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Best 7 Journalism Skills To Make You A Successful Journalist
Best 7 Journalism Skills To Make You A Successful Journalist
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To build a successful journalism career, you will need to develop the necessary skills to grow in this
career path. From natural curiosity to knowing how to use the computer, these are the seven
journalism skills you need to grow.
Contents [show]
1. Natural Curiosity
If you want to be a journalist and feel you lack enough natural curiosity, you can develop some
Journalism is a career where you are constantly researching different topics and events. A natural
curiosity and desire to research and learn about those things is essential. You must learn to
imagine details about an event or subject, and then find a way to shine a light on what readers
need to know. Journalism is, by its very nature, a proactive art. You must proactively ask questions
and find new topics to write about.
If events are not happening, you must come up with topics to research and questions to answer.
Consider, for example, a journalist writing about a car accident. The facts of the car accident come
from the victims and local law enforcement. Yet there is much more to the story if you can dig and
ask the right questions. For example, curiosity would cause the journalist to ask:
Asking these questions and finding the answers will make the resulting article much more
interesting, with information beyond what the law enforcement agencies have already given.
2. Organizational Skills
The image of a frantic reporter arriving on the scene of a crime and scrambling for their notebook
is quite unrealistic. However, if you are going to be a good journalist, you will likely have many leads
and stories you are handling simultaneously. Therefore, you will need to be quite organized.
Organization refers to physical paper documents as well as digital documents. Mental organization
is also helpful as you keep the various ideas, interviews, people, and events straight in your mind.
3. Strong Ethics
To be a journalist whose writing people want to read, you must be a journalist people can trust.
This requires ethical journalism. Journalists must have a strong ethical core. It can be very
tempting to go for the scoop at the expense of other people or sensitive information. This might
cause you to get a good following, but if you use unethical means to get or publish information that
should be kept private, you may ruin your career.
Similarly, you must follow all rules and regulations when seeking information. It takes just one
poorly timed story with information acquired through ill-gotten means to destroy a journalist’s
career, so don’t go there.
Along with your research skills, you will need tenacity. Sometimes, a lead looks like it is going
nowhere, but your tenacity will cause you to find the answers if you keep digging. Learn to grab
onto an idea and never give up until you find the answers. You will not be a good journalist if you
are not a good researcher. Learn how to use the tools at your disposal to build your research
abilities, and you will be able to apply those skills to your work as a journalist.
Learn where the public records databases are in your community and how to access them.
Learn how to search Google expertly.
Trace citations in the articles you find to learn even more.
Be willing to call witnesses and ask for an interview.
Have a system to record and manage references for later use.
Build relationships with your local public records office or library librarian, who can help you with
your research needs.
Gather information
Verify information
Uncover new perspectives
Collect quotes about a topic
Give your piece authority
Interviewing is about more than just asking questions and recording answers. If you are going to
have successful interviews, you need the ability to connect with the interviewee, so they will want
to answer the questions. This means strong communication skills and the ability to make a
personal connection with people. When people feel comfortable with a journalist, they will divulge
more information than if they are uncomfortable. So putting people at ease and then using your
communication skills to draw information from them is essential. These are skills you will develop
the longer you do interviews, but they are crucial.
6. Computer Literacy
Over the past two decades, journalism has changed. Today, adults prefer to get their news from
digital platforms, not paper ones. They will listen to podcasts or browse social media to find out
what is happening in the world rather than opening a newspaper or magazine. Thus, today’s
journalists must be savvy users of all things digital. You must be able to use the computer and
websites, design programs, and online organizational tools to be a skilled journalist.
Today’s journalists publish their works online, using these platforms to reach their target audience.
If you are not comfortable with basic word processing, image collection and sharing, app usage,
and social media, you will struggle to connect with your audience and distribute your work. In
addition, all basic office software, including spreadsheets and slideshow generation, are tools you
may need.
Learn grammar, and then use grammar-checking software on every piece you publish to avoid
problems with typos and grammar errors
It may go without saying, but you must know how to write well to succeed as a journalist.
Publishing works with grammar and syntax errors will cause you to lose your audience and
followers. It will also confuse your readers. Strong journalists are strong writers. Learn grammar,
and then use grammar-checking software on every piece you publish to avoid problems with typos
and grammar errors.
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1. Be a continual learner: Find where your weaknesses are, and then find classes to fix them. The
more you work on yourself, the better your skills will become.
2. Learn from your mistakes: If you make a mistake, don’t let it derail your career dreams and goals.
Instead, learn from it and avoid making it in the future.
3. Keep writing: You will learn the most if you keep writing. Learn to be concise, clear, and
respectful in your writing, but don’t stop. Skilled journalists write all the time, so get a journal and
write all the time.
4. Get a degree: A final way to build your journalism skills is to earn a degree in journalism. This will
ensure that you study journalism from every angle, including the ethics of journalism, to graduate
with exceptional skills.
1. Respectfulness
2. Professionalism
3. Curiosity
4. Organized
5. Detail-oriented
6. Tenacious
Author
Nicole H.
Nicole Harms has been writing professionally since 2006. She specializes in
education content and real estate writing but enjoys a wide gamut of topics.
Her goal is to connect with the reader in an engaging, but informative way.
Her work has been featured on USA Today, and she ghostwrites for many
high-profile companies. As a former teacher, she is passionate about both
research and grammar, giving her clients the quality they demand in today's
online marketing world.
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