LANCE - I'm a writer now
Welcome to A-Mail! A newsletter about work, money and power. I’m SO close to reaching 100 paid newsletter readers – an arbitrary but nonetheless significant milestone. To help you help me get there, I’m offering 20% off all subscriptions! If you’ve been thinking of supporting my work, today is a great day to do it. One of my most-read newsletters is a post titled “Am I still a journalist?” It’s an essay I wrote two years ago when I was caught in a thick fog of a career crisis. My first book had just come out, but I wasn’t feeling particularly successful. I was disillusioned by the media industry. My pitches weren't landing, mass layoffs were happening and I was questioning all of my career choices, including whether I could even call myself a journalist anymore. Here, I revisit that question. I’ve re-published the original essay and annotated it with my thoughts on what’s changed, and how I’ve been feeling, since then. Am I still a journalist?In April 2021, the author and former New York Times reporter, Jamal Jordan, tweeted about how journalism schools need to teach a module on lay-offs. In what turned out to be ominous foreshadowing, HuffPost UK’s editor-in-chief announced that the news desk was closing and journalists were being made redundant.
As someone who went freelance after losing a job in the media, I know how painful it is to go through redundancy, but even worse, how probable it is, too. Ever since it happened to me, I tell every journalist I know that it’s not a matter of if but when you lose your job in the media industry. What does it say about the media industry that I feel more secure in self-employment than I did in a staff job?
As much as going freelance has been a boon for my career, the time I spend on what I call “traditional journalism” (reporting and writing features for mags and rags) has been an exercise in screaming into the void. My pitches go unanswered. Not because I don’t know how to pitch or who to send them to, but because the pitching system is broken. On top of paltry rates, I pay the emotional tax of chasing late invoices. All this has left me thinking, can I – or indeed do I even want to be – a journalist working under these conditions?
I want to be able to say I stay in journalism because I believe in the power of the fourth estate. And that I know that the business model will eventually work itself out because democracy will always need journalism. It’s earnest and it’s all true, but I also can’t in good faith pretend that’s the only reason. If I’m really honest with myself, I rattle around in this broken industry because I like being able to call myself a journalist. It’s a huge part of my identity – it’s what makes me, me. In a land and time far, far away, I used to go to parties and tell people that I was a music journalist. My bum clenches with embarrassment at how cool I used to think I was. But back then I didn’t know where my work ended and I began. To a large extent, that’s still the case, but the difference now is that I’m aware of how complicated – and toxic – my relationship is with my work. I’m codependent on my job title.
Someone asked me recently if the solution is just to stop referring to myself as a journalist and say that I’m a writer instead. Maybe it is that simple. But if that’s the answer, then why can’t I just do it?
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