Do young people still want to build a career in journalism? How do we motivate them?
Alina Girnet,
Executive Director, Diez
For a long time, I believed that my mission as a manager was to motivate my team, and the main performance indicator I used to understand whether I was doing well or not was how successfully I managed to retain young journalists in the team. I only had the power to create the workplace that would convince them to join my team and stay. Although it felt like emotionally demanding work and a huge responsibility toward dozens of colleagues who crossed our threshold, it was not about their motivation, but about mine. It was my way of trying to give meaning and continuity to a job as a media manager that I had not learned, for which I had no mentors that presented me with insufficient budgets, vacation-time work hours, impossible strategies, and the fear of being left alone.
Over the years, however, experience clarified something essential for me: motivation is deeply individual and highly personal, whether in a journalism career or in any other. It is influenced by the degree of career orientation when choosing university studies, by experiences during university and the people met in their early twenties, by one’s curiosity to explore this field, to participate and try the practical aspects of the profession. The first job also influences how a young journalist sees his/her future in the profession, but not the most important influence, and certainly not the only one. The truth is that, in any ethical and fair editorial office I know, managers do their best to motivate young journalists, just as young journalists do their best to motivate themselves.
What can go wrong along the way?
Salary. It doesn’t really increase much after a few years. Or it increases if you take on other management roles in the editorial office. Financial instability is a reality of editorial offices all over the world. If you had known this before entering journalism school, would you have made the same decision?
Exhaustion. From news, from interacting with bots, online and offline harassers, with institutions that take a month to respond to requests for information, but only a few days to announce a tax audit.
Exhaustion of doing something about exhaustion. There is a general pressure to solve problems, to go on vacation now, to disconnect, to read, to do something for yourself. This is extremely difficult advice to follow for a journalist who is always connected to global news. I once forced myself to spend a day offline during a recent vacation. At 9:00 PM, I reconnected and, in just one hour before going to bed, I had restored my anxiety and worries for the distant day of tomorrow.
And yet, what can go right along the way?
Decent working conditions
For a long time, I resisted the idea of including in job ads the fact that we offer an individual employment contract, 28 days of vacation, and full social benefits. It seemed to me that it was at least strange to list basic legal working conditions as advantages. I gave in, because I still hear about cases that contradict these necessities, which sit at the base of the social pyramid or, in other words, cases where employment relationships are not honoured with proper contracts and full rights.
In this sense, it still seems that it is still normal to mention in job ads that we offer decent working conditions. ‘Competitive salary’ still doesn’t convince me. But I followed the good example of my colleagues at Moldova.org to write in figures the possible salary for the vacant position, depending on skills and experience. It is a good filter, and salary discussions during interviews automatically become less tense, because everything is clear from the beginning and we have not created unrealistic expectations. The limits of salary competitiveness are different for each person.
Ask and you will receive answers
Once every six months or at least once a year we take time for one-on-one discussions with each team member, at least to find out what does not motivate them. It is a start.
We receive very different answers. For some, belonging to a group is important, especially when that group stands for clear values and transparent goals. At the half-year meetings last summer, very many colleagues told me that they needed team activities, to go somewhere together. We did this regularly every year, but in 2025 we focused too much on survival: financial, psychological, political, security. We forgot to take a break. Together. A group of people who want to be at the same workplace and want to rest together, not just work. We went, we rested, we explored, and it felt like a warm hand on the shoulder and like a reward.
Other colleagues told me they are motivated by external validation, by having their work shared by respected professionals, or by receiving awards. For others, a clear growth path, a position with responsibility and ownership in a specific area in which to specialize is important.
We will not be able to meet all these expectations, because they are not a list of gifts, and we are not Santa Claus. They must align with the goals of the organization and complement each other, so that in the end the value of the effort is shared between the organization and its members.
Rules apply to everyone
For today’s young people, rules are extremely important. They must be clear, written, logical, transparently applied, and most importantly — they must be respected by everyone. If you want them to come to the office on time, you must come to the office on time as well. If you want them not to interrupt you in meetings, do not interrupt them in meetings either. If you want them to go on annual leave, go on vacation on time. If you want them not to be disturbed on vacation, do not disturb others on their vacations either.
Patience to teach them and let them teach you
Most of them will come during or right after university, which means that the editorial office must spend quite a lot of time on enrolment and guidance. It is still a beneficial process as it reveals new needs for regulations in the editorial office, certain things are repeated, and decisions are reassessed. We repeatedly analyze with each person what we are doing well and what we could improve.
My colleagues in the editorial office, who are also journalism professors, told me that they really wanted teaching experience, even if they have it and have had it with new team members, because it is an experience that teaches you continuously and is an exercise of analyzing your own abilities. In addition, they want to be able to teach students what they would also like to learn.
With a sufficient transfer of trust, shortly afterwards, juniors should be invited to the big table, in inclusive brainstorming sessions, using techniques that encourage everyone’s participation, not just the leader. In the same way, they should be invited to participate in decisions, in developing regulations and policies, because only this way will they respect and understand them.
With the same commitment to including them in organizational processes, we should also talk to them transparently about money: where it comes from, how it is spent, why we don’t work with certain clients, and why we don’t take money from politicians.
Is it difficult? On the contrary. It’s much easier not to be alone in these big and complicated decisions. You share them with your team, and everyone benefits.
Let them leave
People are not your property, even if you feel they owe you their professional experience, their learning from the beginning. It’s just your subjective perception and the way you chose, at a certain point, to do things and create unwritten expectations for yourself in the employment contract.
Someone leaving is not a reproach for your effort, it’s not a punishment. Let’s remember — you did the best you could. An employment relationship is a role for a certain period of time; no blackmail or bonus offered when the person has already made a decision will convince him/her to stay, and if he/she stays, your relationship will no longer be completely healthy.
Have I treated the team like a family? Of course, I became a manager at 25. How could I have done otherwise? I spent more time at work than at home, I made friends there, and I discovered the world with them. Has anything changed? Of course, in the family we love each other unconditionally. At work, it’s not possible, because salaries are very conditional. There are rules, tasks, and deadlines to be respected. But who said that rules can’t create a friendly and healthy atmosphere? We set clear limits and expectations, we provide immediate feedback, we have direct discussions. Try it! It’s easier to sleep at night.
Do we have a career orientation problem?
My editorial office colleagues, who teach journalism, gave also told me that the overall interest in the profession is declining, if we look at the number of students enrolled from year to year. Among those who still choose to study journalism, there are many people who are not genuinely interested in the field they have chosen to study. Sometimes this is because the decision to study journalism was made with the idea that journalism is an easy specialization or because their parents told them to do so. Many still come to study journalism with the dream of becoming TV presenters, while they are not TV consumers. However, their confusion has also been our confusion – it is not necessarily greater.
Journalism students are not much different than students in other fields, and what is certain is that there are differences between today’s young people and those from 10 years ago that are absolutely justified. One of the biggest challenges of the moment is attention retention, strongly affected by the way information is consumed on social networks. The positive side is that today’s students seem to be more open to sharing their opinions, more courageous to say what they think, and more relaxed in their interactions with professors. They are no longer afraid to drop out of university if they do not find themselves in the field, even though there are students who perform well and cope with university tasks.
The path to motivation
Probably, before motivation we need relevance, people in the team who clearly know why they want to do journalism and how they want to do it, and clarity about the role they will have in society.
It is a difficult mission, one that we all need to contribute to. It starts in school, continues through university and the first job, and the final exam takes place in front of the public and the power it has to define the role and social influence of journalists. Once we clarify the relevance, there may be room for more discussion about motivation.
The article was written within the project “Resilient Media, Informed Voters: Safeguarding Moldova’s Elections from Disinformation”, funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Moldova. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the donor.
