Because you're worth it

We want to consume content without paying for it. So why do we still equate professionalism with getting paid?

I don’t want to add to the heap of blog posts explaining why blogging can be a valid form of journalism. That’s been done many times before, e.g. Ben Goldacre’s summary of the brilliant work done by Simon Singh’s supporters. If you follow bloggers like Tim Ireland or Justin McKeating, you don't need telling that "amateur" bloggers are producing some of this country's best journalism.

The meanings of the word “professional” used to overlap, but now they’re completely distinct. You can’t assume that a journalist who meets certain standards and behaves with integrity will be paid, any more than you can assume that a paid journalist will turn out quality work.

It’s become clear to me that the National Union of Journalists still hasn’t worked out what to do about this. Today I had to contact NUJ head office (in my capacity as vice-chair of the Oxford & District branch) to ask about a prospective member.

This prospective member runs a website about her home town. It contains local news as well as other information: a directory of local businesses, library opening times, etc, etc. Basically, it's an online community newspaper and she is the only reporter. It's a labour of love, paying a fraction of the minimum wage. My question to the friendly man in the NUJ membership department was: is she eligible to join the journalists' union?

The answer? Yes, she can get temporary membership while she builds up her freelance career and hopefully starts earning more. I explained that there was very little chance of her ever earning substantially more in her current role. The friendly man suggested that she join as a temporary member and see how it goes. But she's been running her website for five years. She knows there's very little likelihood that it will start earning her a living wage in the near future.

It's increasingly rare to find a local reporter who actually lives on their patch and puts in the hours of just living there, being there, listening to gossip and noticing things. (I suppose you could call it "quantity time".) Most staffers on local newspapers are under a lot of pressure to fill a certain amount of space in a certain amount of time, so they don't have the luxury of picking up original stories.  The reporter who runs her own website, almost unpaid, can work in the way that reporters used to work 40 years ago. But as far as the NUJ is concerned, it's not certain whether she'll be eligible for full membership when her temporary membership runs out. Why? Because she isn't paid enough.

I can understand why the NUJ has such difficulty with cases like hers. The point of a union is to defend and improve workers' rights. If someone isn't an employee, where do you go from there? The NUJ does have a freelance branch, but it's about helping freelancers get a better deal from their clients, avoid copyright grabs and so on. One of the basic union principles is that everybody deserves fair pay for a fair day's work. What do you do with a "freelancer" who fully intends to continue working for next to nothing?

This issue isn't going to go away. The NUJ urgently needs a properly thought-out policy on "amateur" journalists. That won't be easy to decide on or implement, but I would argue that we need to be more positive about unpaid journalists, more willing to look at what they do rather than how much they get paid for it. The union should keep arguing that professional journalists deserve higher pay; but we need to avoid the trap of saying "you don't get any pay, therefore you're not a professional".

The profession has changed beyond recognition in the past ten years and it's going to go on changing. We have no idea what will happen, or what the definition of a journalist will be a decade from now. But if the union is going to stand up for journalism, we need the unpaid but dedicated journalists on our side.