and finally It’s been downhill since cave dwelling


Chris Proctor charts a history of gloom at work


I for?” They explained that it was an acronym indicating


that The Job’s … well, gone downhill. It’s a common complaint. Veteran journalists remorselessly bemoan that the fun’s gone out of it. They never get out of the office, expenses are frugal and, anyway, writing for a web page is a poor substitute for real, print journalism. Is it really as bad as they make out? Or has each passing generation harboured the same resentment? I think they probably have. I have a vision of a brace of disgruntled figures clad in the rough skins of extinct triceratops sitting outside a cave staring at a slowly dying fire. The tools of their trade, rocks of different sizes, lie scattered on the ground. “The country’s going to the diplodocuses,” says one of them. “I’m glad I’m not starting out as a journalist these days.” His companion nods sagely. “The job’s not what it used to be.” The pair muse silently on the golden days of their profession. “We might not have had much, but we had each other. A sense of community. Of belonging.” They pause. “It was a hard life, but we enjoyed ourselves. “Yes, you’d go out the door and it was fifty-fifty


you’d end up with your body mangled and torn apart by a raging beast 10 times your size, limbs sliced off your torso and your sinews strangled as you slid down a tyrannosaurus’ intestine. But we’d laugh about it! Well, those who made it back to the cave would. “We’d sit round the fire exchanging views and


blows, happy as lycorhinus. We’d quite forget we were in the middle of an ice age likely to last 9,500 years. And, when we did get a summer after that lot, we’d appreciate it.”


once worked for the POEU, the union that represented BT engineers. At one gathering, I was especially impressed by the smart appearance of the Belfast delegates. They strode in


together, wearing white shirts and matching high-quality ties, each emblazoned with the legend “TJF”. “Very attractive,” I told them. “What does TJF stand


Nostalgia for a golden age would break out into other reminiscences. “Look at courting. When we were lads, you’d pick up your trusty club, set off to the next valley, beat a damsel silly and dragged her home. Now you see young men having to spend half the day combing their faces, painting themselves blue and snapping shrubs to give to their intended.” Their heads shake in disbelief and disappointment. “And the job … finished.” “Finished.” “We picked up a good solid flint and ground out


shapes on another rock. Proper work, that is. Worth doing. We made things to last. We’d finish a job and know that people could come and look at it for years. Centuries. Now what do they use, the poor sods? Papyrus. Paper. Horrible stuff.” “How long is something written on a piece of paper going to last? Couple of days, max. Everything’s temporary. No wonder they don’t take pride in the job. I mean, it’s not worth doing a job properly if you’re working with paper. It’s going to fall apart next time it rains. Another of those Noah incidents and it all disappears in a mass of sludge. Our stuff was permanent. In a million years, you’ll still be able to read the rules I carved about parking restrictions for acrocanthosauruses. Paper wouldn’t do that.” “And then there’s the flint miners. They’ll all


be out of a job.” An air of despondency takes over as the pair make their way back to the grotto and nostalgically chip more TJFs onto the wall. Twenty years from now, distant descendants will sit in an air-conditioned condo lamenting the good old days of those laughably old- fashioned iPhones you see in design museums. They’ll recollect the time journalists sent copy to funny little news sites that people used to look at. Those were the days – when newsgatherers wrote in notebooks. They will pine for the time schools taught handwriting rather than keyboard skills. “You wrote things down and it was preserved in


computers’ memories,” they will reminisce. “Now you film yourself speaking a report and it’s disappeared by morning.” “I wouldn’t like to be starting work as a journalist today.”


26 | theJournalist


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