I let you start as an intern at your local paper and see how lazy journalists are. They will certainly welcome you, because few people are crazy enough to make a master’s degree at something and then work twelve hours a day. For peanuts, usually.
At best, do your internship during the period of meetings of the local councils. Several evenings per week you have to attend those bloody meetings until late in the evening, because you never know in advance whether, say, the budget of that 200-people village will be accepted. On Sundays, instead of going somewhere with your friends or family, you have the honour to comment on the referee’s decisions at the game FC Burnley III vs. the juniors of FC Clitheroe. How glamourous.
Things are now going totally out of hand with the evolution in the media. Average journalists (writers), when they are in the field, are asked to make (usually terrible looking) films, photos and interviews, to feed the website. With their cell phones… Advertising money is dwindling, so there’s no budget for recruiting more staff, and those who are already there get exploited to the bone.
My girlfriend is a journalist and press photographer, I hear her stories day by day. She’s 51 and she has nevertheless quit her job at our local newspaper, without having another job yet. She was totally exhausted and has to preserve her health.
So much from me (us) about lazy journalists.
