We are pursuing a great story: More than a hundred teen girls are having fainting spells in a school outside Maputo. The community says ancestors are upset and rituals need to be performed. The Ministry of Health says it is collective hysteria.

A young journalist that I coach is covering this story.  After a press conference at the Ministry of Health, we go for coffee to discuss story angles, ways of asking questions and of taking notes (he takes notes verbatim and slowly, and admires my arrows, bullets and shortcuts, capturing best quotes as they are spoken).

Two young journalists join us. All three were classmates. They have  finished the MA program at the national Eduardo Mondlane University but are still working on their graduation thesis.

I work regularly with two of them, and the third also wants coaching. He heard from his colleagues that they are learning a lot with me.

I pass around Noticias, the daily newspaper. Suddenly, coffee cups are pushed back, blocks that were put away emerge, the reporters scramble for pens.  It is not news that sparks this flurry of interest. It is an ad for an information assistant with a network of children-oriented NGOs. Duties: write press releases and stories for its bulletin.

“I am tired of being unemployed,” says one.

“I am tired of working for so little,” says another.

One works at a weekly for US$100 a month and the lofty title of economic editor. Another has the same salary and the title of city news editor. The third strings for Savana and earns US$30 per story.  

Of course they want an NGO job that starts at US$600, maybe US$800, and benefits. Meanwhile, a journalist with four years of experience who produces four pages every week at a weekly earns US$400 a month.

I understand. But I am heartbroken that only ads for NGO jobs appear in the paper. There are no jobs in journalism or they pay ridiculously low.

The first class of journalism at UEM graduated in 2007. Out of 25 graduates, only three are in journalism, and that is because they were interns at the government newspaper and news agency and were hired. The other 22 work for NGOs, in publicity or public relations.

Monitoring pays better

The only other area of media that frequently hires, although temporarily, is monitoring. There is so much of it going around in Mozambique. Just this year, I know of two parallel exercises of media monitoring on HIV/AIDS and one on children in the news.

Last year, one of these young reporters earned US$1,800 in three months  as part of a team that monitored the press during elections, funded by the European Union.

He dreams of a job doing media monitoring for UNESCO. His thesis consists of monitoring media reports about district budgetary allocations during one year. Not quite gripping as a topic, but this is where the money is, in ancillary, donor-funded media activities, not in producing news.

These monitoring exercises usually report that the quality of news is poor. Is it surprising, when the monitor earns four times more than the journalist?

Last month, for the second year in a row, the Carlos Cardoso prize for investigative journalism was not awarded. The quality of the works submitted was inadequate, said the jury.

Ditto for the MISA prizes two weeks ago: the jury noted lack of basic journalistic principles, even poor command of Portuguese in the works submitted and did not award first and second prizes in several categories, like the environment and HIV/AIDS.      

Dull but secure

Back to the coffee shop. Will you give us a recommendation?  they ask. Of course. I will give them a glowing recommendation because they deserve it - and I will lose the stringers I have been coaching since February. I am heartbroken to see young journalists who like the profession leaving it before they really start, before they tasted its joys and adventures and thrills, leaving it for the dull but financially secure world of bland NGO writing.

If donors really wanted Mozambican media to develop, they should find ways to help private media pay decent salaries, instead of permanently siphoning off the best and brightest reporters as information officers.

In that position, they will write variations of the same story: a poor orphan/refugee/farmer/HIV+ person/granny/albino is helped by this NGO or UN agency.

And who helps young journalists struggling on US$100 a month?