Types of journalism career

 

1. Intro

There are three basic types of journalism careers.

The first is the traditional newspaper-type career. The second is network journalism. The third is opinion journalism, which is becoming a rising star (it used to be a dying industry).

For those who have no interest in the traditional newspaper-type career, that’s all good news. For those who have an interest in network-type journalism, that’s also good news. But for the rest of us, the rest of us who want to get into one or more of these three pillars of journalism, we need some sort of guidance on how to navigate between these three options.

2. Different Types of Journalism

There are a couple of common misperceptions about journalism. One is that it is a profession that requires no time investment, and where you can just work 10-hour days and still make enough money to pay your bills. This is the kind of job that attracts those who have little or no interest in the actual process of doing journalism: they just want to do it and they don’t care how much time they spend on it.

The second is, more typically, that it is just a job for people who like to write as opposed to people who have an interest in doing it. It’s not anything deep or special about them — if you can get along with your editors, you can make a go of things — but when you think about the difference between different types of journalism:

• Journalism is a craft, or something learned from experience

• Journalism is a way of working (the discipline itself)

The first seems true for all forms of writing. The second seems at least somewhat true for some forms of writing, but not others. You could argue that “journalism” as we use the term today isn’t really journalism at all; it’s something different: “a craft, or something learned from experience”. But this very strong statement begs the question: what does “something learned from experience” mean? What makes it different? Is there some sort of unifying principle here (that we can capture here), or are we going to argue over small differences?

And then there are those who claim that you need lots and lots and lots and lots of experience before being able to be productive in any meaningful way. Yeah right… In fact I think most people would agree with me that there is no such thing as “production-quality writing” today: everyone has their own idea about what makes good writing, but almost nobody has any real expertise in how to produce this kind of writing — if you want an example: for all our talk about “production quality writing” there are very few people who actually produce this sort of thing any more than we produce business copy (to take a recent example). And even less than most business copywriters do on average; but still… There should be some sort of minimum level for competence within each form of journalism (especially given how much research goes into education).

And beyond that level lies what I call The

3. Benefits of a Journalism Career

I’ve tried to quantify the value of a journalism career in two different ways. I’ve talked about the value of a career over a lifetime in general, and I’ve looked at the value of being a reporter or editor in one specific business context: information-technology (IT) journalism.

The latter topic is particularly relevant because the industry is changing so fast these days that it’s hard to predict what will happen. It’s also important to realize that there are different types of journalism careers, and that these types vary both in benefits and costs.

I think it would be useful for you to know about them, for two reasons:

• One reason is that you might have heard about some of these careers and been curious about what they are like. The other reason is that you might want to explore them further or learn more about them.

• Values related to these careers can be very different from each other — especially if they go beyond traditional reporting and editing duties (which make up the bulk of most jobs). One career can be highly motivated by non-traditional values, while another may be more focused on traditional values like moneymaking and revenue projections.

Don’t let any of this stop you from exploring journalism careers; but make sure you have the resources (money!) to do so successfully long enough for it all to matter — or at least until you feel like there isn’t much left to gain from pursuing one.

In this post I cover several different types of journalist careers: business reporters; investigative journalists; tech reporters; sports reporters; investigative journalists/reporters/investigative editors; feature writers/columnists; photojournalists/photographers; national reporters; international reporters/reporters/reporters/investigative editors; human resources journalists; philanthropic journalists (and more); freelancers and contract workers. And I include four key rules for making a successful journalistic career work for you: •• Find out exactly what you want out of your working life and how much money matters to getting it accomplished •• Make sure your work fits into whatever business model suits your needs •• Look at what motivates people who do certain kinds of work — find out why they do it •• Don't ask your boss questions unless he or she knows the answers first! You'll also find a brief discussion on how our culture has changed over time with regards to news writing as

4. How to Become a Journalist

I’ve always had a soft spot for journalism. I think it is one of the most important professions out there. You can do a lot with a shovel (or a pen, or even a couch). But even with those tools, you have to have great reporting skills and be able to tell compelling stories.

It’s that simple! Journalism isn’t just about the content of the paper; it’s also about how you present yourself and your work to your readers in order to get them engaged enough so they will want to help you out (and not just because they are paid). It is also about how you maintain relationships with people outside of journalism and even within journalism.

I recently did an online live chat with my good friend Patrick Wilson, founder of Quip , who is now available as an ebook on your Kindle devices. It was my pleasure to interview him on his new book: The Art of Emailing: A Guide for Successful Online Conversations . Here are some highlights from our conversation:

5. Other Options for Young Journalists

Many young journalists aspire to be writers. They want to be able to tell their stories from the point of view of the people in them. But sometimes when you’re a writer, you write for someone else.

You might work for a news organization, putting out your stories — or you might work at a digital news site, making original content — but you may also end up working for an entertainment company that just wants to make money on the back of your talent and opinions. In other words, it’s not always clear which kind of reporter you are:

An entertainment journalist is someone like a “gossip columnist” who writes about celebrities and sex lives. That kind of journalist writes exclusively about stars and uses gossip as a hook to get access to them. When they write about these people (and they almost always do), they are more likely to use sensationalism or gossip to spice up their stories than any sort of fact-finding or impartial writing.

A “journalist” who writes exclusively about politics is writing from a position where facts aren’t important. Instead, she uses her knowledge of policy and research as well as her personal experience with politicians and political ideas, to craft her story around what she assumes will be popular opinion among her readership.

So why do so many young journalists want to work as entertainment journalists? Because if you want to do it long term, there is no better career choice than that! And because it pays far better than being a journalism student (at least if you plan on staying in journalism).

6. Conclusion

I’ve been in journalism for over a decade now, so this is probably more of a personal question than anything else. I’ve been asking myself this question for quite some time: What type of journalism career do I want to pursue?

I’m sure there are few people who can answer this question directly. Most people can only speculate, and generally, they don’t have very good answers. But there are a few ways to get around the problem as they usually come up: 1) You could cycle through various careers and try them out, but you will never be able to be fully satisfied with any one of them; 2) You could find your passion and go into it full-time, but that is a very large investment of time and energy that you will not get back; or 3) You could go the route described above, which is what I chose to do.

Let me give my own two cents on the topic:

I believe that everyone should strive for one career path or another — including writers — because every profession has its pros and cons — mass media is no exception — and it was my own personal choice between two different careers as an editor/writer that I eventually chose to become one (the first was technical editing / writing at Redhat, then moving on to write technical articles at Linux Journal).

But if you are someone who genuinely enjoys doing multiple things in life (and usually prefer doing more than one thing at once), you probably won’t find yourself wanting more than one career path. That’s fine too; just know that every career path has its pros and cons. And know that it doesn’t matter what you have chosen right now; it will all change by maturity.