Australia’s major media outlets have experienced significant job cuts in recent years and the issue is once again the centre of attention in our media landscape.
On Friday 26 July, journalists at Nine walked out of the newsroom to begin a five-day strike in hopes of bargaining for better pay, diversity and transparency, joined by industry peers across The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review, along with freelance writers.
Numerous reports have shown that journalists are anxious about their career prospects, despite the value and pride they see in the profession. As outlined in the Women in Media Industry Insight Report 2024, career dissatisfaction has reached a three-year high with 58% of women considering leaving their jobs due to concerns around pay. It found that 57% of women are dissatisfied or unsure about their career progression in the industry, especially among early and mid-career professionals.
The situation is also dire in the niche of arts journalism, with Adelaide’s The Advertiser slashing arts reviews and long-serving critics being the latest hit, following a series of arts specialist redundancies last year.
What this all shows is not only the precarity of the journalistic profession, but also the low value publications, newsrooms, media corporations and perhaps even the general public, place on quality journalism. Part of this is the fact that news and information is taken for granted in this day and age, and the lack of critical differentiation between accurate, quality information and sloppy misinformation works against the appreciation of the former.
Before this current episode of industrial action took place, ArtsHub was in conversation with Erin O’Dwyer about what the media landscape could mean for journalists today. O’Dwyer has 25 years’ experience in journalism and is a former lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. She’s faced redundancy twice in her career, but says she made sure that ‘my second redundancy was also my last redundancy’.
Last year O’Dwyer founded Good Prose Studios, a communications consultancy which helps businesses and brands to tell their stories. She has employed a number of journos in her business, offering them new opportunities to use their transferrable skills.
While we hope for the best for the Nine journalists’ strike, they will not be the last to walk the plank. O’Dwyer puts into perspective the tools and weapons at a journalist’s disposal should they find themselves caught in the storm.
The core skills of a journalist
O’Dwyer lists the variety of essential skills that a journalist has in their arsenal and how these can be transferred across a multitude of roles and industries. ‘Meeting deadlines, research, building relationships, looking for angles, producing work of a high quality and for a particular audience – these are core skills that can be utilised in stakeholder relationships, communications, marketing and even senior management,’ says O’Dwyer.
‘As a journalist, you are not only highly skilled in a particular topic area, but you also have incredible contacts and those who need to pivot and reposition themselves need to really tap into those contacts,’ she continues.
Especially for journalists looking to find new employment or freelance opportunities, identifying and advocating these skill sets will be essential to bridge the gap of understanding with prospective employers.
‘Some HR managers and gatekeepers don’t recognise how multi-skilled and talented journalists are,’ adds O’Dwyer, ‘so it’s about thinking outside the box.’
It’s likely that those in the existing network built during your journalistic career already appreciate the skills you have to offer, so reaching out to them as points of contact is often more successful than applying for roles the traditional way.
It’s how many came to work at Good Prose Studios, which boasts a full female-driven team across age, demographics and geography.
Read: Job insights: most in-demand arts jobs and salaries in Australia 2024
When it comes down to financial survival, O’Dwyers says journalists will potentially need to put up with freelancing, or jobs in other adjacent fields for a while. ‘It may not be the dream, but you can still find passion and purpose,’ she advises.
Side hustles are also important, not only for financial purposes, but they are also about ‘upskilling you, increasing your networks and giving extra strings to your bow,’ says O’Dwyer.
Essentially what O’Dwyer and her consultancy does is centred on storytelling, helping clients communicate brand values, reach new audiences, enter a new sector or map out strategic plans for professional development and grant applications. Through this avenue the team has broadened their horizons.
‘We’re creative people, so of course we should think creatively about how we build our careers,’ she adds.
Others on LinkedIn have even gone as far to say redundancy is the best thing to happen to journalists, who are now free to start building new foundations where their skills are valued, not underappreciated. Jake Meth, ex-Editor, Commentary at Fortune magazine and founder of Opinioned, wrote, ‘Journalists have lucrative skills, not lucrative jobs,’ adding that self-doubt is clouding the vision for new opportunities.
Is journalism education keeping up with real-world changes?
The current climate for journalism may be discouraging for those studying now, and there seems to be a real concern among students about whether a course will actually prepare them for the real world, especially when the media landscape is rapidly changing.
‘I think universities are trying to keep up, but it’s challenging because course outlines take a while to develop and implement,’ says O’Dwyer. ‘Where they have the opportunity [to be agile] is with work placements.
‘Something I’ve been really recommending universities do is to have active mentoring programs so that, after their degree, the graduates have someone to talk to or offer some guidance… I don’t think universities and training institutions are doing that well.’
Others have also argued for a recalibration of journalism education, from redefining what journalism entails in today’s context to the fundamental “professional values” and “ethical norms”. Working conditions are also increasingly being questioned by students, as the mental and physical strains put on journalists are now widely recognised as both unacceptable and unsustainable.
What needs to happen is the training of core skills in journalists, but also advocacy for those skills and their broader application as a collective. As O’Dwyer puts it, ‘Any organisation would do well to hire a newly redundant journalist. Journalists of my generation are highly trained, versatile communicators, who can pivot on a dime. We are fast, accurate and reliable. We can write policy, press releases and 100-character socials posts. We can whip up a vertical video or rewrite a submission in plain English. We are driven by passion, not greed, which means our pricing is competitive. And we meet our deadlines and budgets – on time, every time.’
If you want to help journalists on strike right now, sign the MEAA petition, ‘Don’t torch journalism’.
