A question of
Barriers and attitudes keep working-class people out of journalism, Kath Grant finds
C
racking the ‘class ceiling’ is essential if journalism and news coverage are to become more representative of today’s society, according to the latest Diversity in Journalism report from the NCTJ. However, it emphasises
there are no easy answers to how people from disadvantaged backgrounds can be brought into the media industry. Joanne Butcher, chief executive of the NCTJ, says: “We must encourage those from all walks of life into journalism, remove the barriers and support people in their careers so they can join the decision-makers. We all need to work together to make this happen.” She is adamant that the industry needs to place equal value
on alternative, non-graduate entry to boost and promote recruitment, and has announced new outreach work with partners in the media and education. She says it will increase recruitment of school leavers onto NCTJ further education college courses and will help diversify cohorts on accredited university courses. Other plans include publicising access to training and funding for it at a time when there has been a drop in the employment of journalists because of severe job losses. Despite generally grim times for the industry, a small
amount of progress has been made in improving diversity but the lack of journalists from working-class backgrounds remains a concern. Journalists are much more likely to come from households where a parent works or has worked in a higher- level occupation – one of the key determinants of social class. Seventy-two per cent of journalists had a parent in one of the three highest occupational groups compared with 44 per cent of all UK workers. A relatively low proportion of journalists have parents in skilled trades at only eight per cent compared with 20 percent for all those in work. Younger, more junior journalists tend to be less socially diverse than senior editors who may have begun work when journalism training was funded. With job losses in the regions leading to fewer staff opportunities for young journalists, many are being forced straight into freelancing when they leave university. However, those from working class families cannot afford to work for little or no pay until they have established themselves as freelance journalists. Robyn Vinter writes for national newspapers including The Observer, The Guardian, the i newspaper and the Sunday Mirror. Based in Leeds, she was formerly a reporter at the Yorkshire Post, and previously ran The Overtake,
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an investigative news website for young people. “Middle- and upper-class people set the standard of what a
journalist looks like, sounds like, what their manner is like. And everything else is inferior. If you can’t assimilate, you can’t survive.” She adds: “Look at how many working-class news reporters are on TV. It’s either none or it’s impossible to tell because they were forced to assimilate.” Working-class journalists are often trusted more when they
are out on stories “but, inside the newsroom, you can see people look at you like some kind of specimen when you’re talking”, she notes. She often felt less valuable when comparing herself to
colleagues and saw her lack of skills as a polished public speaker and the difficulties she found in voicing her own achievements as personal failings. She says: “These are not real failings. They’re not even important for my actual job.” Kate Bohdanowicz is from a working-class family in Nottingham and moved to London in 1995 after leaving university. As a child, she had free school meals and school uniform vouchers. She couldn’t afford the NCTJ course after university so ended up in various jobs, then found work at a press agency and a celebrity news agency. For a while, she was their Irish stringer, based in Dublin. Back in London, she freelanced on the diary desks at the Evening Standard and Daily Express and worked as a staff journalist at the Express for 11 years before returning to freelancing. “No one ever asked me about my qualifications. I was just brought in for a shift and, if they liked me, I would get another one. The Express was full of all types of people – the Standard wasn’t, at least not in the Diary section. Everyone there was posh or connected in some way.” There was a traineeship scheme at the Express that
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recruited people from different backgrounds. However, the NCTJ qualification was required so this excluded some people financially. Bohdanowicz realised that journalism was full of ‘dynasties’
I was comfortable speaking to anyone but I have worked with some journalists who feared going onto council estates
where the same family name crops up again and again as children of established writers are given jobs: “It’s sad as these people aren’t necessarily the best people – they are just the best-placed people.” Jennifer Walley trained as a journalist on an NCTJ pre-entry course 40 years ago when training was still funded. She had wanted to be a journalist from the age of 11 and was the first of her family to stay in education beyond the statutory leaving age because she needed two A levels for the course. Her first job was on a weekly newspaper in Greater Manchester after she wrote more than 100 letters inquiring about vacancies. “We had no phone at home so I used public phone boxes or
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