WHY MEDIA MUST BE A FORBADE INDUSTRY

 Hapless, helpless unless you make it a money industry.

An open letter to the incoming Mass Comm students

As I try to push more into the website for news, I got a block that says, "must undo adblocker, to keep on continue reading...".

My opinion: So, this is how it means to crave for news. There is a facade for openness. And a closure for non-openness. 

How elusive the news is now to people who want more but can't because they are not venturesome enough.

In the mid-2000s era, writers were hired with a requisite that they have to do a side task; to find advertisers and only then will they be able to do their job as writers. Hence, the fishlure is that applicants must be able to land chunky advertising deals, before being able to sit down as writers. 

They don't have to expect better pay, from the side task. But they can expect commissions.

Earlier than that, the nineties were sort of the "golden years" for the practice of media writers. Writers were pedestaled, respected and sheltered to a point of V.I.Pism, making them inaccessible to the rest of the media staff.

But the writers' pay could still be low, depending on the department one belongs.  There were also no workers' benefits to expect, and yes, no promise of a long-term career, as some usually fade away because of workers' being "pirated", there were no copyrights recognition and no hope for better payscale.

In most recent years, the writer's role has been further diluted with the better level of importance given to artists and graphic artists. 

Employers, at the turn of the 2000, have preferred not just wordsmiths but artists who can both bring together ideas and words with a lot of creativity. Still, writers who can lay out and do the artwork were few, and the writers were not given opportunities to really advance in their career unless one hops from one position to another.

Why thus this post position itself into the op (opinion) that MEDIA must be a forbade industry? Below are the reasons:

1. The media industry attracts the best fresh graduates and the most creative idealists. 

BUT THEY CANNOT PROMISE A STABLE FUTURE FOR WRITERS. Through the years, one would discover that employers are not there to appreciate the work of writers. But merely to capitalize on their talents and hopefully attract advertisers. Being a hardworking writer whether in print or on tv, and of late, on multi-media, would not actually guarantee a position of leverage in front of the employers who decide on the pay scheme. It is always up to the "budget", plantilla position, or more like preferential treatment of an individual that one can only realize a better pay outside the skirts of a hardline paygrade that usually degrades the dignity of writers in the media industry.

2.  The media industry does not support writers. But advertisers.

WHERE IT CONCERNS COPYRIGHTS, PUBLICITY RIGHTS, WORKERS' RIGHTS, these rights are actually invisible, and in the past, shall we say recent years, more media companies have become braver in solidifying themselves as a money enterprise and not an industry for the writers and practitioners of media. 

Hence, no number of good words, lengthy service at work, or media commitment would actually measure to the good grace being given by an ADVERTISER to benefit a media outfit or company.

3. Writers' complaints and requests for better workers' benefits or salaries fall on deaf ears. It always has.

No amount of caboodle, enticement, PR boxes and swoon communications can actually make industry naysayers and old-timers to flex their position on copyrights versus advertisers' rights.  No amount of commitment would actually make one benefit from a trove of advantages media companies enjoy including the freebies, where it concerns writers haggling for work duties, assignments and better leverage on media positions. No such thing as improved dignity for writers in a country that basks on having freedom of the press, because the press is actually not free from the clutches of hardship and indignity locally.

Back in the day, a story was told (but this writer is not going to spun for drama), that a colleague has passed away, inside a room alone, with no family to tend for her. It sounded like she was a recluse and not much was known about her. Stories about writers being shortchanged of rights, shamed or indignified, yes even big named media figures can be found on the net. Of what gratitude must a writer have with so much negativity that surrounds the practice of media profession, even if one is bespoke of endearment to an industry of ill treatment of writers? Perhaps, what industry harbingers must write in the epitaph of writers that they have failed to recognize or treat with respect, just like that colleague who more than a decade past, worked for a media industry that could not care for its own:

"She wrote well. nobody knew her. 

she earned less. no family took her. 

she passed alone, without the heart of a media forbade 

to take writers to their cradle, and only to make her fallen."