Wannabe Hacks

Dearest darling Jezebel,

As a sometimes angry, mostly hysterical feminist with a passion for gender politics and reproductive rights and a penchant for pretty boys and trash TV, I thought I’d never find the perfect news website for me. All the “SERIOUS FEMINIST” sites were no good for a laugh on my lunch break and the other women’s mags just made me feel fat while they tried to sell me concealer.

Then you came along. I can’t even remember how we first met, but now I can’t imagine life before you. How do I love you? Let me count the ways…

The Postgrad blows Jezebel a kiss.

In your manifesto you say you will “attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke. Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women’s magazine we’d want to read.”

Well, girl, you’ve delivered. You’re my first port of call for a snarky digest of the weekly gossip rags, a Katch-up with the Kardashians or a cuteness overdose of baby animal pictures. You denounce media misogyny, offer me practical fashion tips, and you’d never, ever call a girl fat.

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Should we be leaving photography to the experts? Photo courtesy of marjoleincc

We’ve gone on time and time again about how we need to be jack-of-all-trades journalists. (As well as having a specialism – we don’t ask for much, eh?!) And I mentioned way back in October that I was taking a module in photojournalism this year.

At the time, I naively said: “I firmly believe that not only can any hack take photos, but I believe they should be taking photos too.”

Well, now I take it all back. While I did really enjoy the module, it was really hard work. But I’m not say we should steer clear of photojournalism because it’s hard. That’s ridiculous. Everything is a challenge when you first start out. And I’m definitely not a quitter.

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You couldn’t have missed the story of Caitlin Reilly’s experience of the current government work scheme in the news recently, where she was forced to work for free at Pound Land. Okay, so it was only for two weeks, hardly slave labour.But is forcing young graduates to work for free the right way to solve the unemployment crisis?  

Money, money, money. Image courtesy of Rogue Soul.

No, you could argue that ultimately it will not create jobs but take paid jobs away. If there is a task to do, be it sweep floors, work on the checkout or stack shelves that is a space for what would be a paid employee. Instead Pound Land and other institutions on the scheme are gaining a free worker making money for their private company.

There has been a backlash against unpaid internships but the government work scheme is far worse. At least with internships, they are at most for only a few months and are (hopefully) going to help the individual work towards their chosen career, resulting in a job.

Jan Moir, columnist at the Daily Mail has slated Cait stating that we all can’t do jobs we love, that we all have to be a shelf stacker at one point in our lives and that Cait thinking working at Pound Land is “beneath her” is ridiculous.

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Matt Hewson is a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Birmingham. He writes for the student paper Redbrick and occasionally blog at HuffPost UK.

Paying to read the news online is for many of us, an unusual concept. Most British newspapers have thus far opted to keep their internet-based content-free. Not so in Slovenia – since the 16^th of January, readers have had to buy a subscription in order to access most news sites. Nine major Slovene publishers have banded together to create a national paywall that will guard elements of their collective material.

The move was coordinated by Piano Media, who were also behind the erecting of a paywall in Slovakia last year. The process will be very similar to the change that took place in Slovakia, but there are a few key differences.

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Artlee Mhlanga is a final year student at Coventry University, studying Journalism and English. He is currently the editor of ‘The Source,’ Coventry University’s student newspaper and an intern at Communicate Magazine. He spoke to Freelance Journalist Judith Townend and got her tips on how to break into the industry as well as her thoughts on Al Jazeera’s growth and the fallout from the Leveson inquiry.

Most young hacks nowadays are training to be efficient across all media platforms from broadcast, audio, online to print journalism. There is a never-ending debate about whether a modern-day hack should be a jack of all trades but a master of none.

Speaking at the first instalment of the Coventry Conversation series 2012, Judith Townend, a digital journalist, gave young journalists some insight as to how interactive media is changing journalism. With copies of her CV being distributed across the room, few could doubt her credentials. Boasting a degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge Townend trained in journalism at City University London in 2006/7.

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