Are good reporters born — or made? Can you teach the curiosity that all good journalists possess? The persistence of the best reporting? The creativity of the most compelling stories? Every so often I hear a journalist say that you can’t — that those quaities are ‘innate’ or “can’t be taught”…

This line of thought — a line which lacks the very curiosity and persistence that journalists are expected to aspire to — bothers me.

And it’s bothered me for some time.

Over the last year I’ve been thinking about these qualities a lot, what they might be, how educators teach them, and how they could be developed in journalism students and trainees more explicitly.

Today, then, I’m publishing the first in a series of posts exploring 7 habits that we often attribute to the best journalism, and to good journalists — and identifying ways that those habits are and can be encouraged and developed.

The 7 qualities are: Continue reading →