Charlie Beckett on equality in the media

• Should internships be banned?
• Who is actually using new media?
• The middle class domination of the media
  

Charlie Beckett, who is the Director of POLIS, a journalism and society think-tank at the LSE, has an excellent post leading on from yesterday's report in social mobility in the UK, specifically looking at the media. An extract:

"To get a job in national news media you much more likely to have to intern at some point for some time. It is much easier for middle class young people to work for free. Their parents or relatives are more likely to have the cash or spare room in London to support them.

And new media hasn’t done much to redress the balance. As far as I can see, pretty much all the people in social media or new media are the same middle class people who worked in mainstream media. But it’s still early days, so it is difficult to judge."

He is correct of course. The Social Mobility report yesterday also highlighted how journalism has become a 'more middle class' profession. I'm not sure there was a golden age of working class journalism, but it's not hard to believe that local and national newsroom are stuffed full of people with similar backgrounds.

Internships

Beckett's point on internships is spot on too - there are perhaps a dozen work placements I have seen, unpaid, in London over the past few weeks. I couldn't possibly afford to live in London for three months without any salary, and I've got no base there. The world of unpaid internships, which almost seems to be a requisite for entry into certain industries now, only reinforces a London-centric elite. Especially with the house prices and cost of living, breaking into the capital seems more difficult than ever. Polly Toynbee is right:

The rise of unpaid internships gets the blast it deserves. It's free labour slavery for the young who can afford to do it and yet denies access to all without parents to support them. All kinds of professions gladly take in bright graduates for free, so their CVs shine with experience their less fortunate contemporaries lack. It should be banned under employment law.

There's nothing wrong with paid internships, beyond just expenses. It is worth noting too that, by no means, are all placements based in London.

New media

Beckett's second point is one I've been thinking about for a while. I look at those whose blogs I read, and who I follow on Twitter. A good proportion are white, male, between my age and 40 or so, and talk primarily about new media. Like myself then.

The culture of 'new media' lends itself to being a multi-platform, new technology exalting...inward talking shop. So much of the discourse appears to be about new media, using new media tools to share the same ideas. Of course, there are examples - like the Iranian election, the Hudson river crash and some sporting events - when new media is used for external content. But especially when it is used extensively in anything political, as much of the discussion seems to be about that very trend as it does the content itself.

I'm not going to suggest I'm not implicit in this - most of the posts on my blog could be summarised as such.

New media may open up journalism to the masses - but which masses? Those with camera phones, Internet connections and the time to commit? That's hardly the working population of the UK, or indeed the world. When, in five years, everyone has phones with full online capability and the current iphone looks outdated, will we have reached a point of new media equality then? Because of the ever advancing development of technology - no bad thing on the whole - it's unlikely: a new gadget or device, or a faster connection which is beyond the affordability of most will become the only way to communicate on the edge of new media. And the exclusion of all but the upper-middle class and very wealthy continues.