journopig: monitoring the media

We were interested to read in today’s Guardian about a new workshop the newspaper is holding to encourage writers from a minority background.

Joseph Harker, on page 2 of the Media section, writes about why the Guardian has organised this workshop, stating that he wished the media better represented Britain’s population and:

“That whether you are working class, gay, black, Asian, disabled, Muslim, old, young or a woman, you felt your views and experiences had a proper outlet.”

Um – hang on a second. The old, the young, and women – these are all “minorities”? In fact, the majority of the British population seems to be covered here, apart from white middle-aged males. Harker states that the media is still:

“led by an elite that is male, from the home counties and private school/Oxbridge-educated”

- although, given that he thinks the young and old are minorities, we were surprised he didn’t add the average age of this elite.

Being a bit perturbed that one Guardian writer sees all these groups of people as minorities, we explored the Guardian’s workshop webpage.

It clearly states that you can apply for the workshop if:

“You belong to a minority group through your ethnicity, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief.”

Now, we’re sorry, but one half of us is apparently in a minority group because of her gender. Only this fact seems to have utterly escaped her.

Journopig One is a writer – and wonders whether, in assigning her gender as a minority group that needs encouraging, the Guardian has made a somewhat retrogressive step.

Some of our favourite Guardian writers are women, but we’ve never thought, “Oh, well done them for getting published in the Guardian!” Their gender is irrelevant.

All we want to read is good journalism from good journalists, regardless of their “minority group”. Some writing is done by the male “elite”, but the writer doesn’t matter – it’s their writing that does.

In addition, as far as we’re aware, nobody has ever questioned Journopig One’s gender when she’s been pitching for work, or not commissioned her on that basis.

We’re more concerned with the fact that the media is always keen to commission writers based on their celebrity rather than on any discernible talent, and seems to commission from an ever decreasing circle of “known” writers or celebs, to keep their sales as high as they can.

And we’re concerned with the slashing of freelance budgets by many publications, and the lack of flexibility when advertising staff jobs, which doesn’t make it easy for those with childcare responsibilities to apply, and therefore possibly discourages some women from applying for these roles (the average jobbing journo’s salary not being great, as opposed to childcare costs).

It doesn’t matter what “minority group” you may be from, if the media continues to focus on a limited number of established journalists (or the dreaded celeb writers), your chances of getting commissioned by the likes of the Guardian remain small.

A workshop that assigns you a label and assumes that if you’re a woman, you need help on how “to discuss how to approach commissioning editors with ideas” is not going to help.

Getting your commissioning editors to accept work from people regardless of their background would be good. Looking at what might be stopping various people from writing for you would be good – rather than grouping a load of diverse people together and assuming they all have the same reasons for not having come to you.

So why not just run a workshop for your editors to encourage them to be more open, rather than focus on it being the majority who are, apparently, in a minority that are the “problem”?