North American Journalism schools pour out thousands of graduates every year.

Maybe one out of six of those graduates actually get jobs in the rapidly shrinking journalism world.

Which means that those who do get jobs are desperate to hang on to them. Which, in turn, means that their only loyalties are to their bosses and they’ll do what they’re told because of all those other journalism graduates pushing booze in bars just waiting for a chance to grab those jobs.

Now, journalists who just do what they’re told by their bosses aren’t journalists. They're employees. They don’t buck the system, they become part of it. They have no dedication to balance, fairness and integrity, no sense of journalism as an essential cornerstone of democracy.

Instead, they see journalism as just a job, like selling shoes. Their loyalty is not to a higher cause, but to whoever pays the cheque.

At the same time, these recent  graduates certainly aren’t ready for prime time journalism. It takes a minimum of ten years before recent graduates can genuinely earn the title of journalists by proving that their first loyalties are to the people, that they’re truly servants of the people and dedicated guardians of the free marketplace of ideas.

So here’s the problem — news organizations get rid of senior journalists (mentors) to save money and don’t train  younger ones coming in. As a result, the entire culture of newspaper, TV and radio newsrooms changes. Newsrooms  turn into mere offices.

And I’m terribly afraid that without older, seasoned journalists who truly believe in the honourable profession of journalism and its ethical base, free and democratic journalism as we know it will disappear and all our democracies will be in very grave danger.


(Samantha Jones is a Canadian TV journalist publishing her erotic memoir My Life In The Great Sexual Window at www.lulu.com)