The state of the media is terrible
And media organizations’ hiring processes are perverse.
A while back, I received an email from a storied news organization that I admire very much. According to this email, I passed the first round of screening for a year-long fellowship and I should be expecting some form of communication from HR to schedule an interview.
Weeks went by, no communication. Finally, when nearly a month had passed, I sent an email inquiring about when I might finally hear from this mysterious HR department. Two days later, and a rejection letter appeared in my inbox. Rejection letters always sting, but this letter had a particular paragraph that left me fuming. It said:
“Unfortunately, due to the high volume, not all candidates that passed the initial screening were granted interviews. Please note that we are unable to provide specific feedback to candidates.”
So basically: not only did we NOT do what we said we were going to do, but please don’t ask us why.
This is not an isolated incident. Not for me, and not for other young journalists I am lucky to call my friends.
Journalism seems to finally be crawling out from the hole it found itself in during the mid-2000s when everyone realized that newspapers no longer served their original purpose and people wanted their information on the web. News websites are now aplenty, and many of them are doing great work that’s driving decent readership. Some outlets are declaring the crisis to be over completely, and that a revolutionary era of online journalism is only just beginning.
But it is still a grumpy old boys club that picks and chooses who is worthy to enter.
Journalism has been claiming for a while it wants and needs to diversify newsrooms. Ann Friedman wrote Thursday for the Columbia Journalism Review that the lack of transparency in media’s hiring practices is making it very hard to accomplish this. I agree wholeheartedly with this argument, but I would perhaps go further and say this opaqueness is a way to hold on to what journalism has always sort of been: privileged white (mostly male) kids explaining current affairs to “commoners.”
A few months ago, I received another email from an editor at a high-profile start-up who seemed interested in my resume. A meetup for coffee turned into a tour of this newsroom, which I was very grateful for. But when I sent an email thanking this editor for their time, I got nothing. Zip. Nada. Instead, I was alerted later (via Twitter) that the position this editor had been considering me for was taken.
I discovered after the fact that other young journalists had similar experiences with this start-up. I guess they saw it as a way to shop for fresh meat. Still, the idea of courting someone only to never call them again seems normal in maybe the world of online dating, but for online journalism it just reeks of high school cliquishness.
As somewhat of an outsider, it’s comical watching this “online journalism revolution” unfold. These people, who are essentially cheering for themselves, are almost all white and universally come from some sort of privileged background. Does journalism finally have a pulse again? Getting there! But is it still gripping onto the ideals from the heyday of newspapers? Yup! Amanda Hess of Slate perhaps said it best when she declared: “journalism and technology won’t just magically diversify when they shift over to a new platform.”
At the end of the day, I’m glad this is my chosen field. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t read a truly great article or see a really innovative infographic. Great journalism is out there, and it’s easy to find, thanks to the magic of the Internet.
But media organizations have got to open themselves up a bit. Only interviewing and hiring people who fit a specific mold is holding journalism back from getting where it needs to be. Dare I say, these practices are holding itself back from the real new media revolution.
