EDITORIAL: Hanging on to journalism’s golden era by our fingernails

A debate about the so-called juniorisation of Namibian newsrooms took centre stage recently, with insinuations that junior journalists were somewhat to blame for the perceived lack of insightful reporting on elections ahead of the November polls.

It’s not a new topic. It’s as old as time itself, but to date, there has not been a solution to this issue. The dynamics contributing to this are many and evolve all the time. It’s thus nearly impossible to pin this phenomenon down and nip it in the bud for once and for all.

In the Namibian context, the issue is not always about young and inexperienced journalists flooding newsrooms, but also about older, experienced ones leaving one media house for another – if not quitting the fraternity altogether.

With nearly all media houses struggling commercially - for a variety of valid reasons - it has become difficult to retain the best scribes in the industry against the lure of high-paying jobs in the corporate world.

It has become a perpetual cycle in this industry that just when journalists have gained about enough experience to reach the next level, they are snapped up by non-media employers who offer way more attractive packages than this industry can afford.

The resultant consequence is the mass exodus of experienced journalists, leaving newsrooms with young reporters who naturally need four to five years to reach the level of those who departed. Once ‘ripe’, the latter group then follows into the footsteps of their predecessors, and so the cycle of newsroom juniorisation continues unabated.