Part (I lost count already) First Job
After working as an unpaid intern for a newslimited newspaper (I won't say the name, just in case) for 6 weeks, I got a job as a cadet journo (same shit sandwich jobs like voxpopping at petrol stations, but I got moneys for it).
Fresh out of school, naive and having recently read Robert Fisk's Great War for Civilisation, I believed I could make a difference. Let me sum up what working as a journalist is like by recapping one experience.
One fine afternoon my chief of staff approached me and told me motor scooter sales were up and he wanted me to write an article about it, but first what he wanted me to do was "find a hot girl who rides a scooter". That's not the worse part, apparently a cadet in the Melbourne office got tasked with the same job, so when I was writing up the article, I could hear the editors and chief of staffs compare the photos of the two girls to decide which photo they'd use.
Later the COS came up to me and said "sorry, the editors like blondes, your girl had much better quotes though, it's just a shallow industry."
Should have quit right then.
