August 29, 2003
Bad dress-sense, good training
It’s a catch-cry carved in stone, apparently: Editors and producers of some high-profile mainstream media outlets sometimes publicly bewail the fact that university journalism and media graduates aren’t always instantly able to be sat in front of a terminal and magically become a fully-fledged member of the journalism staff. They require further shaping and experience.
The complaint is reasonable – on the face of it. If the kid has just had three years of education, he/she should be a fully-fledged media producer. Well yes, and no.
Universities traditionally try to provide a broader education that might span a number of themes, including understanding communication and producing good, audience-friendly, material. Increasingly, they attempt to mimic real-world experience but ultimately they cannot do it to the enth detail.
There are a few factors in play here. For a start, a university can’t provide completely realistic workplace training unless it goes into competition with the very publications or shows (print and electronic) which might employ their students. Can you imagine the fuss if public tertiary funding was poured into direct competition with the private media sphere?
Even if you did succeed with such an enterprise, which model do you use? One of the significant characteristics of the media landscape – particularly now with the (still) early development of internet – is that publications and business models are begun and fail on a continuous basis. Even established names fall over, eventually. That’s how the market works; to choose one, or even a few, would be foolish and short-sighted.
Following on from that theme, perfectly shaping a student for one model can make them ill-suited to another – thus defeating the original purpose.
Meanwhile universities have a broader cultural agenda – driven in part by tradition and in part by results – which includes providing something broader than a set of trade skills. Train a mind to research, analyse and communicate across a broad range of disciplines, and you have a flexible person. Train a person to specific needs and you have an operator, who will be fine until your business model falls over…
The complaints of editors and publishers (I’ve worked as both in specialist fields) skate over the fact that you could have a combination of Tolstoy and an award-winning journo new to staff, but it will still take time to properly embed them into your culture and audience. Unless (maybe) you hire them as a commentator or columnist – which is an entirely different question.
A cheering aspect is that work-experience or internship programs seem to be breaking down some of the barriers. Sometimes the temporary employer is appalled by the presentation and dress-sense of the student (who might be poor, but smart).
When a well-trained and motivated uni grad, or near-grad, gets a break in a pukka workplace, both parties are often pleasantly surprised by the experience. The kid is usually a good researcher and often (with a few rough edges knocked off) able to provide useful work. Sometimes the employer decides to keep them.
A challenge for the employer is to find real work for the wunderkind to try them out – and many media workplaces are short-staffed, or sometimes short on basic management skills, to the point where no-one is capable of thinking this problem through. Meeting a deadline is top priority, and could you make a cup of coffee, or file something, dear…
Perhaps the biggest hump to overcome is cultural. A British former mainstream senior journo and successful book publisher reacted to my admission of having recently switched from full-time media to full-time teaching with, “So you’re the fucking enemy!” Eh?
It’s because, like me, he learned his craft by working his way up through the trade, and I was now one of those bastards who apparently was trying to turn it into a ‘hi-falutin’ science. Actually I’m not. His suspicion of academics allegedly trying to take the media training high ground is typical of much of the industry.
Media is still largely a trade. But I can’t help noticing that, after 20 years in the sphere (which I’m still involved with), working through a masters program in academia taught me to think about and analyse the game instead of just the content of the story. That was a difficult and sometimes painful experience, but I don’t regret one moment of the effort, or considerable expense.
The research and analysis skills taught by academia are immediately applicable to real-world media, and there were times – after some minor revelation during a lecture, or puzzling over a thesis – that I sincerely wished someone had made me do this ten years earlier. It has improved my skills in the real world, judging by the fact that I’m now paid far better on a time-per-dollar basis when writing an article.
Good result, but my dress-sense is nothing to write home about either.

Guy Allen