New beats: where do redundant journalists go?
Amid the masses of journalism redundancies La Trobe University associate professor Lawrie Zion, looks at the question of what happens to those who take redundancy.
You’ve probably heard the news: the Australian media is experiencing the most serious contraction in its history.
The rise of online and mobile media has led to the collapse of the classified advertising business model that has long sustained media companies, especially in print, and this, in turn has affected their ability to fund the journalism that has long informed us.
What’s less often discussed is the considerable human cost of those changes. Last year more than 1,000 journalists in Australia became redundant: that’s around 15% of the journalist workforce.
Interesting article. “legacy media” – where journalists once got reasonable pay for their efforts. “Digital media” – where journalists are getting miserable pay if at all.
Perhaps it is about time there was a review of Commonwealth funding for journalism degrees too. After all they are supposed to be applied degrees, training people for a specific career. If the jobs don’t exist it is time to closed many of these schools down and consolidate them into a handful of schools of real excellence. Same applies to film/media/cultural studies faculties. A back to the future approach.
I’d like to know how many of the more than 1000 journalists made redundant from the print media were sub-editors.
As a Mentor for a University, I am surprised at the continuation of the Journalism courses, and their steady increase of intake numbers. I reluctantly advise my mentees that the career they are planing for does not exist.
Interesting information on the current situation for many journalists. Equally interesting would be to compare the downward trend of magazine/newspaper sales with the concentration of media ownership. When the direction, content & quality of so many publications are subject to the views of one silly bigoted sleazy old man, it’s no wonder they have lost readership. The online world is a convenient excuse, used by the conservative shock jocks of the news world to explain their unpopularity, it is not the whole reason. For todays consumer, the titillation, gossip and biased commentary do not equal real news and information.
What is legacy media? Pardon my ignorance, but I have not heard of it.