10 Things Every Journalism Student Should be Doing

As a journalism student, waiting till you graduate to start doing something about your career. Truth is your career starts while you’re still in school working towards getting your qualification. Take initiative and get your career going. This way you’ll be killing two birds with one stone. Gaining experience and getting that degree. Read the list below, get informed and put it all into action. Good luck!!

1. Learn the basics of writing

Learn how to write a news story following the inverted triangle method. That means, knowing that every story must answer these six essential questions about the event you are reporting on known as the 5W’s and 1H.
Who?

What?

When?

Where?

Why?

How?

2. Develop a beat or specialism

No more generalising. To offer value and material that people are prepared to pay for, you need to become an expert in a particular field – to cover what we call a beat, or specialism. That might be movies, music or fashion. It could be health, education or politics. Maybe you have no idea what specialism to choose. If so, just pick a subject – ideally something you are passionate about – and make covering that area your way of learning to be a good journalist.

3. Begin to develop your personal brand

There has been a fundamental shift in the way journalists establish themselves as reliable, authoritative reporters and commentators. Develop a personal writing style.

4. Create a fully-professional presences for your journalism using social media platforms

Social media are an essential tool for the journalist. They are where you find stories, research them, and promote them with the use of links on Twitter, status updates on Facebook, and so on. So you need to have a presence across social media that presents you as a serious journalist, one with knowledge, authority and experience.
Given that, would you be happy for a potential employer, a contact or a consumer of your journalism to see your Facebook page? If not, you may need to separate your personal social media presences from your professional ones.

5. Use social media as your specialism

Make sure that everything you report on, talk about, or link to on your professional social media platforms presents you as a journalist specialising in a particular beat or area.
Your tweets and status updates should be designed to inform readers about your area of expertise, and you should retweet and like content from others that is within that field of expertise.Follow the accounts of those who share your specialism, or who are knowledgeable about it or interested in it.

6. Create a blog or website that reflects your beat or specialism

Get reporting. It’s easy to build a publishing platform on WordPress, Blogger or one of the other free blogging/web-publishing platforms. Use the platform to write about your chosen beat or specialism. Tweet about what you write, publish status updates about it, and get the word out.

7. Use your smartphone for live and multimedia reporting

Your phone is a powerful reporting tool and with it you can report live on events as they unfold. Platforms such as WordPress and Blogger allow you to file to your site from your phone. So you can be writing text reports as things happen, and also tweet them.

But you are not restricted to text reporting. Live video broadcasting apps such as Bambuser, Qik, UStream and others let you broadcast live video from anywhere. And embedding the relevant player on your blog or website allows anyone to view what you are reporting on. An audio app such as Audioboo lets you do the same with sound.

8. Get something published

You need by-lines on published articles before commissioning editors will take you seriously. But it’s virtually impossible to get opportunities that will win you by-lines unless you already have a track record of published articles. Pitch to your local news paper or write for the on campus publication.

9. Volunteer or Intern

Get as much work experience as you can. Sometimes this will turn into paid work, often it won’t. But it’s a start. Take anything you can get, start from the bottom and work your way up.

10. Contacts, contacts, contacts.

Connect with people via Twitter, engage online and get your name known within the subject area you’re interested in. It’s never been easier to do this so take advantage of social networking.