Schooling journalists
| 12:25 UK time, Monday, 19 June 2006
The educational background of journalists has been much discussed over the last few days - with the survey (read it ) of top journalists suggesting a significant bias in their education towards private schools and certain universities, above all Cambridge and Oxford (including me).
Others have tried to follow this up and today's Media Guardian reflects disappointment that we have been unable to provide figures about the educational background of all our journalists. It carries of the Times Education Supplement which claims that "while the recruitment process remains so informal, untransparent and unmonitored, it will be open to abuse".
I think this criticism is taking things too far. There is always a decision about how much monitoring to do. Our recruitment process is actually pretty closely monitored - for example we look carefully at issues of gender, disability and the progress of ethnic minority candidates. We have never felt it appropriate to monitor specifically for educational background and, given we recruit several hundred people a year, it would be a significant undertaking.
But what we try to do in our recruitment is to attract a diverse range of candidates and to build teams with a broad range of knowledge, experience and skills. Educational background is part of this diversity but so are many other factors - age, class, where people come from, and their passions and interests to name just a few. Ultimately it's about achieving the best mix of people to be able to make the best output - that does mean understanding our audiences and challenging stereotypes and preconceptions.
There are things we have done such as removing the informality from our work experience system and making much more information about audiences available to everyone. There is much more that we can and should do. But I'm not convinced that simply adding up whether people went to university and, if so, which one is going to take us a great deal further towards serving our audiences better.
Comments
Agreed but is it not the case that we are hideously white, male and middle class as an organisation and that our recruitment methods favour that status quo? The biggest difference between the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and a lot of print newsrooms is the low proportion of people who have blagged and battled their way in through doing journalism at the bottom, rather than getting a triple tripos or whatever (I didn't go).
You could do a lot of things: you could cap the number recruited from Oxbridge at, say 5% of recruits and work for a target of no greater than 5% of the editorial workforce over 10 years (you would have to keep stats though)(my rough reckoning puts the combined Oxbridge undergrad population at about 2% of UK students at college); you could go out into the workforce and actively headhunt the kind of people who end up working for the tabloids; you could pay people decent wages on the same principle that operated when Rugby League was born - people with no family wealth cannot afford to work for the kudos or the love of it.
I'm another Cambridge-educated journalist but I have to say I've never worked with another "Oxbridge" graduate in 10 years at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. Ironically, most of my former uinversity friends who went to work for the press are now at The Guardian!
I don't really see how educational background matters, anyway. I'm from a working class family, and I met a huge range of ethnically diverse people from all walks of life at University. In fact, there were more people from ethnic minorities in my first year halls than there are in the 200-strong newsroom I'm sitting in at the minute. And that is where the real problem with ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ recruitment seems to lie.
For a journalist to break through today you need one of three things, money, a top education (oxbridge ect) or luck. Many journalists with talent wont get the recognition or opportunities they deserve because there is a distinct lack of any kind of framework to provide the bridging gap between the complulsory government chosen subjects provided at GCSE level and then college, to university and then, with luck, a career. I myself and a prospective journalist working as hard as i can to hone my skills writing editorials, reviews, articles and sports pieces. Now i may and do (even if i do say so myself) have the skill and talents to make it in the word of journalism but its not easy for me to get there. I was lucky enough to get on a city and guilds journalism course, one of only a handfull run in the U.K and this will set me up, hopefully, for a university degree, combined with a-levels in polotics, media and english. Now even though i was lucky enough to have this opportunity many others wont and still have to get a placement on a magasine or paper later on in life. I am looking for one at the moment but with letters and emails not being returned and many people saying i am too young my talents are going un-nurtured and un-recognised, the industry is making a big mistake.
People on the journalistic scene need to get their act's together and recognise that people like me could be the future writers for this country and just because i wont be attending Oxbridge or wont have daddy's back pocket paying my way through it doesnt mean ive not got what it takes and that many others like me wont be at the top level if given the opportunity either, i say to you all, wake up and take notice!
Are you aware that your own educational background (including the independent school you attended) is in your on-line profile?
Adrian was born in Bristol in 1961 and educated at Bristol Grammar School and St John's College, Oxford, where he read Modern History.
Do you think thats in any way relevant to your work at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳? What should someone infer from reading this?
Some excellent broadcasters and journalists never went to university - it's technically still possible to train on the job as a newspaper reporter from age 18, and arguable that reporters who do that on a good regional evening paper will be better prepared for on-the-road reporting than someone with three years at Oxbridge and a year doing a post-grad qualification.
They're certainly more likely, I'd have thought, to have an undiluted and instinctive grasp of what interests C1 C2 D&E, who are underserved by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ services, so I read. I hope the reporting training scheme (does the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ still have one?) includes a well-phrased advert seeking people like this somewhere like UK Press Gazette in its recruiting.
I gained 7 A's and A*'s overall In my GCSE's yet i am dyslexic. I aspire to be a journalist however do not consider myself intelligent enough to attend a university such as Oxbridge or Cambridge. In my coursework at college I link everything to media in the best way possible and when I do this I do It successfully gaining A grades. But because I can never succeed in a subject such as maths or biology due to my type of dyslexia,which I personally feel have nothing to do with journalism (or at least nothing to do with the field that i want to go in to)does this there for mean that for me the chances of getting into a top edcation in a higher establishment such as Oxford are almost impossible?
Firstly you should apply Kelly! I don't see why having dyslexia should make any difference to you getting into Oxbridge if you're bright!
I'm currently in my final year at Cambridge (reading Arch and Anth at Jesus) I managed to get 8 A*s and 5 As from a pretty rubbish inner city east london comprehensive and 5As at A level from a FE college with undiagnosed dyselxia.(I was only diagnosed at Cambridge due to the pressure here uncovering my coping stratagies)
This leads me to a second point.
I think there's a lot of negative snobery being expressed here about Oxbridge. Yeah sure there are still (a lot) of very posh kids with loads of money and connections... but they are also extreemly intelligent (or shall we say academic) posh kids and like it or not Oxbridge provides one of THE most academically rigorous, demanding , stimulating not to mention highly pressured education that you can get.
I would like to go into Journalism when I've graduated as politics is my passion and I am known for being a good writer. I come from a working class family from the east end .I am at Oxbridge because I have worked to prove myself and am a fantasic at expressing myself in written form and can perform generally at a high standard and in a high pressured environment. Why should people like me have a quota imposed against us?