Becoming a journalist is nearly impossible "if you don't have rich parents", according to Orwell Prize winner Johann Hari.
The 29-year-old Independent columnist, whose first media job on the New Statesman in 2001 earned him £9,000 ($18,141.30) a year, spoke out as he received the Orwell Prize for political writing last night.
"Basically, if you don't have rich parents, it is increasingly impossible to become a journalist in Britain – and that is really bad, not just for social justice but for the newspapers themselves," Hari told the audience at the Orwell Prize as he accepted the £3,000 award.
"When I graduated, I suddenly realised that if you want to become a journalist, you have to work unpaid in central London for as long as two years – and I just couldn't afford it. There was no way I could."
In her book No Logo, author Naomi Klein touched on the theme that cultural industries jobs in Canada, including journalism, were defaulting to those who had the financial support to accept unpaid internships.
I've heard of jobs in T.O. that pay in the low $30K range, which doesn't buy you much of a life in the Big Smoke.