The process of recruiting journalists is opaque and dubious. You may have rarely come across an employment advertisement in Times Ascent, HT Careers, naukri.com, monster.com, timesjobs.com, etc where a newspaper or a television channel is seen looking for journalists. Even if you have, those ads don't lead to recruitment; they are nothing but a hypocritical show of 'transparency'. The sub-editors and city reporters come from sundry mass communication schools and the senior editors get jobs by leveraging their connections with politicians, industrialists and, once in a while, personal friendship with the media houses' honchos.
An element of glamour is both rightly and wrongly associated with the media. Stricken with this superficial sheen especially of television channels, fresh school and college graduates, instead of enrolling for higher education, make a beeline for admission to mass communication courses offered by many established as well as fly-by-night operators. But a mass communication course can only tell you how to present what you know; if you don't know anything enough, what will you present? Not realising such incomplete nature of high school or undergraduate education, men and women in their late teens are in a hurry to see their faces on the television monitor or, at least, their bylines on 'Page One'.
It becomes a terribly tasking job for senior journalists to teach these youngsters nuances of politics, society, science, history and all other subjects that are associated with the matters that are reported and edited. In the process, the seniors lose their cool and misbehave grossly with the juniors who, in contrast to the rosy picture they had visualised before becoming journalists, are paid a pittance as salary: A sub-editor's or city reporter's initial salary is somewhere between Rs 7,000 and Rs 10,000. Further, by the time they make up for their lack of higher education with the grinding of experience, their salary rises up to a range of Rs 15,000-Rs 25,000. This is when the media houses start conspiring to replace them with yet another batch of young people who can work for less money, be moulded easily and can tolerate the Don Quixotes — their bosses. In most such conspiracies, senior editors (with political connections) drawing salaries that run into a few lakhs of rupees per month are the co-conspirators along with the respective owners of various media houses.
in todays world knowledge & experience is most important. thing in life to acheive our goal...........aur jahaa tak baat hai media mei jaane ki ....4 the job........ it is very difficult.........because ..........there is a lots of obstecals regarding recruitment & tough competition while giving the interview... even one mistake can push u out from the entry........SO MEDIA REQIRE TALENTED N EXPERIENCED PERSON...............SO the normal educated person cant get inside the media...........without any special traits in their education...................!!!
everybody wants to get into media, from masters in mass comm to law graduates. And almost everybody is good at writing,so preference is given to those who are equally good at desk work.
People get jobs on the basis of 3 things at the senior level.
1) Inherent talent. some ppl are better at reporting, some are better at production etc
2) what u have learnt in your years of working.
3) your experience. after years, u grow better at even those aspects that u weren't best at to begin with.
At the junior level ppl get jobs on the basis of knowledge of language, readiness to pick up, honesty.
And it is very easy to get into media. We are all the time on the lookout for young people with the above 3 qualities to hire at junior levels. We get candidates who apply for desk jobs and their grammar is faulty and general knowledge is poor. We get candidates who apply for reporting jobs and their general awareness is nil so their understanding of how to bring in the news from the field remains like a novice's.
I have been in positions where I have been looking to hire ppl and I have got candidates like these and rejected them or hired somebody just because we were desperate to fill the post and get another hand. And I don't care for journalism courses. I have found that those who come from there are not necessarily better. They have to be taught from scratch. I much prefer a fresh graduate or post-graduate who will learn readily. There is no learning like learning on the job. That is how we learned.
Finally, I agree with Surajit that saying there are so many good writers around is a joke! read the newspapers and magazines with attention and you will see how much bad writing is floating around and getting published these days because the number of newspapers and magazines has gone up and there are pages to be filled. so a lot of rubbish and poor writing gets into print which would never happen earlier.