A new report on social mobility has confirmed that the traditional career ladder of regional press journalists moving onto the nationals has all but ceased to exist.

The “Unleashing Aspiration” report on access to the professions published today predicts that unless action is taken, the journalists of the future will be drawn from the richest 25pc of families in the UK.

Among the reports’s findings were that while journalists and broadcasters born in 1958 typically grew up in families with income around 5.5pc above the national average, those born in 1970 grew up in families with incomes 42.4pc above the average.

“Typical journalists of the future will today be growing up in a family that is better off than three in four of all families in the UK,” it said.

The report, by a panel of experts chaired by the former Cabinet minister Alan Milburn, also provided the first official confirmation that the old career route from local to national papers has broken down.

“During the UK’s first wave of social mobility, journalists might have worked their way up through local newspapers…such opportunities have diminished in recent decades,” it said.

Interviewed on the BBC Today Programme, Mr Milburn said that “in the old days, it was possible to start out as a messenger boy on a local paper and become a Fleet Street journalist.”

Nowadays, he said, it was almost impossible to enter the profession without a university degree.

The National Union of Journalists has welcomed the report’s call for national standards for internships as a means of tackling what it called “bogus work experience placements.”

The report showed how the cost of such internships, as well as the debt acquired when undertaking journalism courses, present a barrier for those from less well-off backgrounds to enter journalism.

The NUJ has been campaigning for a number of years for the government to tackle the use of placements by media companies to get work done for free.

General secretary Jeremy Dear said: “This report shows how the use of unpaid internships has undermined the diversity of our profession. It is good to see the government recognising the problem and we are now looking for swift action to ensure the financial barriers to entering journalism are lowered.”

Comments

Bored in the PR world (21/07/2009 15:11:28)
Personally I never had any problem getting weekend shifts with the nationals,and that was only five or six years ago. I made a decision to move into PR because of the money — ironically my new salary would probably put my children in the group likely to get a chance according to this report.
I do agree very much with the comment about papers getting work done for free, it has gone on for years

Chris Youett (21/07/2009 16:40:58)
What took the good & the great so long to realise that journalism has been the preserve of the three and four car family.
Even 30 years ago, it was almost impossible to get onto many local papers unless you had been to at least a minor fee-paying school – something too many editors were quite comfortable with.
The profession has been largely graduate-only since the mid-1980s. This is why most newsrooms are almost exclusively middle class. I would suggest that this has a lot to do with circulation decline. After all, if nobody reports was us “smelly proles” want to read, then we aren’t going to be in a rush to buy a paper every day.

Mr_Osato (21/07/2009 16:53:34)
They may come from the richest 25 per cent of the population, but they’ll be in the poorest 25 per cent if they stay… and therein lies the problem.
We do get a huge number of talented young people into the industry (although we get some duffers too).
The problem is that they don’t stick with it. They see mates who are no smarter or better educated than them going into other industries, earning more money, working fewer hours, getting less hassle and without the Sword of Damacles hanging over them in the form of cutbacks by greedy/negligent/incompetent managers.
This particularly affects those who don’t come from money and want to get on the housing ladder/build up a pension etc. And that includes those recruited under the rare, worthy schemes to find new reporters ‘off the streets’.

gis a job (22/07/2009 11:16:31)
I would say that the future is already here. I’m from a working class background and have been a reporter on a local paper for four years. I love reporting but am beginning to lose hope I’ll be able to carry on, because how long can, or should, you work for more than 50 hours a week and only have enough to cover bills, travel and food with nothing left over for fun, holidays, savings, buying a home or starting a family?
I didn’t know any professional people when I was growing up and naively assumed I could work my way up through the ranks. I had no clue quite how much of a stranglehold the right schools, degrees and family contacts had on such jobs. Although it’s true it’s possible, if not easy, to get weekend shifts on the nationals the problem is leaving a steady job to go shifting when those shifts can be cut at any time. A risky business normally, and much worse in the current climate. Doing an internship to put yourself in the right position is even more impossible. I worked really hard for my first at BA level, despite working around 20 hours a week for money, and think I’ve got a lot to offer. But I also have debts I must pay monthly. Sadly more often than not when I meet someone who works for a national or the BBC they are public school/Oxford educated and/or did the hideously expensive MA at City Uni. And every time that happens something dies in me inside.

The Dark Rider (22/07/2009 12:40:55)
six month placements etc actually make me feel sick when I read them. I have spent the past 5 years in severe stress – I work full time and study part time – completing an OU course and now my NCTJ (I graduate next month) – all to become a journalist. The most I can afford to give for free is a month’s work experience each year. So when I see adverts for 6 month unpaid internships, and then read that that is pretty much the only way to get a job, I feel rage. Real rage. 5 years of hard graft, living off beans on toast, with no one to support me but myself – and some rich kid waltzes into a placement that’ll lead to a job – just because he has parents who can support him. Unfair. Sorry if I sound whinging, but if you could see the debts in my bank and the circles under my eyes, and having pretty much no chance of getting a job, you might be whinging too. Hopefully things will change.

Joe Willis (22/07/2009 14:22:36)
Fair enough… they might start their career coming from a family with an income 42 per cent above the average, but a few pay days in and they will be shopping at Lidl with the rest of us.