Too many women, too few Maoris in news rooms creating media imbalance

Press, 26 February 1987, Page 13

Too many women, too few Maoris in news rooms creating media imbalance

By

KEN COATES

Newspaper journalism, once the preserve of males except for a solitary “lady editor” in charge of social notes, is becoming a feminine domain. At least, that is the indication from the enrolment of 17 women and three men students for this year’s University of Canterbury post-graduate journalism diploma course.

Of course, the figures do not represent a planned take-over by women of the country’s news rooms. It is simply that more women than men of quality are applying for the course. And, according to the new head of the course, Jim Tully, it is the pattern in most journalism training sections throughout the country. Women who apply tend to prepare and do their homework better.

Many boys’ schools do not promote journalism as an attractive career, in the way they do law or medicine, so few entrants come from the “prestigious” boys’ schools. By contrast, girls’ schools present journalism as well paid, interesting, and different — a far more attractive calling than previous options for girls.

A move towards greater balance could come with journalism as a Sixth Form Certificate option and more sixth form students seeing it as a positive and attractive career. Students are selected for the university course on merit, but Jim Tully says that a student who has been fully involved in campus activities and received lower grades could make a better journalist than one who has stuck solely to study. An imbalance of women to men is not ideal, he comments. A lack of Maori students is also disappointing. News rooms should reflect the community. Jim Tully left an assistant editor’s chair at the “Auckland Star” to become the first New Zealand director of the one-year diploma course for graduates.

A Christchurch man, he was one of the first students to graduate from the journalism course, in 1969. His experience and background give him definite ideas of how training can meet New Zealand needs.

Among these, he sees a multicultural perspective as important. With a significant degree of racial tension simmering, journalists able to cover news in this area with sensitivity and understanding are required. A range of North Island people

close to events — from the more strident to the restrained — will be brought to the university, so that students can better understand what is happening.

Island cultures is a subject Jim Tully knows something about He specialised in covering the South Pacific for his paper for six years when the “Auckland Star” was the only major paper to spend money actively doing this.

He followed the fall of the Cook Islands Premier, Albert Henry, closely in 1978, and his stories helped him win the inaugural Journalist of the Year (now Reporter of the Year) award.

He regards it as important for students to recognise New Zealand’s place in the Pacific, its sphere of influence, and the role of this country’s significant Polynesian population.

Noting that his predecessor (Brian Priestley) did a great deal to change largely theoretical training into a practical course more in tune with the industry, Jim Tully, fresh from newspapers, sees gaps he says need filling. One is a shortage of good analytical financial journalists. Also, a closer look needs to be taken at political and other writing, including sport After editing the “8 O’clock” through to its demise, Jim Tully played a. leading role in the development of. the “Sunday Star” (circulation 160,000), which

at the end of March marks its first year of existence.

Market research over the last two years shows emphatically that people want news from their papers, he says. They want to read about their country and the world, and they want explanation and interpretation. The journalist-turned-teacher describes New Zealand readers as a conservative lot who view tabloids as carrying more sensational stories and lacking authority. Broadsheet papers are looked on as more authoritative and less sensational. Bright and breezy writing is regarded as having less authority than a paper which, journalistically speaking, is stodgy and poorly presented. Readers seem to require a good, substantial diet of news and interpretation of the news to go with it Most metropolitan papers, Jim Tully says, are generally meeting the needs of readers. =.

Some, from a journalistic point of view, are boring and unimaginative in presentation and design, he adds. But it does not seem to matter to readers too much. Papers with increasing or steady circulations see no reason to change.

Changes in lifestyle, such as resulted from daylight saving, are noted by Tully as having had a significant impact on evening newspapers. People have more time for leisure activities after work and little time left over to read the evening paper. The newspaper then publishes brighter, shorter stories, but this becomes a vicious circle as they are then seen as insubstantial in content.

Evening papers’ problems are world-wide, and those surviving have a battle to retain readers.

Readership surveys can, however, contain traps for the unwary. Often there is an expressed need for more international news, but it seems some people feel that they should say this. Other surveys have shown that international news has limited readership. It adds up to readers not owning up to reading the racing page avidly, but saying they read all the international news. The sooner new technology is fully used by newspapers in New Zealand the better, according to

Jim Tully. Papers will then be able to respond to changing lifestyles as later, more flexible deadlines will make contents far more up-to-date. He points to the proliferation of radio stations, and says that while afternoon papers cannot compete with the immediacy of radio news, readers expect to read about an item they have heard, expertly dealt with and analysed.

Married to a journalist, and with two children, the former Auckland assistant editor is a runner and plays indoor cricket and other sports. He admits that the first .question he has invariably been asked since arriving in his new post is whether he will appear on the television programme, “Fourth Estate.” He has not been approached and is taking things quietly as his first commitment is to the course. Preparing a year’s lectures is "challenge enough.”

But Jim Tully does see a positive role for the university journalism department in analysing and researching what the media are doing and not doing. He envisages a six-monthly journalism review published by the department with a wide range of people contributing, not just journalists. Important questions were raised, for example, by the Des Tucker heart transplant case, he says, and have not been examined in depth.

With 200 journalism students being trained in New Zealand this year, the industry’s needs have to be closely looked at in relation to numbers. i

Training courses exist at Auckland and Manukau Technical Institutes, at Rotorua, the Wellington Polytechnic, and, for broadcasting students, at Christchurch Polytechnic. New Zealand News has a two-year .diploma course for cadets, in block courses.

- Nothing enthuses a journalist quite as much as a good story, and one suspects that for Jim Tully this enthusiasm will be transferred to the school of journalism.

As expected of a man who has spent all his working life on daily newspapers he plans to ensure, students are actively involved — at times working with staff of a provincial newspaper, covering news, or discussing techniques and issues with people from the industry.

The aim is to have, the * students, whose average age this year is 24, emerge with solid grounding in the basics so they are of value as employees from their first day.

Journalists with an awareness and understanding of 7 deeper issues, and who bring a special I depth and maturity, are seen as very much in the interests of the industry. And for readers it should mean good reading in their newspapers.