The Journalist 2.0
The future of your magazine is up for discussion as digital convergence hits the NUJ.
This issue has not been printed and is available only as a pdf from the NUJ website. The NUJ national executive’s motive for doing this was to save the cost of print, post and packaging, but it comes at a time when the relationship between print and internet is changing fast.
The Journalist Editorial Advisory Board is already working on a plan to go online with a site — a proper website, not pdfs — launching later this year. The relationship to the printed magazine — and to the union’s official website — are under discussion.
What do members think? What do you want from the union’s publication? Do you want more or fewer issues, a website only or a hybrid? Or nothing at all?
Below is a sample of the comments the union has had over the online appearance of this issue. But this is a one-off. The Journalist is now kicking off a debate to which all can contribute.
First contributor CHRIS WHEAL argues that the editorship should be a full-time freelance job, running a fully interactive ‘Web 2.0’ website.
AT AN NUJ Annual Delegate Meeting in the early 1990s, when the Journalist had been cut to six issues a year because of the then financial crisis, one London Freelance Branch delegate suggested that the editorship should not be a full-time post, but freelance. He was heckled and I was the first to condemn him, but with hindsight, perhaps he was right.
The role, which attracts a full-time official’s salary of more than £45,000, involves more than just editing the magazine. For years the editor was also the press officer for the union. The current incumbent, Tim Gopsill, has taken on other roles, including “servicing” committees (organising meetings and dealing with correspondence) — currently for the Ethics Council. He launched the union’s website, was its first health and safety official, and he edited and wrote much of the report of last year’s multimedia working party.
Being both an independent editor and a union apparatchik is a difficult balancing act that few can or would choose to do. Tim Gopsill estimates that about 60 per cent of his time is spent editing the magazine.
The last time the editor was up for election was 1998. Five prospective candidates requested application packs but, in the end, nobody but Tim Gopsill applied. Two of those who did not said their reason was that they wanted only to be editor and not a union official. So is it possible to create a job of editor alone when Tim Gopsill retires in a couple of years time?
General Secretary Jeremy Dear says the full cost of employing the editor is about £65,000. This year’s budget for producing the magazine, excluding the salary, is £204,500, with each issue costing just under 70p per member. Even including the overheads, this is only 90p per copy.
If a freelance were offered about 60 per cent of the total cost of an editor, the fee would be about £40,000 for ten issues a year. Such a change — effectively offering a five-year freelance contract — might attract a journalist thinking of taking the self-employment plunge. That would increase the number of people standing for the post and create a lively election period, with candidates outlining the editorial direction they intend for the Journalist.
But all the NUJ would save is £25,000 a year. There are much bigger saving plans afoot, particularly as the biggest costs are printing, postage and distribution. One proposal is to produce the magazine as a downloadable PDF for all but a few issues a year. That way, the editing and production roles would stay the same.
A better option, surely, would be to embrace the multimedia working party’s report — as drafted by the current editor — and have a new Journalist website as a full-on multimedia service with the editor doing video and podcasting and photography as well as writing. The site could integrate a bulletin board and blogs and offer an RSS feed.
User-generated content could come in the form of union bodies posting updates of their activities, images from meetings and picket lines and messages of support from fellow members around the country. The NUJ’s nitty-gritty could be covered, with committee chairs open to scrutiny and questions from the members. It could even be our very own social networking site. Web 2.0? This would be Journalist 2.0.
It would also demonstrate that the NUJ can go multimedia in a planned, well thought-out and funded way. The current editor spends about 60 per cent of his time on the Journalist. We know that producing multimedia content takes longer than producing single media content. So make the editor’s role full-time, with no committees to service or reports to write.
There won’t be magazines to lay out, but instead of that work, the website content will need subbing properly (so rarely done on most websites these days). And if just a little of the savings from scrapping the printing, postage and distribution costs, could go on more multimedia contributors, the NUJ could have one of the most up-to-date websites and still save money.
It is time to make the editor of The Journalist a full-time role, not just a full-time job.
Chris Wheal is a freelance and chair of the NUJ Professional Training Committee