I spent yesterday evening at home alone, apart from a dog requiring endless tummy-tickles, confronted at every turn by thoughts of journalism.

Watch the video or read the text? It’s your choice.

The evening went like this:

• I had a call with a friend who used to write interviews with a picture byline showing her face in a major newspaper every week – but doesn’t any more, and
• I was reminded of her when I switched on the telly and watched a TV drama involving a local-newspaper reporter in his late 40s who lost his job because the paper, struggling financially, was going online-only.
• I avoided the evening news because it’s too depressing at the moment (I know, I know), and watched instead…
• a 90-minute documentary, about investigative reporters around the world collaborating on a story about spy tech (mis)used by dictators and other baddies (not cheerful exactly, but not depressing). I drew a picture later, from YouTube, of one of the journalists:

• And the evening’s viewing concluded with a programme in which talking-heads from newspapers and elsewhere smirked, mostly, but occasionally dabbed tears from their eyes as they shared opinions on a recent libel case, Vardy v Rooney.

I went to bed feeling a familiar taste of contempt for journalism mixed with admiration, idealism with cynicism, hurt with hope.

***

What is this thing, journalism? And if I think it’s important (which I do) then how can I write about it without getting demoralised by how awful so much of it is? Why do I even care? I don’t even read local newspapers, for months on end, or interviews by people with picture bylines. I’m not that interested. Do other people get so tied up in knots?

One answer would be to identify a reassuring, plausible certainty that

1. This Kind Of Journalism Is Good and
2. That Kind Of Journalism Is Bad.

But I can’t say “it’s Good to investigate spyware misused by dictators”, and “it’s Bad to gossip about footballers’ wives”, because it’s not as simple as that.

There are important stories to be told about libel cases and (I daresay) many other aspects of the lives of women who happen to be married to footballers. And on the flip-side there are some dreadfully self-important investigative journalists who get carried away with the supreme consequence of whatever they happen to be working on, just because they happen to be working on it.

Good for them, I suppose, as long as they remain capable of thinking that way. But looking back on my own experience, and conversations with people in all kinds of employment, I suspect that any job can eventually turn into hack-work.

To explain what I mean, let’s look away from journalism for a second…

In activism, hack-work might begin when you launch a new campaign just because the last one reached a natural conclusion; after all, you have to do something with all the charitable donations flooding in, right? In law, a barrister might finish one case and without suddenly being overcome with a passion for justice instruct the clerk to take on another.

With luck, the new campaign or legal brief will soon feel important. If not? Oh well, there’ll be another one soon.

Obviously, the same kind of thing applies to journalists. My friend who used to write interviews with a picture byline probably thought that each interview was sensational – much as I did, when I was a full-time writer on newspapers and magazines – until the following week.

Only with hindsight do the highs and lows of a career make themselves visible. Ah, yes, you might say to yourself – that was a good one. And skip past the others.

***

Question: How to avoid doing hack-work?
Answer: Get out while you can, before it’s too late.

***

A thing I noticed in that spyware documentary: nearly all the journalists who appeared on camera were young-ish.

Nothing wrong with that, but just think how many grey-haired editors sit around long desks in All The President’s Men. Do today’s grey-haired editors not like to be on camera? Or are there none: did they all get out while they could?

I bring up this issue of age because – it’s almost too boringly obvious to mention but I’m going to mention it anyway – news media have for years chosen to save money by replacing experienced staff with younger people. I don’t blame them. But there is a cost. When I worked for The Sunday Times there was a (white-haired) editor called Bob who was generally agreed to remember everything important that had ever happened, anywhere; both out there in the real world and internally.

Lose Bob and you lose so much.

Or do you?

***

I go around in circles on this, and it makes me dizzy. Do I even like journalism? Is it important? Really? Or is it just gossip? Is gossip so bad? Some anthropologists argue that we couldn’t have made it, as a species, if we hadn’t gossiped about each other all day, every day, for hundreds of thousands of years (I paraphrase). So why do I take it all so seriously. I don’t know. Lighten up!

When I get like this, I start to hate words. Really hate them.

Because I know I could write about this topic, or something else, from any number of different points of view. And I could make a decent case for any of them. I’m a technically accomplished writer. I know that. Working as a journalist gave me that facility. Does it give me pleasure that I know how to use and misuse words? No.

Not right now, anyway. (Ask me again tomorrow.) Right now, I just want to draw pictures, make drumming noises on my desk, or anything else that doesn’t involve having an opinion on anything.

Nothing Matters.

F*ck.

***

(Pause. Goes to fetch a coffee.)

***

The problem isn’t journalism. It’s me.

Journalism can be good and bad. Good journalism makes bad journalism look worse, and bad journalism makes even modestly good journalism appear stunning. Good and bad like light and dark, rich and poor, north and south. They’re relative. No matter how close together you bring them, you can’t have one without the other.

When I say the problem is me, I don’t mean to give myself a particularly hard time. I’m not so bad. Like many people, I have impossibly high standards – standards I don’t even meet myself.

***

Writing down all this to-and-fro has been helpful. I’ve come to see something deeper.

Journalism isn’t just Good or Bad. It can also be Fun or Not-fun.

I think the angst on this page is just a reflection of my struggle to see the point of writing anything when I don’t have an editor demanding it from me every week. I had an editor like that, for just two years, on the Financial Times magazine. He was such a pleasure to work for / with / for. He came up with ideas for me and trusted my ideas too. He was intelligent and funny.

And I was reminded of him when I spoke last night to my friend.

Yes, that’s probably the reason for all the angst: after 20 years, I still miss working with Michael.

Ah well.

Some Things Matter.
(A Bit. For A While.)

That’s all for now.

***