accepted view is that it is OK. Well, I do not accept that interpretation — and I am a journalist. One had hoped that with the demise of the disgusting News of the World, Sunday newspapers would drop some of their more dubious practices in their search for sensational stories. But the antics of the fake Sheikh — whose mtehods have recently been somewhat discredited –have shown that other newspapers are prepared to fill the gap. In the Sunday Mirror’s case, there is also a political motive, as it is Labour-supporting, and Mr Newmark’s indiscretion leaves egg on the face of the Conservatives. The journalist concerned will probably get a pay rise because of his scoop, but I believe he should be criticised, not praised. Not only has he ruined Mr Newmark’s career for the time being. he will have caused immense distress to the MP’s family. Brooks Newmark has certainly been a very silly boy, but then so are millions of men when it comes to sexual desire. He is now in disgrace, but to my mind, it is the journalist and the sort of gutter journalism that he represents that should be.

Journalists at Risk

Journalism has become a far more risky profession since I started out as a cub reporter for the Manchester Evening News and the Geographical Magazine in the Vietnam War. It is not only in war or conflict zones that journalists are often deliberately targeted these days. Just this week, in Yerevan, Armenia, Edik Baghdasarian, who heads the Armenian Association of Investigative Journalists, was violently assaulted by three men as he left his office and could easily have been killed. His ‘crime’ in the eyes of whoever orchestrated the attack was that he has crusaded against high-level corruption. The incident served as a salutory reminder to us members of the Association of European Journalists who have been been meeting in Linz for the past couple of days of the risks that we take.

In a scheduled session on the subject this afternoon, we had presentations fropm Neboysa Bristic (Serbia), Zdenko Duka (Croatia), Krzystof Bobinski (Poland) and Fabrice Pozzolli-Montenay (France), highlighting dangers of diverse kinds, from violent ultra-nationalists to interfering media owners, government attempts to control the media and some irresponsible members of our own profession who have little respect for truth, objectivity or integrity. My old Bush House colleague (and Chairman of the AEJ British Section), William Horsley, who chaired the session, also spoke of the role ‘dumbing down’ has had in contributing to the decline in media standarsd over the past 25 years.

Link: www.aej.org and www.aej-uk.org