"And, most of all, when an aspiring journalists can’t be bothered to go out and walk their patch or is happy to sit on Twitter, rather than meet people in the know with the stories, that’s ego of the highest order." -- I thought that just meant they should think of doing something else. But maybe you are right, maybe that's ego.

Cracking read, couldn't agree more.

Some others have already pointed out that this is nothing to do with journalism, and more to do with people. People have egos. Get over that.

But there is a greater, central, fallacy here: that ego is bad for journalism.

I'm not ashamed to say that seeing my byline is exciting, but it also brings with it responsbility and ownership. The flipside to boasting at an achievement is the embarassment of getting something wrong. If an article has my name in lights at the top I want to make damn sure that it is the best it can be, as accurate as it can be. That is a positive driver.

Journalists can be brands in their own right. It might be the populist rantings of a Clarkson or Littlejohn, or the analysis of a Fisk or Goldacre, but people trust the person as much as the publication. From an economic perspective, ego can give you a bigger pay cheque.

Journalism is about judgement. Picking out what's interesting. Assessing conflicting viewpoints and deciding which is more convincing. For that you need ego, because if you don't trust your own judgement then why should anyone else?

@thestudent Hi there. I guess that was a slightly grandiose way to put it. Put more simply what I mean is this: every aspiring writer who wants to progress from writing to amuse him/herself to being paid to write for an audience has to learn to take him/herself out of their work.

I blogged on this theme fairly recently - http://bit.ly/gku1LI (please do take a look - I get no traffic) - but essentially, it's a learning curve by which you stop thinking about why the angle you have taken on a story or the style you have written it in reflects on you, or your ability, and instead why it truly reflects the interests and needs of the people who will actually read it.

It sounds very simple, but only the other day I subbed a piece by a very experienced journalist who had still fallen into the trap (or so it seemed to me) of writing to try and give a certain impression about his authority on the topic in hand, rather than giving the audience the more interesting angle (sorry to be so awfully vague, but as I say, it's a genuine example so I'm trying to be discreet).

Anyway - my point with ego is that while young journalists have always had to go through this process of 'getting over themselves' to become any good, those who have spent years blogging and operating in social media may (I muse) find this even more difficult. Say what you like about Twitter as a place to share content, but really it's about marketing ourselves (no shame in that). Which runs somewhat contrary to this idea of learning to stop trying to market ourselves when we write professionally.

Hope this is of some interest! Nice to have a forum for these sorts of self-indulgent journo chats.

Sam

What a refreshing blog! This gives me hope that there are still some young / aspiring journalists with their head screwed on. During my time working with student journalists, I've met way too many who want to run before they can walk. The funny thing is, the learning never stops, it simply changes.

Thanks to everyone who commented, sorry I'm only getting round to responding now.

@benbryant As pictures of ego or arrogance are hard to come by, the keys are meant to be a representation of the old-fashioned notion of journalists as gatekeepers, which I think a lot of young hacks are drawn to but which is doesn't make for particularly good journalism.

@Mikey Thanks - we've tried a few different things to try and make the site a bit easier to digest (especially long posts) but we get the sense that what we're doing isn't working. We'll make a point of looking at that.

@samparker Interesting analogy - I think I'd heard of something similar (if not the same) and, if true, that's exactly (if not extreme) what I mean. When you say 'dethroning of your self in matters of style/focus', do you mean a kind of subservience to what you're writing? Am intrigued by this but would like to know more what you mean.

@jakeryan No shouting down here Jake - you make a valid point about it being across all professions. But I think there is a clear distinction between being 'great' and thinking you are 'great' - going 'beyond your remit' as you call it (what I imagine to mean going beyond what is expected of you, whether on a story or work experience) doesn't necessarily mean that you have to shout about it yourself - leave that for others to do would be my point. As @monk says, ego rarely translates to talent

I agree with @josephstashko that there's is less impetus (from my own perspective) to have from page (though thats not to say I don't want to write good stories..) but I think it would be damaging for everyone to be like that. In an odd way, it;s beneficial to have those ego-weilding characters in a news team, just as long as they aren't too many of them and they're reined in sufficiently.

This is a sniping, oxymoronic post. I know of the arrogant kids who brag about work experience and their bylines - and who shout down their peers. And where do I find them? Everywhere and in every profession - ego is part of being a young person.

There will always be a few who overtly display these characteristics, and the rest of us who do our best to self-examine and repress them (example; I'm quite precious about my copy but I bite my lip - does that make me better than those who don't?), or provide subtleties that some are incapable of showing - as well as using the confidence that emanates from your ego as a journalistic tool.

Now for the oxymoronic bit. Blithely posting about a minority's behavioral traits is weak.

Paul Bradshaw is an esteemed lecturer on journalism but his point is about as nebulous as it gets - I'm sure he was pushed for time. Unfortunately your attempts to illuminate it (no doubt admirably) are interspersed with snipes which have blinded me to what are probably some good points.

There are those who think they are great, those that know they are great, and the rest of us who try to be great.

Each one of these requires a level of ego, so use it as best you can - if you go beyond your remit, something or someone will cut down you down to size. Fortunately the first two are a rare species, and long may that continue.

That was my aphorism and it required a level of ego to write it. It may be cut down as tripe, or received lukewarmly - the tone of my post has most likely left little room for any other response. But I will listen, consider and decide if it was in any way worthwhile; but I won't then be 'getting over myself'. That would be suicide as an aspiring journalist. Putting my opinion in the cupboard when I'm writing a news story? I do it all the time. Though I still try to (sparingly) leave idiosyncratic bits of my own style in there - again, ego.

(I defer to Sam Parker's temperate post)

In any other job - be it stacking shelves or rocket science - new starters don't usually come with the attitude that they are the greatest in the world at it.
But we see it all the time with wannabe journalists.
Although it may be an ego thing, it doesn't tend to translate into a talent thing.

Reminds me of a lovely story about a workie at Empire who left after her first day because she was asked to transcribe an interview, complaining that the experience "wasn't what she wanted" - i.e. writing reviews and interviewing Tom Cruise all day.

Ego is definitely a problem for wannabe hacks (the people, not this site), particularly in an age where having a grasp of blogging, social media etc. can give young people the allusion of being the finished article when in reality, the core skills that separate a clued-up blogger from a quality journalist still takes years of varied experience (and the humility to learn) in order to perfect.

I think the problem goes deeper than this article suggests - bragging about where you did your work ex or being ungracious about your interviews is a maturity/personality thing - what's more pertinent to your development as a journalist (I would argue) is the dethroning of your self in matters of style/focus.

As the old adage goes, you have to work 20 years at least on a quality paper before your editor will let you use a personal pronoun in your work - in blogging and Twitter, putting yourself at the front of your writing is par for the course. What takes time is realising that to be good, your work has to speak to your audience, not show off your personal creative abilities, or reflect on you as an individual.

I think this lesson will come as a shock - or never fully sink in at all - for a generation of bloggers and social media addicts - and that is the main problem surrounding ego and young journalists.

On the positive note good to WH ever improving and generating interesting debates surrounding the industry.

Sam@samparkercouk

A great post and a point well worth making - you see it all too often.

"It’s got to a point where it seems young journalists think they have to display this kind of bravado to survive and thrive in the industry." - I'd argue that's the kind of attitude that will get you nowhere at all.

When it's so hard to get a job anyway, is an ability to muck in, take rejections on the chin and cover whatever story comes your way as well as you can not a better way to go about things?

When a website for aspiring journalists incessantly puts the important bits of the article in bold type lest the reader miss them, that's ego.

(winky)

Spot on Ben.

I've got to the point where I don't even really care about bylines anymore. Foolish? Possibly, but I'm more interested in being involved in the overall production of news rather than being the one with my name splashed all over the front page.

Way too many people are full of ego when they're still students, which I think it's sad. It's one of the times when you can actually afford to be fairly idealistic and experiment with various things. Starting out with a mentality of "I know best" when the reality couldn't be further from the truth is clearly the wrong path to go down. It's a trait that's put me off journalism several times recently, because I don't particularly want to be part of a profession that still asserts that it has all the answers when its far from the case. That the same attitude manifests itself in some students is saddening but understable and unsurprising.

"When an aspiring journalist disregards a supposedly smaller local story in favour of chasing (and not necessarily getting) a big ‘celeb’ interview, that’s ego."

I'd argue that's just sensible, rather than ego!

When a website for aspiring journalists incessantly puts what they consider the important bits of the article in bold, just in case the reader has trouble spotting them, that's ego.

;)

I like this post but i'm trying to work out what the picture of keys means