Wordblog

The topic of the middle-class hold on journalism is not new but Media Guardian’s four page focus on journalism training is welcome, especially if the debate it stimulates results in action.

Peter Wilby leads the debate with an examination of the rise of the narrow social and ethnic base of journalism. He writes:

Faced with trying to understand, say, the grievances of the Muslim community or what drives inner-city youth to violence or what it’s like to have children attending a “sink school”, most journalists are lost. They have no contacts and no inside information.

Back in June 2006 I commented on a Sutton Trust report and wrote:

There are few from the poor housing estates, the very communities that are being covered with little understanding. With the rise of white nationalism (shown in the recent local government elections) and the threat of home-grown terrorism we need, more than ever, reporters and commentators who understand the people who live in these places.

So it is not surprising that I endorse virtually everything else Wilby writes. The real question is, what is to be done about it?

The new creative and media vocational diploma which is promoted by Cilve Jones, ITV’s former chief executive of news and regions, who has been advising the government, looks promising. In a Media Guardian interview he says the industry could do far more by funding bursaries and training schemes and ensuring we have a balanced entry.

Yet if we are to get to difficult places to reach the industry may have to go further, recruit young school-leavers for a probationary period and then provide those who show promise with the time and money for training.

But I am not holding my breath. It is more or less what I proposed at an early-1960s NUJ conference when I called for post entry release to attend NCTJ certificate courses. I was soundly defeated then.