How to survive a crisis in media

The last year the world of Russian media shakes and fever - media projects change the owners, reformat and close, successful chief editors leave - quietly or with great noise, after them the established journalistic teams are leaving. Russian media in a deep crisis?

The head of the Pruffi recruiting agency Alena Vladimirskaya believes that talking about great unemployment among journalists is only an informational noise, but is always ready to give advice on employment to professionals who have found themselves in the high turbulence zone.

For what I will tell now, I will be equally hated by the so -called liberal journalists and the so -called state journalists. “The so -called” - because the designation itself is conditional: we have a prosperous media can be private, and - completely suddenly - the media that contains the state can be completely liberal.

Now the crisis of the profession as a whole is taking place. Its rethinking. To begin with, I agreed to this interview before the dismissal of Galina Timchenko (Former editor -in -chief Lenta . Ru . - Ed. ). It is important for me not so much this dismissal itself, which in itself, of course, shame, but so the owner decided. Objectively, if you remove the hysteria, we do not know all the components of the decision to dismiss Gali. There are many versions - from a big policy, ending with the fact that the contract expires. It is more important for me in the situation around the dismissal of Timchenko that the vast majority of journalists of the “tape” after her wrote a statement of care. I don’t know if Gorreslavsky can (the new editor -in -chief of Lenta . Ru . - Ed. ) To persuade them to stay and whether he will persuade them. In my opinion, this is one of the main indicators that the media in our country is such a sphere where the role of personality is extremely high, and all attempts to lead the media to the role of normal business, where one hired manager can be replaced by another hired manager and at the same time the business will grow or not fall, unfortunately, they do not lead to success. That is, media in our country is generally not a business. From here are the pluses of this industry.

The second thing that I want to note is, oddly enough, a very low professional school. Any girl comes to the media who is conventionally weaned at any humanitarian faculty of any institute who writes something there. She comes, begins to work and considers himself a journalist, so we have a lot of rather unprofessional media - a third.

We lived very well all these years. These were the years of the truly great economic upsurge of Russia, and the salaries of journalists in Moscow were extremely high. At the same time, the media most often were not business and mostly lived on investments, subsidies, grants and other things. But now the country's economy is changing, and the combination of all of the above makes the media zone of high turbulence.

Media in our country is not a business.

So far I do not see a large number of unemployed journalists, I see only conversations about them - a big informational noise. The processes have just begun now. The first reductions in RIA really went about two weeks ago (I do not mean those people who left Mironyuk). On the "tape" this is happening right now. We understand that, apparently, there will be dismissal on "rain", but they are not yet. Of course, if there are a large number of dismissed, then the dumping will be, it is obvious. But so far none of this.

The chief editors have no problems with the search for work, there is a story with personal names that carry in themselves and all the pros and all the disadvantages. Behind any personal name in the media there is a series of relationships, and no matter how successful you are, you are still either inscribed or inscribed in the relationship that certain circles build with you. Here, of course, is a completely different issue of employment. Because you are already a name, and you are either bought for it accordingly or do not buy. Or they buy, but you don't want to go there.

This is what I want to say about the practice of leaving the whole team after the editor -in -chief. We are all adults and should understand the pros and cons of this care. On the one hand, reputation is correct if you believe your chief editor, he is a leader for you and you are not ready for some reason (personal, economic, political, social) to work with a new editor-in-chief. But I will not condemn those people who remain, because they did not come to the name of a person, but under the brand of the publication. So everyone must think for themselves, but I advise you to simply not rush, carefully evaluate the time and position in which you are.

You, journalists, are to blame for this yourself.

Exhale, take a break for two or three days, do not make any decisions on the first emotion. Not to react quickly - this is not a betrayal. You may have a million circumstances (mortgage, children, God forbid, sick mother), and I really do not like this pressure of society: you are all young or traitors. Life is more complicated and multifaceted, and here everyone should decide for themselves. And no professional editor -in -chief will provoke the editorial office to things such as leaving, because it is always a personal choice. The main thing is to understand how the media environment has changed. If two years ago you could clearly get up and leave, realizing that you have no problems with money and you will get a job, now everything has changed.

No one protects the interests of journalists. In fact, you, journalists, are to blame for this yourself. You are people with a good education, you all go around the world and know how trade unions work in high -quality media. Now, in a situation with Timchenko, in any normal Western media, the trade union would have stood hard and would say: “Stop! Let's understand the law. " That is, some conditional trade union should get up and start talking: we protect this and go, for example, to court. There is a completely normal human technique according to which trade unions of the whole world work, the benefit of it is not for you to invent it. The fact that instead of the trade union you have Facebooks where you are all sitting - this is actually doing worse only to yourself. Until you yourself are learning to protect yourself, nothing will happen. And all these stories on the emergence of the trade union only when they fired - this is also very strange. It must be thought about him much earlier. Why not? Well, in many ways, probably because we ourselves lived at a time when everything was very good when there were some strange forms of calculations with journalists and all this was not taken into account by the trade union. And the chief editors themselves, perhaps, did not want the appearance of the trade union, because it will not always protect the chief editor, but rather the opposite. But why do you not protect yourself, I do not understand.

What to do if you have lost your job? I say right away: the time is economically difficult, so if you have lost work for various reasons (reduction, as in RIA, care, as in the “tape”, transfer to another property, like “AiF”, and so on), such a choice, with such salaries and capabilities that journalists had two or three years ago, you will not have.

There remains a pool of income media. There is a myth that there are now very high salaries - no, not very high. There is a myth that there are a lot of jobs - no, there are actually no places. There is no crazy set of employees who were a year and a half ago. But if you do not want to go there for some reason, what, in fact, do?

The first, oddly enough, is to try to make your media. With all the disadvantages, we now live in a good time when there is a shortage of quality information, a shortage of civil positions and a shortage of people who are ready to fill out these gaps qualitatively. And regularly. It works. A classic example: you can treat the “companion and pogrom” in different ways, but the person who chose a position made a highly civilian media. It just sits and does it - fidgets from morning to night. It is clear that this is a path for units, because it is very complicated.

The main editors have no problems with finding work.

On the other hand, just in the last crisis, when it was very difficult, new media began to grow. The number of talented people who are and may be without work will lead to the fact that they will need to go somewhere. Just on the basis of a wild crisis and lack of money, NTV once arose. This is a classic story. In the same way, that star "Kommersant" arose. If we are talking about later crises, then Lam arose. For such things and to people who, for some reason, suddenly turned out to be thrown into the market, but they have will, strength, desire and understanding-difficult, difficult, but money comes. They do not come to the volume to which, maybe people are used to, but practice says that money comes. However, this, I repeat, is a path for units.

The second path. Always during the crisis, people left to study. Many of the professionals who are now working in Russia, just in 2008, left to study at MBA . Now, perhaps, MBA is expensive and unnecessary, but there are quite a few grants to leave the country not for good, but only for some time. Spend this time on your education in order to return with new knowledge later. But this requires a certain stock of money, which the journalist most often does not. Not because they earn little, but from the overall carelessness and such a lifestyle, from which you will have to wean in the near future. In order not to be like this: and for the weekend we go to London, and in the evenings we have dinner at Jean-Jacques, and we spend the night in the “lighthouse”. All this will have to be abandoned.

The third path. Of course, some niches remain. Firstly, these are niches of entertainment media. Moreover, it is entertainment media that exist with portals, where everything is still fine. I’m not talking about the “tape” now, which existed under the “Rambler”, and I say, conditionally, about some content projects of Yandex, Mail . ru and so on. Like "Health@ mail . Ru ", where you can engage in themes, useful people. There you have no internal doubts whether you are doing one or not. You do beautiful, useful things, and you are doing well.

There is a myth that there are a lot of workplaces in the seeding media. There are actually no places.

There are other niches. Now a lot of investments are going to the cinema. Big money came to both TV shows and in a large meter and production. In the series, scriptwriters are very needed now. They’ll die directly there, waiting for the scriptwriters. The question is further in another: how much a journalist can be retrained to the screenwriter. This is quite difficult, so this method is not massive, but individual.

I am generally a big pessimist and in general I do not wait for anything good. This is not the first crisis in my life that I pass, and I want to say that during the crisis, several types of businesses live well.

A grocery retail lives well, focused on local products. The euro and dollar rate suggests that people stop buying an imported product and generally switch to cheaper food. In addition, such a grocery retail is partially lobbying and subsidized by the state, so he lives well.

Oddly enough, development lives well. They will tell me: they don’t buy apartments now. No, they buy! The crisis covers development later. Therefore, at the beginning of the crisis, development in the form of construction, sales of apartments and mortgages lives very well. When there was a crisis of 2008, he caught up with the builders a year later, in 2009. When everyone had already begun to leave the crisis a little, they just visited.

Private things - they are not always a story about a deal with conscience. There are a lot of things that the state does - both they are normal and high -quality. For example, the development of education and everything related to universities. We do not take possible cleaning that they are talking about now and which still affect the upper persons rather. It is quite possible to make faculties such as what Sonya Sokolova is doing now with a “tower”, some incubator and PR things, where there will now be money.

Since these industries are developing, they will demand not just builders, sellers, and so on: they will begin to demand new personnel. We are now working with builders and therefore we know that builders begin to seriously think about how to sell microdistricts located next to Moscow. They are inexpensive, but they need to be sold, so they are looking for people who will come up with some infrastructure decisions to motivate people to buy housing in these microdistricts and in any others. The competition is already big. Just build a kindergarten, school, one restaurant and three stadiums - does not work. Therefore, special departments arise that come up with different interesting things: special museums or sites for children, infrastructure solutions. Not just a pond, but some mini-zoo nearby. Something that people from different microdistricts under construction choose and invest in this one. This is more than urbanism, it is such a socio-urban sphere. Such specialists are now very in demand.

I say to all the girls that now is a great time to go on maternity leave.

Another trend: regions are actively developing and asking for metropolitan journalists. These are Kazan, Perm, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar and other regions, where there is money and infrastructure. A year ago, they understood that they could not take the capital's journalists at all, while they needed to raise their media. If you are here - a journalist of a good level, then, having arrived there, you become a media manager.

I say to all the girls that now is a great time to go on maternity leave. Absolutely seriously - if you work in a large, solid company where you get everything that is supposed by law is a great period to give birth to a child.

In fact, these methods of employment, which I am talking about, are a dead poultice. The only right thing is to try to go to the movies or make your media. All other methods can be conventionally translated into the category “How to Distant Crisis”. We do not know what will happen next, this time of high turbulence, and any solution is risk. The same story with RIA struck me by the fact that in RIA they went to work, as they say, forever.

Despite everything, I still see that some incredible number of people drag into journalism. In the "HSE" and Moscow State University huge contests, despite high prices. However, our problem is that universities are very divorced from real business. People entering the university do not know who they will work, for what money they will work and how they will be employed. They live in some world, universities in their own, and business in their own, and they are in no way connected.

Recorded by Julia Ryzhenko