Journalism as a career

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.” – Joseph Pulitzer

Ever since I started this column in the Guyana Times/ International, friends and acquaintances ever so often ask me about writing and journalism. I feel like a bit of an imposter, since I have been trained in neither field.

What I do tell them is that my efforts are the result of pure serendipity.

I once wrote a piece on the reasons for indentured labour following slavery for my CSEC SBA and submitted it to the Guyana Times. It was accepted and I was asked to write a weekly short feature on anything that struck my fancy.

I’d always liked the power of words and figured that wasn’t such a tall order. And that was that. But after the questions I took a greater interest to find out what writing was all about in general, and journalism in particular.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I think the CAPE Communication Studies offers a great perspective on writing as one of the forms of communication and I would encourage anyone thinking to pick up writing as a career to have a go at it.

Of course, there is the distinction between creative writing – poetry, novels, plays etc – and the non-fiction stuff I put out. For the CAPE Internal Assessment (IA), we had to put out a piece of writing in any of the several genres of writing.

I took a stab at creative writing – it was a ‘meditation’ of a young girl contemplating suicide. No, I wasn’t being morbid.

It illustrated my much more mundane (albeit tragic) investigation on “Suicide as the highest cause of death in the 15-24 year old cohort”. But back to writing in general – I’ve often wondered why more Guyanese do not get into writing.

Okay, there’s the not unreasonable desire to earn a living and we don’t seem to have nurtured a tradition that it is romantic to starve (in a garret or a grass-roofed hut) as we write! But then there’s journalism.

Guyana certainly has more than its fair share of newspapers – ranging from tabloids to more serious broadsheets like the Guyana Times. I’m surprised that more of my peers do not talk about journalism as a career. There does not seem to be the acceptance – as it is in the developed countries and in India – of it as a sought-after career.

Journalism has played – and will continue to play – a powerful role in shaping the opinions of people.

Even though the medium is changing – the computer monitor or tablet may replace the news “paper”, there will still be journalists putting out the news.

For a country like ours where superstition and prejudices are still rife, trained journalists can really assist in shedding a ‘light’ on topical matters for the ordinary citizen. I would advise those who run our newspapers to attend the ‘career days’ that are conducted by schools such as Queens to expose the merits of a career in journalism in our country.

And me? Well, if medicine doesn’t work out, I always have a fall back option, right?! Who knows, maybe I can practise medicine and write at the same time? There are lots of precedents in this career choice, ranging from Anton Chekhov as a short story writer to Theodore Dalrymple as a journalist!