Up To Speed Journalism Careers Advice Tip #4 Believe In Yourself
Up To Speed Journalism’s Founder Tom Hill gives careers advice on becoming a journalist in a new series of posts on the Up To Speed blog.
We hope you find the advice helpful. Over the next few weeks we’ll be covering a range of topics including tips on how to write for print, online, radio and television. In the first few posts, we’re looking at the initial steps you need to take to become a journalist including the all-important task of winning a place on the right course. Today we look at the traits you may need to succeed.
Tip #4 Believe In Yourself
If you’re considering a career in journalism, you’ve probably asked yourself more than once, “Have I got what it takes?”
That is certainly a good starting point. But what answers should you be looking for?
As with any walk of life, journalism attracts a broad range of people and most newsrooms have their fair share of “characters”.
However, it is possible to observe some common aptitudes and attitudes among journalists. I’ll come back to some of these in more detail in future posts on the Up To Speed Blog over the next few weeks, but here’s a simple list in the meantime:
1. A genuine curiosity and interest in other people and their stories. Everyone has a story to tell if you have the curiosity to find it.
2. An empathy for your readers and an ability to see those stories through their eyes and to ask the questions they would like answered.
3. A way with words. It may sound obvious, but sometimes people who like the idea of meeting famous people, or sitting in the press box at a premiership football ground, can forget that there is no such thing as a free perk in journalism. If you really enjoy the process of writing about people you have met and events you have witnessed, then there’s every chance you will enjoy your life as a journalist. But you do have to write those stories and write them well.
4. Creativity and imagination. It may not always seem that way as deadlines loom, but one of the biggest privileges journalists enjoy is the opportunity to use their brains creatively. Lateral thinking is encouraged and journalists are lucky enough to see the products of their labours produced on a printed page or a television or computer screen, or to hear it broadcast on the radio.
5. A can-do approach to your work and life. The phrase, “That’s so not fair” is never heard, or at least never tolerated, in newsrooms. It’s more a case of when the going gets tough, the tough get going. When snow brought large parts of Britain to a halt this month, the journalists didn’t cower at home under their duvets, they made their way through the snow and ice to stand shivering and broadcasting by the side of motorway junctions so that millions of television viewers could find out what was going on.
6. Self-belief is also essential. If you genuinely think that you possess the first five traits, then you can realise your dreams if you have confidence and you believe in yourself.
Paradoxically, I once read that the trait a newsreader most admired in two of the BBC’s most senior reporters of the time was “insecurity”. What he meant was that they were perfectionists who were always worried their work would not be good enough. That ability to criticise yourself and your work and to strive to be better every day is essential, if you are to reach the top. Another reason senior reporters can be insecure is fear. They are afraid that a young reporter with more energy, drive and ambition will come along and steal their top-dog mantle. Who knows, that could be you?
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Tags: a can-do attitude, A way with words, Bournemouth journalism, creativity and imagination, empathy with readers, enjoy writing, interest in people, journalism at Bournemouth, journalism careers, Journalism courses, NCTJ, positive attitude, self-belief, Up To Speed Journalism, what makes a good journalist