Journalists’ solidarity

Joe,

Well written. Like the Biblical account of Jesus being undermined and denigrated by his people, journalists despise their own!

PG already comprehensively addressed the professional killer of high turn-over in newsrooms.

To me, another important dying character in the media industry is that of mentoring. Experienced journalists rarely pass on skills, knowledge to upcoming writers within the newsroom. Editors are simply overwhelmed.

Rookies find ‘their own feet’ in the profession, and develop own character.

There’s little commonality, other than classroom theories. Many times journalists do not know each other across media houses.

We have, in many ways, become the ‘super employees’, satisfying employer’s performance requirements.

Put another way: There’s no inter-personal touch among many journalists even within newsrooms and no motivation to care about colleagues. Just how sad!

Overall, the value system of resilience and solidarity has been broken by inter-generational gap among practicing juniors and exiting seniors.

Maybe as young writers, we are doing less to drink from the battle-hardened.

It’s sort of ‘capitalist culture’ gone wrong in the media fraternity, I think.