Advice for journalism graduates
If you’re one of the many journalism graduates wandering the jobs pages this summer, here’s my Five-Step Plan® to getting a job in journalism
- Get a job, it doesn’t matter what. Nothing makes a person employable like being already employed. Plus you now have an employer’s reference. You’ll be making new contacts and learning new things, giving you more to talk about on the CV/interview. If you can get a job in the area you want to write about, even better: even if it’s something as prosaic as working in Next because you want to be a fashion journo. You’ll be surprised how much knowledge you pick up. Once you have the job, try to shape it so you can gain as much useful experience as possible: suggest an internal newsletter you could write, or contribute to the company website.
- Get a blog – no, don’t stop reading. This is not about online journalism. A blog helps you achieve a number of things regardless of whether you ever want to publish online professionally:
- Practice makes perfect: writing regularly for a blog helps you hone and improve your journalistic style (note: that’s journalistic style, not diary style. Your journalist’s blog should be a series of articles, interviews etc. in your area of interest, not what you did on your summer holidays)
- Ready-made portfolio: writing regularly for a blog gives you a wealth of material to show to potential employers. You should of course also include any material you have had published elsewhere. Include it on your CV so they can browse through it in deciding to give you an interview.
- Proof of commitment: if you’re committed enough to write a blog regularly, to get out there and find out what’s happening in your specialist area, that proves you’re more committed than most job applicants.
- Exposure: at this point, whether or not anyone reads your blog is not the primary goal, but if you do it well, you can build a reputation, and two things can happen: a) when you’re at the interview, the editor says “I’m a reader of your blog”; and b) freelance jobs will come to you. Note: this often takes years, and is often connected with the next step.
- Get involved in the area you want to report on: firstly, know where to get grassroots news in your area, so build up a first class favourites folder/Bloglines account of the best bloggers and news sources. Secondly, comment on those blogs and sites, and engage in the debates. Thirdly, conduct your own interviews for your own blog, online and offline. And finally, get away from your computer and do things: attend events, do courses, arrange a day in a relevant company. All of this proves your commitment, builds your reputation, and gives you a contacts book to die for.
- Get a good mobile phone – that is, one that takes pictures, video and audio. Download some free editing software like Windows Movie Maker and Audacity, and play around with it. Upload some video or audio to to your blog, YouTube or Switchpod. Quality will come with time, but the primary point here is to prove that you have some multimedia experience. Journalists are increasingly expected to know how to produce audio and video as well as text, and this is another way of putting you ahead of the competition. You will also need it for step 5:
- Get an eye for news: don’t wait to join a news organisation to become a journalist. As you do your job, as you walk the streets, as you read the newspapers and browse the messageboards, keep your news sense about you: is something happening that is newsworthy? Record it with your phone and send it to a relevant news organisation. Has someone said something that is newsworthy? Highlight it on your blog. Is there a national story that you could put a specialist or local angle to? Write it up.
This is the most fundamental of skills for a journalist, whether in news or features. It is the one thing employers will be looking for. If you can tell them you filmed the floods on your phone or spotted a good lead on a forum, it proves you’re always ‘on’.
As a news editor I can’t emphasise enough the importance of step five.
It’s amazing how many trainee reporters aren’t “on” even during working hours. Often they’ll walk past half a dozen stories on their way to work in the morning and not notice any of them.
So someone who is aware of, and interested in, the world around them will win hands down over a reporter who thinks being a journalist is about showing up and being told what the news is.
#2 definitely helped me land a job, and keeping it up will lead to the next job, and the next job, and the next job.
It’s not just proof that you can write — it’s proof that you have original ideas.
If you don’t have #5, you’re in the wrong business.
This is great advice. Today’s blogs and multi-media phones provide opportunities we didn’t have when I graduated. The writer who can’t do these things is going to get left behind. Keeping your eyes open for stories has always been essential for a good journalist. The best part of this is that you don’t have to wait to get a job to get to work. You can use these steps to start right now.
Sue
http://www.freelancingfornewspapers.blogspot.com.
I’m highly fortunate to have landed a job as ‘Reporter – Print/Online’ at the News and Star in Carlisle, having graduated with a journalism degree.
Throughout my time during the BA Hons course (at the Cumbria Institute of the Arts – now University of Cumbria), I grabbed every work experience opportunity I could: Local paper. Local radio. Local BBC. Some were offered to me; others I sought after myself. The insight I gained I could never have gained from degree education.
It was actually through writing a blog over two years ago for the N&S that I caught the eye of the then deputy editor and was offered paid employment for various website/print projects. The greatest benefit to me was the ability to work under those who took the time to listen to ideas and had the foresight to see what possibilities the online medium could offer. Especially for somewhere such as Cumbria, so typically regarded by others as somewhere in the dark ages.
I’ve always been interested in web design, creation and its multimedia possibilities. In the first year of my degree, I developed and created the initial website for our student paper in 2004, which was nominated for a Press Gazette team award the same year. Yet, during the time I worked on it, barely any other students were interested in contributing. I found this staggering.
For my second major project in the final year of my degree this year, I liaised once more with Nick Turner at CN Group on creating content for a website celebrating 25 years of The Great Cumbrian Run. Through meetings, we were able to plan what strengths the site could offer to the reader that print couldn’t. It is online at http://www.greatcumbrianrun.co.uk This site recently won me the Press Gazette Student Online Journalist of the Year 2007 award.
So, as for now… I’ve been at the N&S for a week and already have drafted a list of online potentials for upcoming articles. Already I’ve had comments from the news editor saying, “Oh! Yes, actually that would be the perfect story for a video clip” etc.
I’m in something of a unique position at the N&S as this is the first time they have brought someone in under a role of online reporting as well as print. For a regional paper in a location such as Cumbria, this is a fantastic opportunity and certainly one I would never have expected to be offered, even so close as two years ago.
Web 2.0 is an extremely exciting development and produces topics extremely interesting to discuss in detail – I wrote a dissertation on the subject. However, having visited many, many groups on Facebook and elsewhere, sometimes I do feel like shouting: “Alright, already! Enough talk! Let’s just go – come on!” This isn’t a great way to approach things, but in the same way that journalism needs academics discussing where all this Web 2.0 is going, it also needs those to embrace its potential and get on with utilising it!
It’s not all peachy, though. One of the biggest dangers I face is that I risk alienating myself in the office as the ‘Internet guy’. I am by no means the perfect journalist graduate. I barely got past the initial stages of shorthand [I'm working on it!] and I didn’t get the NCTJ accreditation in law or PA [again...]. What the editor (and, obviously, myself) hope is that we can all learn from each other, so while I get the skills to be a reporter with a great eye for news, I can help others to look at the wider scope of coverage when reporting.
This has turned out to be something of a mammoth reply, but as a journalist graduate who is just starting his career – with plenty of anxiety, nerves and, I have to say, a lack of confidence compared to others – the best advice I would give to graduates is to just get your work out wherever you can. It is never too late. Passion and drive is absolutely the key – even without being some over-confident, fully accredited journalist graduate. Good luck.
By the way, can anyone recommend a good mobile phone to capture audio and video?