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Schemes to address access are vital in creating an equitable industry
This might be the first time I’ve led on a LinkedIn post in this newsletter, but this one’s so worthy of the spot. Jem Collins, Director of Journo Resources, has written about her strong reaction to Ray Snoddy’s interview with journalism professor and broadcast veteran Richard Tait in InPublishing.
In the piece, Tait insists there is still a big role for journalism students who come from Oxbridge. I agree, I work with one every day and she’s brilliant. And of course we need we need smart well-educated people in this business. But the apparent suggestion that clever people only come from Russell Group universities is old-school bollocks, as is the idea that the ‘traditional way of doing it still works’.
Echoing Shirish Kulkarni, who spoke about diversity in our Big Noises season, Jem emphasises just how crucial it is to build an industry that reflects the population we are reporting for. She writes, “The implication that others aren’t ‘smart and well educated’ and the ‘traditional way of doing it still works’ is truly grim. Improving our industry is on all of us — and we need to do better than this.”
*There is a list of organisations supporting access to journalism in Jem’s post.
Remember Threads? Meta’s Twitter killer? You can be forgiven if you don’t, or at least if you haven’t used it since the day after you signed up. FIPP is reporting that recent statistics from Similarweb show that Threads’ daily active users have plummeted from a high of around 49 million two days after launch to just over 9.6 million at he beginning of this month. Anyone up for a sweepstake on when Zuck kills the Twitter killer?
Just two years ago, online-conference hosting platform Hopin was valued at $7.75 billion at its Series D round of funding. Last week it was jettisoned for $15 million. Post-pandemic, the virtual events market has clearly contracted and tech companies supplying the space have struggled, but this is a fall from grace even bigger than that suffered by Vice.
This piece from the NYT argues that some women still want the careful curation and fashion, beauty and lifestyle recommendations they used to get from glossy magazines. While Instagram and TikTok aren’t cutting it, Facebook groups and Substack newsletters are delivering. I’m sad that there are less magazines on the newsstands, but it’s cheering that former journalists are finding their niche.
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