{"id":106111,"date":"2017-08-17T12:54:59","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T12:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=106111"},"modified":"2017-09-06T10:52:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T10:52:50","slug":"not-all-journalists-are-equal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/not-all-journalists-are-equal\/","title":{"rendered":"Not all journalists are equal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kaloyan Konstantinov is a Bulgarian journalist and student at King\u2019s College London. He recently attended newsrewired and was inspired to write about his own experiences as an immigrant looking for a job and the struggles he\u2019s faced despite his experience. <\/em><\/p>\n

A talk at newsrewired<\/a> on 19 July highlighted the <\/strong>Refugee Journalism Project<\/strong><\/a> that aims to support the re-establishment of careers for exiled journalists in the UK.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The speaker explained that the main problem facing the refugee professionals is not their lack of skills or the language barrier \u2013 but the fact that they simply do not know the right people<\/a>. And while the audience, including myself, applauded the noble initiative I couldn\u2019t help but think that such difficulties are not only limited to refugees but affect many of the foreigners in the UK educated abroad.<\/p>\n

I arrived in England in January 2017 to study for a postgraduate degree at King\u2019s College London, starting from September. My intention was to use the time to find a job or at least manage to gain some UK-based experience in journalism. I have previously managed to balance work and study, graduating from the best university in Bulgaria and writing for one of the most prominent news outlets.<\/p>\n

I was conducting investigations, interviewing foreign and domestic ministers, ambassadors, royals, artists and scientists, and reporting from around Europe. At the end of 2016, I received an award for journalistic excellence and became a member of the International Federation of Journalists. I have also worked as a PR for the exhibitions of Bryan Adams, Lenny Kravitz and Ulay. I did all of this before I turned 23.<\/p>\n

Proud of my achievements, I immediately started applying for both full time and intern positions at various UK organisations, big and small. I was prepared to work for free, just to prove myself. You can probably guess that several months later there was no positive result. In fact, there was rarely a response at all.<\/p>\n

Frustrated, I adopted a more aggressive approach by \u2018headhunting\u2019 editors and HR executives and sending them speculative applications. I lost count of the exact number of positions for which I applied, but it was more than 40. Meanwhile, some financial matters began to make my personal situation more pressing. I started applying for jobs at stores, restaurants, supermarkets and factories but I was rejected from every single one of them (again, over 40 and counting).<\/p>\n

I was once told that my university degree is not recognisable and they couldn\u2019t be sure whether I was telling the truth about my experience. I\u2019m not alone, many educated and skilful foreigners struggle against such prejudice and discrimination.<\/p>\n

I can hardly imagine how British journalism graduates, with no real experience, find a job at all.<\/p>\n

To be honest, in the end, one place did hire me. Now I work in KFC and clean the bathrooms. I continue to apply for jobs, basically everywhere, and all the while, a nagging voice in my head insists that some people are more equal than others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A talk at newsrewired on 19 July highlighted the Refugee Journalism Project that aims to support the re-establishment of careers for exiled journalists in the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":106146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[350,3729],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106920,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106111\/revisions\/106920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}