UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Getting Into Journalism
By N. R. LONGMATE (Worcester College, Oxford)
THE saddest event of the Hilary Term at Oxford passed largely unremarked, though The Isis gave it a few inches of space, headed despairingly, "Oh! Dear." This was the statement by a London journalist, imported by the Oxford Appoint- ments Committee, to the effect that there was " little opportunity for graduates in the field of journalism." The graduate, said the speaker, was unlikely to be happy in " popular journalism," and the " quality papers " recruited their staff largely by " personal recommendation." He added, as though this were not enough, that " conformists rather than reformers were the people wanted." Many undergraduate hopes of an interesting and lucrative literary career must have perished on the rock of this uncompromising pessimism. The arts student approaching his last term finds him- self faced with the material problem of unemployment and the spiritual affront of knowing himself to be unwanted.
The opportunities offered by a university for contributing to and even producing magazines are so numerous that to the under- graduate writer in his Orst year the future seems rosy and assured. It is only after two years of enthusiastic activity that he begins to remind himself that his writing remains unrewarded, except for a few review copies of books and perhaps a trivial " gratuity " from some magazine for which he has been more than usually hard- working. The excitement of seeing himself in print soon fades when it is not followed by the more substantial excitement of receiving payment for his writing, and the first period through which the undergraduate writer passes, that of enthusiasm, gives place to the second, that of mere boredom. It is during this phase that he finds a new pleasure in refusing to write commissioned articles for undergraduate editors, who do not even consider the possibility of paying their contributors, though they may draw heavily on their own and their friends' savings to pay their printers. The potential journalist is at this time, which is usually about the end of his second year, indifferent to the future ; the need to earn a living seems still far off, and he finds it hard to remember a time when he was not able to enjoy the carefree round of university life.
Half-way through his third and last year he enters the third and last phase of his development as an undergraduate journalist ; he becomes wildly hopeful and supremely despondent by turns. On one day he will recall with his friends the successes of acquaintances who have passed without pause from Oxford to Fleet Street, articles by these giants which appear in the daily papers will be passed round in bars in a reverent silence and rumours circulated of the fabulous salaries paid to the successful reporter or feature-writer. Occasionally the great men themselves will appear, disarmingly modest, careful not to be patronising, hinting at some sensational story of which they are on the track. These are the bright moments of the third period ; more memorable but less characteristic than the black days, when news arrives of a formerly well-known under- graduate who, several months after going down, is still without even the prospect of work.
It is said that the profession is grossly overcrowded, that the gutters of Fleet Street are filled with brilliant writers who are now cynical and frustrated, trailing despondently from one office to another in search of employment that is not to be found, or spending their days in heavy drinking to conceal from themselves a failure for which they are not responsible. It must be admitted that the remarks made by the editors of daily newspapers when they visit the university are in part responsible for this impression. Whether these men at the head of their profession genuinely desire to give the best advice they can to others who might repeat their mistakes, or whether they wish to emphasise the extent of their achievement by a reminder of the difficulties which they have had to surmount, the picture they paint is invariably one of gloom. They point out, possibly with truth, that the average graduate will find it extremely difficult to enter the profession, and that when he has entered it, he is likely to find himself employed for the whole of his working life in the monotonous reporting of court cases or the less monotonous but more humiliating reporting of trivial " human interest " stories. Assistant-editors and editors are apparently dropped from the clouds ; frustration and despair are assumed to be the daily lot of all other journalists, and the most the graduate recruit can hope for is to be permitted to share it.
This is a prospect which even the most enthusiastic writer must find unattractive. The graduate's experiences as a " new boy " at a public school and as a " freshman " in his college have accustomed him to the difficulties of being a beginner ; they have not prepared him for a life in which the chances of reaching " sixth form " or " third-year " status are apparently very small. " But what about the magazines and quality papers ? ' " he may ask his informant. The reply is even more discouraging ; it appears that they never recruit new staff ; their editors and feature-writers, their cor- respondents and reviewers are never replaced because they never die ; they go on eternally, writing steadily through the decades and, if necessary, through the centuries, and if they do change places, it is on the principle of the Mad Hatter's tea-party. The under- graduate's question, " But what happens when someone retires ? " is as unwelcome as that of Alice, and the response is the same, for the " daily " editor changes the subject with discouraging firmness.
Into this universal darkness the Royal Commission on the Press cast a ray of light. The entry of graduates into the pro- fession was said to be " very desirable," and newspaper proprietors were stated to be sympathetic to the recruitment of graduates. As yet little seems to have been done to translate this sympathy into practical terms ; the undergraduate in his last vacation is harassed by thoughts of unemployment in July as much as by fears of " Schools " in June. He divides his time between feverish revision of past work and despondent speculation about future inactivity ; perhaps in spite of all his hopes there will be no opening for him in the fiercely competitive profession to which he has so long looked with such naive optimism. Three months from now he may be face to face with a world for which his academic training has failed wholly to prepare him. His last line may have appeared in print, to perish unlamented and unrewarded in the files of some obscure university magazine ; and, resigned to some second-best occupation, he will have admitted that his days as a writer are over, and that he is no longer eligible even for the undergraduate page of the Spectator.
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