Moving to the dark side to keep the lights on

Comms or PR? That may well be the difficult choice facing Newshub and TVNZ reporters desperate to find replacement jobs as theirs disappear.

Having been down that route myself, I feel for them, but when financial necessity bites, once unpalatable choices become a necessity.

Freelance journalism has never paid well, and it’s unlikely to be an option for many about-to-be-jobless reporters with bills to pay and families to feed.

Based on experience, the per word rate still ranges from 30c a word – the rate I was paid 40 years ago - to 80c a word, and few outlets pay freelance journalists an hourly rate.

When you factor in the research and writing time for a quality investigative story, you can end up earning less than minimum wage.

In mid-2013, after almost 18 years of freelancing, mostly for magazines, I reluctantly made the decision to look for a job in communications.

The isolation of working alone from home was driving me nuts, and the low irregular pay simply became untenable.

At the time, Stuff was about to undergo another restructuring and there were no jobs going there, so I bit the bullet and applied for a job as a senior communications advisor for the Christchurch City Council.

The final straw was a long read I did for North & South on the fate of earthquake damaged Christ Church Cathedral. The story had taken months, and when I worked out the hourly rate, it was about what my teenage sons earned at the local supermarket (ironically, about 6 months into my comms job, I picked up a Voyager feature writing award for the Cathedral piece).

I was far from comfortable about making the move to comms, and I went through a bit of a grieving process as I came to grips with leaving journalism. It was months before I could bring myself to pick up a copy of North & South, and while no one actually said I was selling out, I felt like I was.

That said, comms was a highly educational experience. In the 2.5 years I worked for the council I learned a lot about the city, how it ticks, and the highly variable quality of elected members.

For those grappling with the loss of a much-loved reporting position, just remember that the very skills that make you a good journalist are transferable.

Reporters are great at gathering and analyzing information. The ability to get alongside someone and quickly build a rapport with them is really useful when it comes to getting a nervous senior manager to trust your judgement on media issues.

I ended up handling a lot of the comms around the council’s dire post-quake finances, rates, annual plans, and the rebuild of the central library. It was interesting and satisfying playing a small part in the city's rebuild.

The council was a friendly place to work, more so than some newsrooms, and the daily face-to-face contact with people worked wonders for my mental health.

In the end, I got fed up with the constant restructuring and management problems. I used to joke my job was equal parts fury and frustration – fury at the money I saw wasted and frustration at the bureaucracy.

At the end of 2015, I re-entered journalism as a senior business reporter with Stuff. Knowing how comms worked was useful when it came to dealing with the legions of Government and private sector people standing between journalists and potential interviewees.

I understood the interminable sign-off process as a prepared statement went up and down the chain of management, even though it was still bloody annoying.

In my eight years at Stuff I saw plenty of colleagues made redundant before it finally happened to me late last year, and I always made a point of supporting those who chose to shift into comms.

If you can’t pay the rent, the mortgage, or afford to have kids, moving on becomes a no-brainer.

However, I fear that with cutbacks looming at central and local government levels, the sorts of comms jobs that may have suited ex-Newshub and TVNZ reporters might be hard to find.

I was lucky that when my job at Stuff was disestablished, I could take the redundancy money and run a few months ahead of reaching retirement age.

It’s tragic that we stand to lose so many skilled and talented reporters at a time when we need quality news, consumer and current affairs programs more than ever.