Joanne the Coach

Journalists in 'We Are Miserable Buggers' Shocker

When I run media training workshops for businesses, we do an exercise where we ask participants to say what the word ‘media’ means to them.  The results are always interesting and rarely positive – people talk about anything from a scary devil with horns to a pack of marauding paparazzi with knives.

And this feeling is reflected in wider society – journalists are often seen as being on a par with politicians and estate agents as the most untrustworthy, lowest of the low professionals.  And now it seems even journalists themselves often don't like what they do.

Sally Whittle writes here about a study in the US which suggests that, in general, journalists are pretty unhappy with their lot.  Stress, poor motivation and depression litter the newsroom.

I tend to see a lot of miserable journalists in my job, but never realised how widespread the misery is.  When people come for coaching, they are generally at a point of change in their careers.  Either they want to switch jobs, earn more, become less stressed, or all of that and more.

I think the NUJ should start a course along the lines of Embrace Your Inner Journalist, to inject a bit of positive mental attitude into the profession.  Or maybe we need Journalists' Anonymous, where hacks can gather to moan about duff PRs and confess how many pitches got ignored that week.

Cheer up guys - at least you're not politicians.

Hang on, isn't that Michael Gove both a journalist and a politician?  Oh dear.  Chin up Michael.  So what if no one wants to lend you a cup of sugar?  Long as you never open an estate agency you should be OK.

Are We Nearly There Yet?

Good grief, this daily blogging thing is hard.

**sigh** Isn't this month over yet?  I am gagging for December to begin.

Meanwhile, in the modern world, Brighton NUJ have started to podcast their meetings.  Click here for a listen.  Quite nifty, should you want to go to a meeting without ever actually going to a meeting.  I went to a great NUJ meeting earlier in the year, where the most vocal person there eventually admitted that she had thought she was coming to a meeting about nuclear disarmament, but had wandered into the wrong room by mistake.