I thought I’d give it a try.
I had loved working as a journalist. Loved it, even loved hating it when the pressure got up, when the sources were elusive, when one stupid typo wrecked your whole story.
But I was living in Canada (Montreal) at the time, and it was hard to ignore the constant layoffs, shutdowns, and general sense of desperation among journalists about job security and availability. The knocks just kept coming.
My own situation was precarious in its own right. My job was not under threat. But my legal residence in Canada was…what’s a nice way to put this….not so much legal.
We needed to leave, to live in a place where we both had (up-to-date) visas. So we packed up and moved to the UK.
Still smarting from the Neverending Canadian Journalism Implosion, I thought, this would be a really good time to try this second career in communications. Everyone swears that going from journalism to comms is a breeze, a natural fit, an opportunity to still use your skills even if you’re no longer a journalist.
So I gave it a try. First at a Big Four firm, then at a smaller membership organisation. (I’m going to be vague about specifics there. If you’re that interested, it’s not hard to find.)
I hated it. I hated every single second of it. I didn’t want to hate it. But boy oh boy did I ever.
Here’s what I found:
They don’t know what they want. Both times, they were positively giddy in the interview at the prospect of having an actual journalist on staff who could help them understand what media was interested in, and how they could position themselves better.
Fast forward to the reality I found: They resisted change. They didn’t see the point in making anything more media-friendly. I can’t tell you how many times I said, ‘This is what I would be interested in, as a journalist’, only to be roundly ignored. Organisational change is glacial, in some cases. And it’s a lot easier to disregard a new recruit’s advice, than to actually do the hard work to implement those changes.
They don’t know how to use your skills. They think they know exactly how they would use a writer or an editor. The idea of having one on staff is intoxicating. But unless there are very clear plans in the organisation’s yearly/quarterly/monthly work outlines for written documents, they’re not going to find the opportunity to create that space. If you’re lucky, being entrepreneurial and volunteering to do this will work well. In my case, there were too many other priorities to even find the time to work on the idea.
They don’t know anything about communications. This was one of the bigger shocks. I knew that moving into a new field would require a lot of on-the-job learning, no matter how close people say journalism is to communications. It’s still an entirely separate discipline, and I was really looking forward to learning the ins and outs, the basic tenets of the profession, and the ways different organisations applied them.
The reality, it seems, is that there are a lot of people just ‘winging’ it in comms, who come by their comms jobs having done zero actual communications work but have other attributes – familiarity with the organisation’s field, good relations with key stakeholders, etc.
Word to the wise: If your Director of Communications ever says, ‘I’m not a comms person,’ run like hell.
But if you are lucky enough to be working with actual comms professionals, you can learn a lot from them. I had some top-notch colleagues who, in addition to being caustically funny, were also pretty solid in their jobs, and from them I did learn a bunch.
Workloads are very, very different This doesn’t apply to comms departments specifically, but to the departments outside of comms. In comms, we were run ragged, expected by the rest of the organisation to do a boatload of everything. But outside of comms, it was a very different pace and a very different set of expectations from anything I saw when I was in journalism.
When people have no requirements to produce regular output, or when output is defined very, very fuzzily, it can make your head spin. At least, mine did. Even more so when people in those departments complained they had too much work to do.
Maybe I didn’t fully understand what it was they did, or how challenging it was.
Maybe.
I’m sceptical.
If the work is not fulfilling, you’ll miss journalism. A lot. If you find something you can really sink your teeth into, then that’s thrilling. You have a reason to go to work and a reason to roll up your sleeves. If it’s not, it’s can feel like drudgery, and can make you look back with severely pinkified lenses at your old life and career. I suppose this is true of most situations. I just didn’t anticipate feeling it so acutely while in comms.
There is a gender difference. I know, I know. You all think I’m an angry, out-of-control feminist. I’m comfortable with it.
But what I’ve found is that employers and bosses look at men and women in the workplace very differently. Sure, you might have an enlightened boss/workplace. But unconscious bias is a thing.
That means that the skills a former journalist has – writing, editing, social media – are seen very differently depending on gender. If you’re a man, those attributes are seen as ‘hard’ skills, critical to business and to a project’s success.
If you’re a woman, those skills are definitely lumped in the ‘soft’ category, as in ‘oh isn’t this nice that she dabbles in writing.’ So even if you have an advanced degree in journalism and 10 years’ reporting experience, if they need a writer, they’ll go and hire a (male) temp.
Yup. No kidding.
Now, the caveats. I’m only talking about two experiences that I had of working in comms. Maybe a third experience would give me a different view. I hope it would. Two experiences are not sufficient to support a widespread generalisation. So, go into comms if you think that could work for you. All I’m saying is, it didn’t work for me. If nothing else, reading this will help you make a more informed decision.
What’s next for me? A new city, in a new country (I’ve been dropping some pretty heavy hints on Twitter, so no points for guessing.) I’m in the beginning stages of putting together a website for a news venture I’m launching. It might sink, it might swim. It might ruin me even more than my student loans have already done.
But I miss journalism, so I’m going back.
Stay tuned!
I had loved working as a journalist. Loved it, even loved hating it when the pressure got up, when the sources were elusive, when one stupid typo wrecked your whole story.
But I was living in Canada (Montreal) at the time, and it was hard to ignore the constant layoffs, shutdowns, and general sense of desperation among journalists about job security and availability. The knocks just kept coming.
My own situation was precarious in its own right. My job was not under threat. But my legal residence in Canada was…what’s a nice way to put this….not so much legal.
We needed to leave, to live in a place where we both had (up-to-date) visas. So we packed up and moved to the UK.
Still smarting from the Neverending Canadian Journalism Implosion, I thought, this would be a really good time to try this second career in communications. Everyone swears that going from journalism to comms is a breeze, a natural fit, an opportunity to still use your skills even if you’re no longer a journalist.
So I gave it a try. First at a Big Four firm, then at a smaller membership organisation. (I’m going to be vague about specifics there. If you’re that interested, it’s not hard to find.)
I hated it. I hated every single second of it. I didn’t want to hate it. But boy oh boy did I ever.
Here’s what I found:
They don’t know what they want. Both times, they were positively giddy in the interview at the prospect of having an actual journalist on staff who could help them understand what media was interested in, and how they could position themselves better.
Fast forward to the reality I found: They resisted change. They didn’t see the point in making anything more media-friendly. I can’t tell you how many times I said, ‘This is what I would be interested in, as a journalist’, only to be roundly ignored. Organisational change is glacial, in some cases. And it’s a lot easier to disregard a new recruit’s advice, than to actually do the hard work to implement those changes.
They don’t know how to use your skills. They think they know exactly how they would use a writer or an editor. The idea of having one on staff is intoxicating. But unless there are very clear plans in the organisation’s yearly/quarterly/monthly work outlines for written documents, they’re not going to find the opportunity to create that space. If you’re lucky, being entrepreneurial and volunteering to do this will work well. In my case, there were too many other priorities to even find the time to work on the idea.
They don’t know anything about communications. This was one of the bigger shocks. I knew that moving into a new field would require a lot of on-the-job learning, no matter how close people say journalism is to communications. It’s still an entirely separate discipline, and I was really looking forward to learning the ins and outs, the basic tenets of the profession, and the ways different organisations applied them.
The reality, it seems, is that there are a lot of people just ‘winging’ it in comms, who come by their comms jobs having done zero actual communications work but have other attributes – familiarity with the organisation’s field, good relations with key stakeholders, etc.
Word to the wise: If your Director of Communications ever says, ‘I’m not a comms person,’ run like hell.
But if you are lucky enough to be working with actual comms professionals, you can learn a lot from them. I had some top-notch colleagues who, in addition to being caustically funny, were also pretty solid in their jobs, and from them I did learn a bunch.
Workloads are very, very different This doesn’t apply to comms departments specifically, but to the departments outside of comms. In comms, we were run ragged, expected by the rest of the organisation to do a boatload of everything. But outside of comms, it was a very different pace and a very different set of expectations from anything I saw when I was in journalism.
When people have no requirements to produce regular output, or when output is defined very, very fuzzily, it can make your head spin. At least, mine did. Even more so when people in those departments complained they had too much work to do.
Maybe I didn’t fully understand what it was they did, or how challenging it was.
Maybe.
I’m sceptical.
If the work is not fulfilling, you’ll miss journalism. A lot. If you find something you can really sink your teeth into, then that’s thrilling. You have a reason to go to work and a reason to roll up your sleeves. If it’s not, it’s can feel like drudgery, and can make you look back with severely pinkified lenses at your old life and career. I suppose this is true of most situations. I just didn’t anticipate feeling it so acutely while in comms.
There is a gender difference. I know, I know. You all think I’m an angry, out-of-control feminist. I’m comfortable with it.
But what I’ve found is that employers and bosses look at men and women in the workplace very differently. Sure, you might have an enlightened boss/workplace. But unconscious bias is a thing.
That means that the skills a former journalist has – writing, editing, social media – are seen very differently depending on gender. If you’re a man, those attributes are seen as ‘hard’ skills, critical to business and to a project’s success.
If you’re a woman, those skills are definitely lumped in the ‘soft’ category, as in ‘oh isn’t this nice that she dabbles in writing.’ So even if you have an advanced degree in journalism and 10 years’ reporting experience, if they need a writer, they’ll go and hire a (male) temp.
Yup. No kidding.
Now, the caveats. I’m only talking about two experiences that I had of working in comms. Maybe a third experience would give me a different view. I hope it would. Two experiences are not sufficient to support a widespread generalisation. So, go into comms if you think that could work for you. All I’m saying is, it didn’t work for me. If nothing else, reading this will help you make a more informed decision.
What’s next for me? A new city, in a new country (I’ve been dropping some pretty heavy hints on Twitter, so no points for guessing.) I’m in the beginning stages of putting together a website for a news venture I’m launching. It might sink, it might swim. It might ruin me even more than my student loans have already done.
But I miss journalism, so I’m going back.
Stay tuned!
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