Working in the Media

Media Career 1.0 (1950s - 1990s)

Go to University, preferably Oxbridge, and take an arts degree to develop your mind. Join a local newspaper or radio station. Blag your way in. Work your way up to a national newsroom or production department. Find an organisation you like and dig in for the long haul. Specialise in print or radio or TV. Climb the vertical ladder step by step, grade by grade. In the 1980s independent production companies open a few more opportunities. It's important to read newspapers, listen to the radio, watch lots of TV. Your employers will even pay you expenses to do so. In the 1990s managers start to talk about "multiskilling". This is obviously a ruse to get you to do two jobs for the price of one and should be resisted. As should any steps to take away your desk/office/locker. You worry content is becoming a mere commodity - it used to be a vocation. Don't panic about the introduction of computers and "emails" - they are just electronic memos. You read "Three Blind Mice" about how the TV networks failed to spot the threat from cable. If you are lucky you may occasionally be asked to go to a conference in another country - airports are exciting. Someone talks about a new idea of "working from home" - sounds like a good way to get a long weekend and avoid dull meetings.

Media Career 2.0 (1990s - 2015)

Take a media studies course that will teach you digital production - or computer science that will teach you how to build web pages. Blag your way in. Move from job to job trying to find interesting projects to build out your CV. Don't specialise in one skill - you need at least two or three. You're your own person and have no interest in a career ladder. If your employer is too restrictive - freelance or, better, offer yourself as a web consultant. Live out of your (Mac) laptop. Your last boss offered you a corner desk to get you to stay - wtf? You never sit at one anyway. You will need Twitter, Facebook, IM as well as email accounts to keep in touch with your peers and find out where the next opportunity may be. You will find yourself watching less and less TV, but radio (or rather audio) is good because you can stream it through your Mac while you work. Don't bother with newspapers - too analogue. What matters are ideas that can be monetized. You read "The Cluetrain Manifesto" about how markets got smarter than business. Make sure you regularly get to one of the many conferences where the digital clan gathers for its global campfire summits. If you can't get a ticket there are lots of social media drinks and breakfasts to go to instead. Airports are a hassle - no free wifi. When you're stoked and on a great project you work 24/7 to get it done - then take 3 weeks off. They can always get you on your mobile and you'll avoid dull meetings.

Media Career 3.0 (2015 - ?)

Take a series of highly vocational courses to give you the widest set of skills you can manage - coding, video, business, psychology, economics, law, web science, marketing. Blag your way in. Network constantly and aggressively. It's all about who you know. The successful ones sit on a beach in Australia and run the website for a European magazine or run an automated digital service which purrs away and earns them money from micro-payments while they sleep; some Californian guy pings you on your all-service IM (which you have open 24/7) to get you to do for his site what you did for the contract before last. Your functionality delivers higher returns than most of your colleagues - so the work chases you. If it doesn't - switch careers. You have to have a network of contacts to thrive - there is no distinction between home and work. TVs? What was the point of those? You watch video on your phone. Print? Too niche. Audio is good because you can stream it on your Mac while you work. You read Lawrence Lessig's latest book on how internet governance failed to keep up with technology. Your mobile screen is your office - you've never met your boss and don't know where he works. Meetings are virtual - video links. Some of the older guys still get on aeroplanes to go to conferences and eat together. But airports are hell and since the cost of flying trebled, it hasn't been worth it. You don't do dull meetings.

Comments

[JohnofScribbleSheet]

Interesting piece. I do wander about the viability of radio in the future as a young person I never listen to he radio, I just get a few podcasts I want online then leave, its probably like that for most others as well.

[Tom Armitage]

Take a media studies course that will teach you digital production - or computer science that will teach you how to build web pages

God no!

The last thing a CS degree will do you is teach you how to build web pages; it'll teach you high-level, well, computer science - something somewhat different to programming. If you want to know how to bash out web pages... well, you can learn that yourself. Get yourself a blog, and start learning. That way, you don't waste three years of your life learning how to write a bubble sort.

I'd still argue that the best thing you can do is study something you genuinely love. You can pick everything else up on the way. You can learn a lot about audio production from your student radio station; your student computing service might offer free webhosting to students.

Concentrate on the stuff you can't pick up later: the people, the networking, the constant acquisition of general knowledge. You describe this as "Media Career 3.0", but it feels more like "Career 101" to me...

[Graham]

Blimey, some of that's scarily spot on, not the bit about the beach though, maybe a canal or a river bank.

[Andy Tedd]

Great stuff Richard.

Right I'm going windsurfing.