Happy journalists day

Not surprised by the general results of this poll, reported by CNA (Taiwan's Central News Agency). ..though nearly half wanting to quit their jobs is pretty depressing.

Time to have some media reform!

Reporters have mixed sentiments toward their job: survey

Taipei, Sept. 1 (CNA) Taiwan's reporters have mixed sentimentstoward their job, according to a 1111 Job Bank online survey released Saturday. The survey was conducted Aug. 23-30 among media reporters onwhether or not they are happy in their work, to coincide with the jobbank's celebration of Sept. 1 Reporters' Day.

The poll results show that 22.76 percent of the respondents wereunhappy with their jobs, while 31.41 percent said they enjoy work.Another 45.83 percent of the surveyed reporters were ambivalent.

Analyzing the results, the job bank found that reporters who saidthey were cheerful were mostly those who work for magazines,accounting for 44.45 percent of surveyed happy reporters.

Those who said they were unhappy and stressed were mostlytelevision reporters, accounting for 40.62 percent of all the unhappyreporters surveyed, according to the poll. Asked what kind of events they dislike covering, 60.58 percent ofthe respondents answered "controversial political events, " followedby "social events" with 58.33 percent. Lifestyle and travel are the two subjects that reporters lookforward most to covering, attracting 58.01 percent and 51.6 percentof the polled reporters, respectively.

Asked whether or not they wanted to change careers, 49.04 percentsaid they wanted out of journalism, while 50.96 percent said theywanted to remain in the business. According to 1111 Job Bank statistics, jobseekers who wanted towork as reporters had only 0.67 job opportunities on average in 2006,a ratio that dropped to 0.55 this year. In the August survey, the respondents anticipated that they willwork as reporters or related jobs for an average of 13.85 years. A total of 312 valid questionnaires were collected for the onlinesurvey.