Beyond fact-checking, interviews, proof-reads and contacts book, a journalist is expected to be on the edge of their culture. This could involve staying on top of political, financial and social developments, or researching celebrity and human interest stories. No two days for a journalist are ever the same. Finding the best material for a story could mean attending a press conference, holding an interview over the phone, trawling through professional contacts, or hammering out paragraphs.
The story comes first, and journalists do whatever it takes to make it accurate and thought-provoking. Read an interview with Alyson Lowe, Digital Journalist. The average journalist might get to work fairly early, perhaps around the 8am mark.
Broadcast journalists, often moments away from addressing a camera, have to be especially composed to deliver the goods at any time. In any case, office-based work usually ends around 5. You must not be careless with them. All journalists must aim for accuracy. Without it you will lose trust, readers and ultimately your job.
The best way of ensuring accuracy is to develop a system of ordering facts in your mind. You should always have a notebook handy to record facts and comments, but your mind is the main tool. Keep it orderly. You should also keep it alert. Never stop thinking - and use your imagination. This is not to say you should make things up: that is never permissible. But you should use your imagination to build up a mental picture of what people tell you.
You must visualise the story. If you take care in structuring that picture and do not let go until it is clear, you will have ordered your facts in such a way that they can be easily retrieved when the time comes to write your story.
With plenty of experience and practice, you will develop a special awareness of what makes news. Sometimes called news sense, it is the ability to recognise information which will interest your audience or which provides clues to other stories. It is also the ability to sort through a mass of facts and opinions, recognising which are most important or interesting to your audience. For example, a young reporter was sent to cover the wedding of a government minister.
When he returned to the office, his chief of staff asked him for the story. The young reporter had not thought about the relative importance of all the facts in this incident; he had no news sense. People will give you information for all sorts of reasons, some justified, others not. You must be able to recognise occasions when people are not telling the truth. Sometimes people do it unknowingly, but you will still mislead your readers or listeners if you report them, whatever their motives.
You must develop the ability to recognise when you are being given false information. If you suspect you are being given inaccurate information or being told deliberate lies, do not let the matter rest there. Ask your informant more questions so that you can either satisfy yourself that the information is accurate or reveal the information for the lie that it is. Some people call it aggressiveness, but we prefer the word determination. It is the ability to go out, find a story and hang on to it until you are satisfied you have it in full.
Be like a dog with a bone - do not let go until you have got all the meat off, even if people try to pull it out of your mouth. This means you often have to ask hard questions and risk upsetting people who do not want to co-operate. It may be painful but in the end you will gain their respect.
So always be polite, however rude people may be. The rule is simple: be polite but persistent. While you are hunting for your story, you may drive it away by being too aggressive.
Sometimes you may have to approach a story with caution and cunning, until you are sure you have hold of it. Then you can start to chew on it.
You need to be able to get on well with all sorts of people. You cannot pick and choose who to interview in the same way as you choose who to have as a friend. You must be friendly to all, even those people you dislike. You can, of course, be friendly to someone without being their friend. If you are friendly to everyone, you will also be fair with everyone. This is a quality admired in any profession, but is especially valued in journalism where both your employer and your audience rely on you to do your job.
If you are sent on an interview but fail to turn up you offend a number of people: the person who is waiting to be interviewed; your editor who is waiting to put the interview in his paper or program; your readers, listeners or viewers, who are robbed of news. Even if you are late for an appointment, you will upset the schedules of both your interviewee and your newsroom and risk being refused next time you want a story.
In a busy news organisation, punctuality is a necessity. Without it there would be chaos. There are many reason for becoming a journalist and many type of journalists to become. It is a career with many challenges and rewards.
Journalists must:. Have an interest in the world around them. Love language. Have an alert and ordered mind. Be able to approach and question people. Interviews and assessment centres. Skills and competencies. Fun, prospects or money: what are you looking for?
Filling a coronavirus-shaped gap on your CV. Get inspired. This traditional question can be asked in an interview across any profession or industry. Good self-knowledge combined with good employer research will help you to answer it.
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