sevenstrokeroll, excellent post, great advice, little followed, sadly. With you on Aussies tho'! Fair dinkum...
Jonny Suave Trousers;
If you think becoming a prof pilot is difficult, try getting work as a journo!
The statement is not very clear. "Getting work" and "becoming a prof [sic] pilot" mean two different things. Do you mean that it's more difficult to find a job as a journalist, once trained and experienced, than it is to get the education, achieve the licenses, gain the experience and after years working for bottom-feeding cheapo outfits, get a position as an airline pilot at a major, or do you mean its tougher to find work as a journalist at a major newspaper than it is to find work at an airline? One point is about training, qualifications and experience and the other is about one's luck in landing a job and you've mixed the two in one thought.
If the former, I, and likely many here would be interested in what training journalists are required to have and what experience they need to have before landing "top" jobs in media, (tv, magazine or newspaper). By the way some journalists write it's an open question. You've compared either training or getting work as an airline pilot with the difficulty of training or getting work as a "journo". I would like to know more about the difficulties and I would like to know about what checks and balances there are on the product, notwithstanding the significant issues surrounding "subtle" editorial control, draconian censorship in many countries and the pressure to propagandize (as per Chomsky's comments in "Manufacturing Consent" and "Necessary Illusions"), so that trust and integrity is engendered.
I'm serious. I want to know how integrity is established in journalism. You've opened the dialogue and I would like to know how those issues raised in this thread, which are legitimate concerns, (which, like others, I have experienced first-hand), are resolved and handled. I'm not talking about hack reporters who don't do research. But, like our business, your business has pressures, goals, creeds and professional ethics. I would like to know about them; it may clear up some issues.
PJ2