There are many aspects of national newspaper journalism that annoy journalists themselves, particularly those of us who have been around for some time and witnessed the changes and how it affects us.
Yes, we moan about reduced payments, the lack of respect (admittedly justified in some cases), cutting back on sub-editors, celebrity-led online content and dictatorial campaigns telling people not to read the newspapers they want to read, run by those who do not read those publications anyway.
But more annoying than all this is the assumption made by some that the world of hacks is overwhelmingly populated by upper class twits from private school who only got their jobs through nepotism, old school ties or some other kind of privilege.
Owen Jones wrote last week on X: “The thing about the British media is that it’s disproportionately populated with people who this toxic combination of being very privileged, well connected, having no moral compass, being shameless careerists, having minimal intellectual curiosity but also being really thick.”
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The obvious response is to point out this statement comes from someone who graduated from Oxford, whose first job in journalism was on a national paper and whose previous career working for trade unions made him very well connected within a certain sphere. But for those of us who have spent more than 40 years trying to earn a living out of this blasted business, it is insulting to be so wrongly stereotyped.
Perhaps Jones is basing his opinion on the privately educated lefties he has worked with from Seumas Milne to Jeremy Corbyn.
Or perhaps he doesn’t recognise the many working class, state school-educated journalists that have an equally high profile – breakfast telly’s Kevin Maguire, for instance (son of a mining family) or even Andrew Pierce. He may talk posh but he’s a council house boy who I got to know when he worked on a rival local paper to mine in Ilford.
Yes there are Old Etonians among our national newspapers though it is interesting to see that OE Geordie Greig’s position as editor of the Mail on Sunday is now occupied by David Dillon, who grew up in a council house and went to one of the roughest comprehensives in the area.
Even closer to Owen’s professional home, there is a small coterie of working-class journalists at The Guardian, including assistant editor Hugh Muir, an East End son of immigrants who went to his local comp and eschewed university for an NCTJ journalism course.
There have been studies – this one by the NCTJ on diversity for instance – which found the proportion of entrants into journalism from professional and middle-class backgrounds outstrips the class make-up of other occupations.
This is not surprising when the traditional routes into journalism – via local papers and press agencies, for instance – are increasingly hard to come by, the pay is low and many see journalism not as chasing stories but by writing blogs, podcasts and anything that gets them more likes on social media.
Instead of addressing this, Jones fires potshots at the privileged who have made it, tarring us all with the same posh brush and ignoring the fact there are a great many who have got to where they are through hard graft, ambition and, of course, talent.
I worked on The Sun from 1987 to 1993. Most of those I worked with – and those we mixed with from other papers on endless doorsteps, press conferences and in pubs – had been state-educated and did not go to university, me included.
The only Old Etonian/Oxford graduate there was Paddy Hennessy. He joined The Sun from a local paper so did his apprenticeship. Kelvin Mackenzie made great play that he had tempted someone of this ilk to his paper. Turned out he was a bloody good journalist and went on to become the political and strategic adviser who helped Sadiq Khan to successive election victories as Mayor of London.
Like all good journalists, it is their talent not the education section of their CV that counts. No one cares what school you went to if you’re good at your job.
Down in the boiler room of newspapers are reporters, photographers, subs and even columnists who represent the old adage that journalism is a trade rather than a profession. These are people who didn’t get a shoo-in to a national paper or the BBC because of what school they went to, who their dad went hunting with at weekends or who they snorted coke with at The Bullingdon Club.
What has changed is the lack of opportunities for those who want to be journalists. The dearth of good local journalism, the financial restraints preventing agencies and publications from taking on apprentices and the high dropout rate when those who hope to be out there covering the big stories find themselves stuck in front of a PC rewriting PR puffs or finding new ways to describe what Kim Kardashian is almost wearing for online clickbait.
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