News Analysts and Reporters
Now this is a career that many think of but believe me, it’s horribly difficult to get into. The idea of the crusading journalist out to put the world to rights attracts many but most unfortunately, few are chosen. The profession is also a poster child for the way in which certification has become ever more important in employment. The time was that the training of a journalist happened on the job: Terry Pratchett tells of his first day as an 18 year old on the local paper: four hours later he saw his first dead body. Progression in a career happened by starting on a small paper in a small role and as more was learned (and talent shone through) moving on to larger roles in larger outlets.
Nowadays the absolute minimum to get anywhere in the industry is a college degree. It can be in journalism itself although there are many places that prefer a college degree in what will become the specialist subject: politics, business or economics for example. It is also becoming more common for employers to want a further college degree: perhaps a Master’s in journalism.
Unfotunately, what hasn’t happened at the same time is that those small jobs went away. Even with a college degree, it is still extremely unlikely to be hired on a large paper or by a national network: careers still progress by starting with small jobs and then moving up: it’s just you need that college degree before you start now.
Reporters and journalists need to have two skill sets: they need to be able to read people, empathise with them, in order to get the information and stories they want. They also need to have the systemizing skills to put it all into order, to explain it with reference to the rest of the world. So by our EQSQ personality tests standards, we’re looking for balanced brain types here.
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:26 am
According to one of my great heroes, Russell Baker (formerly of the NYT, among others), there was a time when reporters and writers were not required to have such enhanced systemizing abilities. But Baker did not attribute this to the new requirement of a college degree. Instead, Tim, he blamed it on some guys from your neck of the woods. In “The English Mafia,” Baker wrote:
“It used to be a nice little living, the writing racket, until the English Mafia moved in on it…It had moved in on the publishing houses, newspapers and magazines and was terrorizing small-time operators and literary biggies alike with laws propounded by its most powerful families. The three most feared families are headed by, respectively, Edwin (Dry Laugh Eddie) Newman, William (The Funster Punster) Safire and John (The Enforcer) Simon.”
The new systemizing enforcement included tough-as-nails grammar and sentence-structure laws and banned such things as “stale clichés.”
November 4th, 2006 at 3:10 am
Although you need a college education, you can still get into the newspaper biz without a degree specifically in journalism. With degrees in psychology and creative writing, I was offered a reporting position at a newspaper in my hometown of Destin, Florida. It was a small job—the typical newspaper starting gig to cover the city council meetings and such.
But here’s the rub–I was offered only minimum wage. Though small, the paper was part of a larger network, and opportunities to move up existed–I’d have liked to have taken the job. But minimum wage? And no benefits? Anyone interested in journalism and in having a decent salary would do best by getting the appropriate degrees.
November 9th, 2006 at 12:39 am
In college, I was an English major with an emphasis in creative writing, but I knew I needed to establish my credibility as a versatile writer for future job opportunities. I took a job as a reporter at the school newspaper with no prior experience. The first pieces I turned in were basically stories with no journalistic structure. My editor had to teach me the correct format. By the end of my senior year, I was covering visits from the Dali Lama and Nelson Mandela. I knew how to put a piece together.
Tim writes of a time when “the training of a journalist happened on the job.” This still happens at the college newspaper. You build credibility; just don’t expect to be paid. I knew Journalism majors who never published anything in college and didn’t land good jobs after school. If you are looking for on-the-job training, look no further than your school publications.
One thing I have learned for sure: people don’t respond to cold reporters. Learning to empathize with your subject leads to the most successful reporting. A reporter must first realize his or her emotional intelligence before learning the systemized structure of putting a piece together.
November 13th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
I think all four of us are really actually saying the same thing here. No a college degree isn’t necessary to be a journalist, most especially a college degree in journalism itself.
However, an apprenticeship is: it can be on the college paper, it can be as the UK system or Millie’s experience, on a small town paper, or in the UK in magazine journalism it is as an unpaid intern for a year or so.
I think my complaint, my mention of ‘credentialism’, is really that people are beginning to demand both the degree and the unpaid experience: either or would be fair to me.
One thing I didn’t mention above is that blogging itself can replace a large part of that apprenticeship. It certainly has for me: OK, I don’t do journalism, more like columns and OpEds and book reviews but I’m getting into The Times (the London version) and the Philadelphia Inquirer with pieces and I’ve no academic training in journalism. All of my opportunities have come from people reading my main blog.