Are you feeling your age? You are not alone. Journalism, it turns out, is an ageing profession with only one in eight UK journalists under the age of 30 and almost four in ten 50 or older*. Neil Merrick spoke to young journalists, employers and academics to find out why journalism seems to be becoming a less attractive profession for young people – although media courses still attract many students.
You can read about what young journalists still love about our profession in the current (June 2026) edition of The Journalist.
You can also read how freelancers learn to deal with rejection, when their pitches for work get turned down or, worse still, ignored.
These sit alongside features about what makes a good football journalist, whether journalists should still knock on doors when there is a tragedy, and a look back at the bad old days of press freebies.
The Journalist is a magazine with strong content and it is easy to see why it wins awards as a standout among trade union journals.
Editor, Christine Buckley, writes on the NUJ website about how The Journalist reflects the aspirations of the union, but keeps its independence, partly due to the fact that she is directly elected by the NUJ members. “This is unique in the union movement and ensures our own publication accords with the standards we expect in media organisations – that the editorial process should be independent of ownership.”
So how do you easily get hold of The Journalist; now published six times a year (all six online but only three of them in print format)?
You can download a pdf version directly from the NUJ national website by going to https://www.nuj.org.uk/ and scrolling down to “latest publications”.
If you are an NUJ member you do not need to do this – you receive your copies by right, either the print version through your door or the online version via a link in your inbox. To make this happen, there is one bit of essential admin you should do now! Here it is…
- Go to https://www.nuj.org.uk/ and log in. You need your password to do this. You probably chose a password when you joined or when you first visited the site. But if you have forgotten it, the usual online dance will get you a new one.
- Click on My NUJ. Here you see the details the NUJ holds about you – address, phone number, email address etc. and can check that these are correct.
- Click on View/Edit my profile
- Click on My contact preferences. Here you choose between.
The Journalist magazine: Digital Only 6 editions per year, download or read online.
The Journalist magazine: Paper & Digital (3 paper/digital & 3 digital only).
While you are here you can also select topics that interest you most. You can also choose how NUJ communications arrive – post, email or phone. - Click the box showing that you accept the NUJ privacy policy, terms and conditions. You need to do this so that the NUJ does not breach regulations related to information held electronically (GDPR).
- Click Save Details
Now just wait for the next issue to drop…..
*Age profile from a report for the National Council for the Training of Journalists
