Read on Twitter
Journalism. On one level who have a few posh folk fretting about it being too elite and on another we have a wider industry incapable of paying wages that attract or retain anybody who aspires to a middle-class lifestyle. https://twitter.com/emilyrbakes/status/1294260292537516032
I don’t know very many journalists who are privately educated. I know hardly any who would make enough to send their own kids to private school. More tellingly, I’ve seen a helluva lot of relatively senior people leave the trade because they want to afford a foreign holiday.
There are particular issues with journalism retaining people in their 30s with kids. It’s fine doing some digidesk gig when you’re in your 20s, renting a room and doing Ryanair breaks. But have a baby? Wanna buy a house? Take kids on holiday? Forget it.
I get why folk worry about Fleet St editors or BBC execs who are from a narrow background. But journalists as a group are not rich or privileged. We’re mostly working people who’d earn more flogging phones down the mall and who stick with our jobs because we like what we do.
