Today, amid much pomp and circumstance, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism minted its newest crop of alums.
It hasn’t been an easy few years for journalism, but these graduates, along with colleagues from countless other journalism programs, step into a media job market where the darkest clouds seem to have parted, and where it’s perhaps a bit easier to see the industry’s paroxysms as opportunities, not trials.
And so we ask you to offer them your thoughts. What advice that wasn’t likely imparted via formal education do you have for young and not-so-young people embarking on a career in journalism this spring? And what habits do you reckon they may have picked-up in school that would be best unlearned?
Watch everyting. Listen to everyone. Believe nothing -- especially if it comes from within your media organization.
Make peace (if not friends) with math. I was shocked to realize the most useful courses from college were during my "wasted year" as an accounting major. Take a community college course in double-entry bookkeeping and another in basic statistics. Learn your way around spreadsheets and databases. Math literacy is useful to truth-tellers in two big ways: 1) You will find ways to anchor your stories with lives saved or dollars wasted. 2) A head for numbers produces a nose for bullshit.
Write from your heart, but use your head.
Don't sleep with a source. Colleagues are OK, but keep to sub-Casanova levels. Journalists do gossip, after all.
#1 Posted by Ex-Hack, CJR on Wed 19 May 2010 at 04:56 PM
Ex-Hack,
Thanks much for the point about math. The innumeracy--and indifference about innumeracy--in the field, especially among non-specialists, can be crazy. This Regret the Error piece from last fall explains why in more detail:
http://www.cjr.org/regret_the_error/sorry_wrong_number.php
The advice on whom (not) to sleep with sounds on point, too.
#2 Posted by greg marx, CJR on Wed 19 May 2010 at 07:12 PM
Commit to a digital Rolodex:
Make a spreadsheet of everyone you know and their contact information. Organize along personal, professional and academic lines.
Add sources to spreadsheet as you go along.
Refer to spreadsheet early and often.
#3 Posted by Kevin, CJR on Thu 20 May 2010 at 02:32 PM
If you are covering economics and Wall Street, read everything by John Brooks and nothing by Charles Gasparino. Stay away from the fugitives from The Weather Channel on CNBC.
#4 Posted by Mike Robbins, CJR on Thu 20 May 2010 at 08:11 PM
write what you hear, paint what you see.
#5 Posted by Chris Rohde, CJR on Tue 25 May 2010 at 04:23 PM
Review the literature on the difference between a news story and a PR piece
Dhanraj Bhagwandin
#6 Posted by Dhanraj Bhagwandin, CJR on Wed 26 May 2010 at 12:02 PM
Review the literature on the difference between a news story and a PR piece
Dhanraj Bhagwandin
#7 Posted by Dhanraj Bhagwandin, CJR on Wed 26 May 2010 at 12:04 PM