Career And Living Conditions Of Journalists In The Capital Of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region: An Investigation Report

Along with the increasing free-market orientation of journalism,competition between media ventures for market shares becomes tenser and tenser.The competition between media enterprises causes them to compete in attracting talented journalists in this circle.As a result,media employees,especially journalists,find themselves under enormous pressure.In other words,the career and living conditions of journalists in the capital of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is not favorable.Against this background,the current research project is conducted to investigate the career and living conditions of journalists in the capital of Inner Mongolia.Questionnaires and interviews are employed as investigation instruments.The investigator has designed 33 questions in 7aspects.The following is a brief account.The first aspect is basic information,such as name,age,education background,major and salary,etc.This category of basic information lays the cornerstone for later discovery of and solution to problems.The second aspect has to do with task enthusiasm and career devotion.Questions in this category try to find out the internal state of journalists in the capital of Inner Mongolia,such as reasons of career choice,attitude toward current job,degree of willingness to complete given tasks,and reasons for the intention to switch to another job,if any,or for loss of enthusiasm in work.The thirdaspect boils down to an investigation into job satisfaction and work-related pressure,with questions touching upon salaries,benefits,work hours,welfare,promotion potential,social status,and interpersonal relationships.Meanwhile,efforts are made to find out whether the job has brought great distress;what the causes are behind the distress;whether the distress affects their daily life;and how they react to the distress,etc.This part also covers career weariness on the part of journalists in the capital of Inner Mongolia,and analyses are made to pin down the causes of exhausted enthusiasm,emotional alienation,and sense of low efficiency.The fourth category of questions is an exploration into the professionalism of journalists under concern.Questions range from initial aim for choosing the career of journalism,to personal criteria defining career success,to self-evaluation of professional skills and personal improvement,and to journalists' ethics,etc.The research project yields these discoveries.Although the journalist team is now younger,filling the media of Inner Mongolia's capital with youthful vigor,employees' lack of experience negatively affects the social influence of media to a certain extent.Although current journalists have more advanced degrees in education,most of them specialize in very few areas.For instance,humanities claims the largest concentration of employees,so there is an obvious imbalance of specialized areas.The salaries of journalists in question are about in the middle on the income scale.Althoughjournalists are active in pushing their work,they show insufficient loyalty to their career choice.As they tend to overwork under pressure,fatigue and weariness are prevalent.On the whole,journalists have a strong enough sense of media responsibility and abide by professional ethics.Of course exceptions do exist.Through further analyses of the investigation results,a number of problems associated with journalists in the capital of Inner Mongolia are noted.The role of journalist is marked by alienation,and journalists' careerism has declined.Journalists are not well paid,and there is an apparent difference in work reward between media types.Journalists' work load is very heavy.Three causes are named for the above problems.The first can be traced to great changes in the media eco-system.The second is incomplete mechanism of media management.The third is weaknesses on the part of employees.To improve the current situation,a number of proposals are put forward in this paper.First,media managing authorities should uphold the management principle of combining efficiency and humanitarianism.Within the current framework of labor and reward system,more incentive should be given to encourage effective work.Journalists should be trained to restructure their knowledge and add field variety.Recruitment should be based on a larger group of candidates from all over the country,and on-the-job training programs should be run to keep employees up with the times.Second,from the perspective of individual growth,journalists should stick to ahigh standard of professionalism and keep self-improvement until perfection.Journalists are expected to aim high out of a strong sense of mission.They are to have a strong sense of responsibility,a will of self-discipline and a steadfast adherence to moral values stipulated for the journalist profession.It is desirable for journalists to keep improving their personal qualities and professional skills.They are also advised to make psychological adaptations to the constantly changing post-modern society.