So we’re seeing some great journalism at the moment, aren’t we? If the gay community aren’t defending their ’sleazy’ lifestyle in light of this widely read national column, then we have this smunt poncing around staring death in the face and egging on his readership to ‘froth at the mouth’ and wet themselves. But hey, both are examples of particularly poorly presented opinion, and if you were lucky enough to be born into favourable circumstance then you too could have a national platform from which to air your homophobic views and/or penchant for shooting animals in the lung.

This stunning example of McJournalism, however, is not opinion, it’s a ‘news’ piece. The very same Brain Centre that published Moir’s bigoted soap box whinge, The Daily Mail, is now suggesting that, you know what? Date rape isn’t really that big a deal and cases of drinks spiking are essentially unheard of. And that headline? Perfect. Just the right about of twattish patronising disregard for such a serious issue.

Granted, these ‘findings’ have come from two doctors from the University of Kent, so The Daily Mail would say that they are merely reporting on science. A science that suggests that “Date-rape drugs are largely an urban myth used as an excuse by women who booze themselves into a stupor,” and that women would rather claim they’ve been spiked than admit how much they’ve had to drink.

To prove this, The Mail notes that “police have found no evidence that rape victims are commonly drugged with substances such as rohypnol…

“Dr Burgess said: ‘There have hardly been any cases where it has been proved that sedatives such as rohypnol and GHB have been used in a rape incident’.”

Yet it is a well established fact that common date rape drugs leave the body quickly, which can, as this article suggests, “leave no trace of a crime”. Factor in many women’s reluctance to immediately report rape crimes for fear of not being taken seriously  (if they report them at all, given such low conviction rates) – which is, sadly, a widely recognised failing of the British Police Force – and it’s not a tremendous surprise that there are so few cases proven to involve the use of sedatives.

But none of this matters to The Mail, who have specifically chosen to report on this matter in such a way as to suggest that women that are nothing more than lairy piss artists that would rather cry “stranger danger” than ‘fess up to their binge drinking.

Burgess then questions, in a yep-I-think-that’s-pretty-sexist manner, why, despite this ‘evidence’, date rape continues to be such a prolific topic on virtually every TV soap opera:

“Maybe that tells us something about the programmes these women are watching. But it is concerning that women are more concerned about something that is incredibly unlikely ever to happen to them.”

Why is it a concern that women are concerned about being spiked? Why should it be a ‘concern’? All those government campaigns for watching your drinks and investments in anti-spiking devices were just for shits and giggles were they? Ladies! It’ll probably never happen to you, so don’t bother your pretty little heads over it. Just watch your programmes like good dears, eh?

As ‘Gordon’ from the USA points out in the comments section, “A study was done, data was collected, facts were presented. That’s all there is to it.” True, a study was done and its findings have been presented. But that’s not all there is to it, and it’s the absence of the countering facts, as detailed above, that have rendered this article and The Mail once again figures of loathing in the minds of decent journalists everywhere.

So, I’ve managed to clock up a respectable 6 weeks since my last blog post. Tremendous. I recall making a similar statement when I started my previous job all those moons ago, but the fact remains that unless you have one of those new-fangled multi-meeja jobs that everyone keeps going on about, you’re just not going to have the opportunity to blog as regularly as you’d like. As such, the most amount of action this blog has seen was during my spate of unemployment when all the posts consisted of furious ranting about the injustice of it all, peppered with anecdotal tales of rural living and my parents’ dog.

Anyway, let’s just forget about all that and focus on things in the news lately which have angered and dumbfounded me. Of which of course there are lots. But here are three which jumped out.

Elle Magazine offers homeless girl internship

Now, I don’t think I’m alone in my belief that the journalism industry, both here and abroad, is going down the pan. As such, jobs are literally like gold dust and accounts of 1000+ applicants per role are not unheard of. I graduated from the (fairly standard) PGdip course in 2008, and luckily the majority of my classmates were able to get jobs. Some, however, were not, and I can’t even imagine the ‘What Are You Doing Now?’ returns from this year’s lot. Such is the demand for jobs and work experience that publishing companies are able to dangle some really crappy scraps in the faces of new journalists and have them gobbled up gratefully; a friend of mine, for example, is doing 3 full days a week in the capacity of editorial assistant for reimbursements of £100 a MONTH.

Journalists, then – especially new ones – are being exploited, and the fact that Elle has so kindly bestowed a 1 hour a day telecommuting internship upon a homeless girl really isn’t cause for the media flurry that ensued. This girl, Bri, is still living in a beat up RV on a dust track. Her storage costs are still increasing $80 a day. And now she is the proud winner of “the most hideously humdrum internship in America.”

In the words of E. Jean, the woman who bestowed this opportunity to Bri:

“You’ll be stuck with the tedious job of organizing research for my book, transcribing interviews, and analyzing data from 1,800,000 pages (not a misprint) of a college sex survey I did on Facebook”.

And all for free! Jean goes on to say:

“At the end of the four months, if you don’t have a job and an awesome place to live, I will become your intern.”

Really? Do you think she means that or is it, perchance, a little bit of added razzle dazzle to give the whole story an even greater heart-warming slant? Look! Even though it’s all gone to shit we’re still altruistically helping the journalists of the future! I also wonder if this woman has any real concept of the merits of a journalism internship, since I’m pretty sure that all those kids I know that have slogged their arses off for sod-all in return aren’t automatically employed, nor suddenly have an ‘awesome place to live’. And they don’t  have the added disadvantage of being homeless.

Nonetheless, good on Bri for her determination and drive. I hope that she manages to manipulate the situation so that she gets as much out of it as Elle have.

O2 Broadband Routers Vulnerable to Attack

Obviously this is big news and it’s imperative that it’s bought to the public’s attention, lest they (and icky, here) find themselves the subject of a sinister hacker, but did anyone else think, as soon as the story broke, ‘Well, I’ll be buggered if every hacker in the entire world isn’t rubbing their hands with glee now’? Especially since so many sites gave pretty explicit details as to the issues involved and just how ‘potential’ hackers could go about ruining your day. Perhaps this could’ve just been kept quiet until O2 had sorted out a patch? No? It’s gotta be reported now to the detriment of every O2 user in the county? OKAY THEN.

NHS Staff Suspended Over ‘Lying Down Game’ Pictures

The best part of this whole affair was a radio interview I heard the other morning. I forget the exact details (it was Radio 1, during the Chris Moyles Show), but this nasal sounding jobsworth came on with a speech akin to the following:

“Can you imagine if you came into the hospital with a sick child or injured relative and they needed URGENT medical attention and a nurse came out and said ‘I’m very sorry but none of the doctors can be found’ and there was no-one there to help you because they were all lying face down on a heli-pad having their pictures taken?”

Possibly one of the funniest sentences I’ve ever heard on the radio. Still, Nasal McBleaty does have a point. Imagine if ALL the doctors were lying face down on a heli-pad when your sick and/or injured child and/or relative required attention. IMAGINE. Unlikely to happen though, is it? And to be honest if I found myself in a hospital with a doctor I would hope they might have spent an earlier portion of the day lying face down on a heli-pad because it might mean they’ve had a bit of a laugh and are a bit less stressed about working in such shit conditions and are therefore less likely to leave a scalpel inside my child or give MRSA to my elderly Aunt.

So instead of suspending these staff, thereby accruing months of paperwork and additional cost and stretching the NHS even further than it already is, just tell them to be a bit more careful with their privacy settings, eh? It’s not like they’re the first people to slack off at work.

A couple of weeks ago, I’d almost resigned myself to the idea of being unemployed forever. Despite the cringingly chipper emails that would ping into my inbox from recruitment companies advising me to ‘Keep on, keeping on’ and to ‘Hang in there’, I couldn’t ignore the fact that unemployment in the journalism industry remains a real and ugly problem, and if folk with ten times the experience I have were finding it tough, what hope was there for me?

Things became particularly frustrating when I noticed posts I’d previously applied for being re-advertised (‘You should have picked meeee!’ I’d scream at my laptop), and on one occasion I received a ‘thanks but no thanks’ email from one company, informing me that they’d already filled the position. And lo…onto Twitter and there it was, being advertised not half an hour after they’d OUTRIGHT LIED TO ME. The worst thing? This was one of the most respected B2B publishing companies in the UK. Safe to say I was deep into the sea of unemployment apathy.

But then, a break in the clouds. An interview. A call back. And then, while stood in the middle of London’s Carnaby Street trying not to die from flu, a phone call – accompanied by a chorus of angels and a beam of golden sunlight from the heavens – to say I’d got the job. I’D GOT THE JOB.

I start on Monday.

Alas, it’s only for maternity cover, but given the current climate – and considering how close I was to lackeying for free just for the sake of my CV – I am literally overjoyed.

So, the strap line of my header (above) will get the boot, and in my next post we can all pretend that this hideous episode never happened.

Maybe.

Let’s see what the situation’s like in nine months time….eep.

Dun dun duuuuuuun. It’s happened. I’ve signed on for Job Seeker’s Allowance. I am officially on the dole.

Despite all the propaganda depicting smiling, presentable women looking over the shoulders of smart-looking young adults as they fill in simple paperwork while sitting at ergonomically designed beech effect desks, I at best anticipated my first encounter with the Job Centre to be tolerable. And in fairness, it was tolerable. I didn’t storm out effing and blinding like the kid who was fifteen minutes late and subsequently missed his appointment. I didn’t stand in the middle of the room shouting my mouth off about the ’stupidity of it all’ like the fellow whose benefit had been stopped because he hadn’t signed on for two weeks. I didn’t even make a racist slur against the receptionist when she told us they were running late, unlike the young woman sat next to me with two mixed race children. The fact, then, that I emerged from the building without upsetting any of the staff or other ‘customers’ (that’s right, I’m a customer) would suggest something of a passable success.

However, if these fortnightly meetings with my ‘dedicated employment advisor’ continue in the same vein as today’s, I may well become that person standing in the middle of the room, shouting incoherently. Nothing personal against the lady in question; I’m sure she’s spent many years reeling off the same speech to disinterested mouth-breathers and bright, articulate folk alike. However, I did take slight umbrage with the disparaging look she gave me when I mentioned that she’d spelled ‘The Gardien’ incorrectly. And her stand-offishness when I told her I do most – nay, all – my job hunting online. ‘COMPUTER NEEDS A NEWSPAPER’ were her actual words (hence Gardiengate).

Then she gave me a sheet of paper with boxes to fill in every time I ‘do something proactive towards employment’. I told her that I complete, on average, three job applications a day and check all the relevant job sites, on rotation, from the moment I get up, to the hour before I go to bed (even though I know I won’t find anything new then, I just physically can’t stop myself). ‘Well you only need to do three things a week,’ she replied, to which I quipped, ‘If I only did three things a week I’d never get another job.’ Cue more disparaging looks.

Then we had a little chat about the kind of work I’m looking for – assistant editor, editorial assistant, etc. ‘So, sub-editor, then?’ she announced.

‘Um, not really no.’

‘Well, if not editor jobs, then something below it, right? So a sub-editor. I’ll put down sub-editor.’

‘Well actually, that’s a completely different role.’

More disparaging looks.

And finally, just before I left, I was told that if I hadn’t found employment within nine weeks, I would be required to attend a course that would teach me how to ‘effectively search for a job.’ Something in my otherwise stony-faced expression must have twitched then, because I got another disparaging look and was told, ‘We can’t all be sub-editors, you know.’

Scream if you wanna go faster! Throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care! And so on.

Apparently unemployment isn’t all doom and gloom after all. In fact, it’s so not doom and gloom that this report by the LA Times (admittedly a little old now) has branded unemployment ‘FUNemployment’. Yeah!

Says the article, “It may not have entered our daily lexicon yet, but a small army of social media junkies with a sudden overabundance of time is busy Tweeting: ‘Funemployment road trip to Portland.’ ‘Funemployment is great for catching up on reading!’ ‘Averaging 3 rounds of golf a week plus hockey and bball. Who needs work?’

“Buoyed by severance, savings, unemployment checks or their parents, the funemployed do not spend their days poring over job listings. They travel on the cheap for weeks. They head back to school or volunteer at the neighborhood soup kitchen. And at least till the bank account dries up, they’re content living for today.”

Yeah we are! Woooo! Road trip anyone? I’ve got loads of time to kill! Oh, wait…sorry, my mistake. I was, in my deep pit of unemployment (UNemployment) related despair, busy fantasising that I was someone else because this is definitely not the situation I’m in at the moment.

I personally am ‘buoyed’ by neither severance or savings. I have accepted the charitable donation of rent-free accommodation from my parents, but they certainly don’t see me around the golf course three times a week, and tomorrow, for the first time in my life and after nearly three months unemployed, I shall be signing on for JSA. And I suspect, unless I’ve gotten the wrong end of this benefits malarkey, that my weekly payment from Brown et al is not going to support me while I go travelling on the cheap for ‘weeks on end.’

Furthermore, I’m physically unable to spend time away from the computer. Every minute that I’m not vigorously refreshing my email or scouring the web for jobs is time spent in a chronic state of anxiety and twitchiness; job related things could be happening and I’d be too busy flouncing around making margaritas and catching up on my reading to notice.

Perhaps this is indicative of the difference in attitude towards work between us and those crazy yanks, or perhaps that article was written predominantly on the back of interviews with kids whose parents all well off enough to buy them a golf course should their wee hearts desire it.

Perhaps though, Fifel had the right idea all along and the streets of America really are paved with gold. If society can, in the face of foreclosures and bankruptcy and redundancies, kick its feet up and think about hitting the beach instead of looking for a new job, then that’s a society I’d gladly make a pilgrimage to. If I can take my laptop.

Props to everyone who voted for my new career direction. I have to be honest though, I get the impression that a lot of the voters were kindly old ladies who stumbled upon my blog after mashing the keys wildly in an attempt to dial up AOL, hence career suggestions like ‘Find a man and have children’.

Other eye-opening oh god it’s so clear why didn’t I think of that before? suggestions included ‘Be a poet’ and ‘Publish a book’. Both of which obviously came from people who live on air and daylight alone. Sadly, I’m one of those materialistic types that need food and stuff, and as such I don’t think these are immediately viable options.

Lots of suggestions for cake making, although I know who voted for this and they just want free cake, or were thinking about cake at the time, or had just had a piece of cake. Therefore results in this field cannot be trusted.

A surprising 15% of votes suggested that sticking with journalism would be the most sensible thing to do. Clearly voters in this category fall into three brackets: 1) People that have never actually read my blog before, or indeed any kind of news-based media, 2) People that are my parents, who ran around their village commandeering everyone’s IP address to vote for this option, lest I never actually manage to establish myself on any kind of career ladder, 3) People that are having a laugh. I also feel a bit insulted in that while 15% of people voted I stick with journalism, no-one, NO-ONE, has any faith in my tattooing ability. You have eyes, don’t you? Did you not see that picture?

Other great suggestions included: children’s TV presenter, drag racer and super hero. Unfortunately, I don’t really get on with kids, so I’ll have to veto the first one. As for drag racing, because I live in Cardiff and not near California’s NHRA, I think I might be a bit disadvantaged. Also, I drive a Rover.

However, I can certainly get on board with the super hero thing. If I take all the energy and effort I’m putting into finding a new job into learning to fly or shooting balls of fire from the palms of my hands, I’ll be saving the day left, right and centre in no time, right? Right? Oh.

I can’t really say what masochistic impulse inspired me to do this, but just now I sat down and figured out how many days I’ve been without gainful employment. The answer is 46. That’s just over six weeks, which, when you’re a kid and on your summer holidays, seems like a lifetime. And when you’re sat within the same four walls day after day trawling through the same web pages you have saved in your bookmarks as ‘FML’, slowly being forced into one corner of your desk by an ever-increasing army of used mugs and bowls that once housed instant noodles, it seems like a lot longer than that, I’m telling you.

So, obviously I need to do something else – but what? Something that will indulge my creative side, while delivering some money (unlike freelancing, by the way. This video sums that up nicely). Luckily, it turns out there are innumerable creative jobs out there, most of which I’m already more than qualified for, mostly because I’m not a fuckwit. Behold:

TATTOO ARTIST
Now I’m no Leonardo da Vinci, but I can sketch my way around a variety of basic shapes and stick men. I’m even down with watercolour pencils! So, imagine my surprise when, after countless hours spent slumped on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon watching Miami Ink, I learnt there’s absolutely no skill involved in this craft whatsoever. See? I could do that with my eyes closed. Literally.

CAKE MAKER
Obviously I’m not talking about being a baker. That’s hot, sweaty, back-breaking work. Not for me thanks, I’m a creative type. I mean this kind of thing. Can you believe that’s a cake? And the best bit? After a lengthy discussion with a soon-to-be-married friend, it turns out that as soon as you stick the word ‘wedding’ in front of it, you can whack the price up ten-fold. Lots of cashmoney potential in this one, and it would seem that I already fulfil the basic entry level requirements, in that I have eyes and am not a five year old child, unlike this cake wizard.

HAIR AND MAKEUP ARTIST
I used to know a girl who was adamant she was going to go to ‘beauty school’. In the event she ended up doing a journalism degree is now probably walking the beaches of Falmouth fighting seagulls for chips, but I do remember wondering what sort of thing could be taught at beauty school. If you’re a girl, chances are you’ve been twiddling with your hair for years – certainly since it was long enough to get it irrevocably caught around your mother’s cylinder hairbrush – and we’ve all been there with the ill-advised make up judgements. Beauty school ain’t gonna prepare you for that.
I put on make up and style my hair every day, so I don’t see why I can’t do it for a living. Pretty sure I could a better job on Pammers than this, and hell, if you’ve got enough hairspray then this beautiful, feminine and practical hair style is a breeze. Give me a job, Max Factor.

INTERIOR DECORATOR
Admittedly this one ’s likely to be harder to crack because my name is not Olivia and I don’t have a rich Daddy to finance my half-arsed attempts at redecorating the boutique apartments of all my trendy Chelsea friends. However, if someone comes to me requesting their living room be transformed into an unsettling political nightmare of the Savannah, I’m pretty sure I’d be able to pull it off.

So help me out. What’s it to be?

Perennial buffoon, Jonathan Ross, will have to pre-record his Radio 2 shows, The Guardian reported today.

Under the ‘tough compliance rules’ issued by the Beeb last October, Woss’s inconsiderate tongue is proving to be a something of a hazard to the happy clappy PC facade Aunty is so keen to portray, and as such his shows will be pre-recorded to make them ‘watertight’.

I, as a rational thinking member of society, am indifferent to the off-hand ‘homophobic’ remark he made about boys asking for Hannah Montana MP3 players (although I’m inclined to say that I’d probably be aghast if any offspring of mine requested one. This is down to my intense dislike of the saccharine Disney fluff though, and not indicative of any kind of veiled homophobia), but the fact remains that while the Thought Police rule the roost, folk like JR have to watch their loud, obscenely overpaid gobs.

So here’s an idea: Bin Ross and his inane gibbering and replace him with someone who will, for a fraction of the price, do a professional job which won’t continually land the BBC in very expensive hot water. As my previous posts illustrate, there are thousands of media types chomping at the bit, raring to go, and within them there must exist at least one broadcast journalist devoid of the enormous delusions of grandeur and self-important arrogance that keeps making a mockery of the industry.

So, I’m still in the market for a job. Even though some places are reporting signs of a break in the clouds, jobs for my lowly level remain few and far between, and spending hour upon hour trawling internet job ads and crafting covering letters – only for them to be skim-read and disregarded – is becoming a bit soul destroying.

However, without a doubt the most heartbreaking thing about the whole process is the rejection emails. Rejection emails are entirely different to rejection letters. Rejection letters indicate that some poor sod has had to go to the bother of actually reading your CV in order to glean your address, so at least your details have graced the eyes of somebody in a publishing house, albeit the workie. No, rejection emails are much worse.

Now, let it be said that I don’t break down into tears every time one of these pings into my inbox. Not at all. As the Press Gazette reports, there are at least 1,800 unemployed journos spending their days in a similar fashion to me, so it’s not really a surprise that among that number there are individuals far more qualified than I.

However, I really, really take umbrage with the frequency with which these emails are coming back to me littered with spelling errors, punctuation mistakes and grammatical fuck-ups. That’s just poor show anyway, never mind the fact that it’s the antithesis of these crimes that form the very foundations of the jobs I am applying for. One shining example is laid out below:

***
Dear Racheal,
Many thanks for you’re application to (Magazine). We have reviewed your CV and have on at this occasion decided not to call you for interview. We wish you every luck…etc.

Yours sincerely,.
(Person)
***

Perhaps, however, I should be grateful that they at least made a stab at spelling my name correctly, as the following treat popped up not an hour ago:

***
Dear [INSERT NAME],
Thankyou for your interest in [JOB TITLE], but after much careful considerations we have decided not to process your application further.
***

I’m sorry, Mailshot Wizard, but something tells me you’re fibbing about the ‘careful consideration’ bit there.

When my fellow Maglabbers and I finished our magazine diplomas at Cardiff University last year, we were under no illusions; getting our fledgling feet in the proverbial door was going to be a tough gig. The onus was on work experience, making contacts, pitching articles effectively. Nonetheless, with faith that our £5.5k investment would see us right, we toddled off into the industry and hoped for the best. Most of us got relevant jobs – some got great jobs – and a few remained stuck in a horrible journalistic limbo between college and working. And the latter individuals were, for the most part, talented, hardworking writers, keen to cut their teeth in the industry.

Then the extent of the economic downturn really came to light and employment freezes were implemented and editorial cutbacks were made; two maglabbers were made redundant, one has been moved to another publication and awaits the end of their contract in October, a few are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and those stuck in that horrible first job-seeking limbo are becoming increasingly deflated and apathetic.

A quick scan on Reed yields depressing results: 57 applications for a pharmaceutical editorial assistant role. On Gumtree, an ad for another editorial assistant role has been viewed nearly 12,000 times. 12,000 times. Entry-level jobs remain hard to come by, and as such any that do are being filled by over-qualified journalists prepared to take a pay cut for the security of a job in these difficult times.

And it’s set to get worse. According to Press Gazette, applications for university journalism courses are up by 24%, despite the wave of job cuts. So with a market awash with new journalists, how to stand out? Certainly an expensive diploma from one of the Big Three counts for less than it did only a few years ago. Getting some cuttings through freelancing is always an option, but in light of so many redundancies, editors across the country are swamped with pitches by similarly new but far more experienced freelancers. Work experience is all very well and good – indeed a lot of magazines are keeping afloat thanks to unpaid interns – but only if you can get a placement and can afford to work for long periods for free.

Hard work and elbow-grease were always on the cards for a new journalist, but it would seem that in order to get out there and make a name for yourself in the current climate you’ll have to bring a big stash of savings to the table as well. And after spending thousands of pounds on a journalism course to be in a position to apply for entry level roles, this is certainly an unlikely luxury.