psmith, journalist

Today I’m speaking to journalism students at Trinity and All Saints College in Leeds, where I graduated with a journalism degree a few years back. Here’s a flavour of what I’m telling them, with some links and media for anyone that decided to turn up in person…

It seems odd to be giving advice when I still feel that I’m starting out, but I suppose that’s never stopped me before, so here goes:

Get digital

Despite the digital revolution that is creating so much turmoil in the industry, storytelling, news sense and feature writing haven’t changed that much and essentially involve the same skills. But having a few digital journalism skills up your sleeve can help you stand out among the multitude of journalism graduates out there.

Very simple things can transform everyday stories into something more compelling and interesting. What about a bit of html editing – e.g. could you quickly embed a photo or video into a web page? Do you know how to customise a Google Map or collate huge amounts of data into a presentable package for online readers? Are we allowed to take that photo from the internet and use it? These are the kinds of things news organisations are grappling with every day and they’re looking for young journalists to tell them how to do it.

Why not learn video and audio recording and editing? Lots of software is free, the kit isn’t as expensive as you might think – as Adam Westbrook will tell you – and learning the discipline of broadcast story-telling and the technical aspects of editing are things that everyone can do. You can even use something like Audioboo, the iphone app which provides idiot-proof audio interviews with one button and the result is this:

On top of that, it’s worth considering what journalism is these days: increasingly, publishers are hiring people with news skills and knowledge of maintaining and growing online communities. Is that journalism? If it pays the bills and it’s a rewarding job, does it matter?

Tweet early, tweet often

Twitter probably isn’t the most important thing for journalists, plenty of award-winning hacks refuse to use it. But all I’ll say is that I’ve been commissioned because of it, I’ve made some great friends and it continues to inform and enrich almost everything I write. For example I asked people what I should tell TASC trainees and here’s just some of what they said:

Promote and sell yourself

How are you going to tell the world about what you can do? Do you have a website/blog? Freelance journalist Anne Wollenberg put it succinctly at a recent Frontline Club event on how to be a freelance (you can watch the whole event here, I would recommend it): if an editor wants to contact you, doesn’t have your contact details and can’t find you after five minutes searching online, they just won’t bother. Having a single page, like this, that sets out who you are, what you can do and what you’ve done is a big help. And that leads on to:

Find a niche

If you are lucky enough to get a job on a local or national paper, then you can afford to be a generalist – a jack of all trades covering everything that goes on in a town or a patch. But the reality is most people will struggle to find paid employment right away, especially as a standard “reporter” without a specialism. However, if you do know and care about a subject and can prove it you may find a lot more doors open to you.

For example, if you love videogames, why not write a blog about it? Showing some sort of passion and critical knowledge of the games landscape and the industry could help you pitch for an internship, some reviewing work and maybe even a job at the many games mags and online publications that are currently faring better than some other consumer sectors. Editors want to know: does this person really know the subject? Are they passionate about anything?

Do it yourself

Since you have all the tools at your disposal online, there’s nothing stopping journalists at any stage of their development to get online and start writing. If you fancy being a reporter and are interested in your local community, you could set up a blog or Ning-style community site that covers the area in detail – there’s a whole “hyperlocal” generation of sites that are covering communities, even individual postcodes, with more depth, scrutiny and collaboration than printed newspapers could ever match.

The Guardian now has three “beatbloggers” in Leeds, Edinburgh and Cardiff and journalism student Josh Halliday’s SR2 blog is a cracking example of local online journalism made on a budget. Talk About Local is a good place to start for advice if you’re interested in doing the same.

There are self-serve advertising services like Addiply that allow such sites to make money: journalists will have little choice but to become more entrepreneurial in the coming years, so it makes sense to understand the commercial side of online publishing now rather than later.

Broaden your horizons

I started out aiming to get a job on a local paper, but it didn’t happen. I ended up on a trade magazine, Press Gazette (to which I still contribute occasionally) and wrote about the comings and goings (mostly goings) of the regional and national press for two years.

There are a whole host of opportunities out there beyond the newspapers and magazines that you might read: there are countless B2B trade titles, in-flight magazines, not to mention travel sites, agencies, charities, NGOs and – dare I say it – PR firms, that can offer experience or paid work. After doing work experience at the Indy a friends of a friends recommended me for some shifts at a railway trade mag. I already had accepted a job at that point but I sometimes wonder what could have been…

Know your numbers: don’t be scared of the balance sheet

One thing that is always in demand is financial reporters. It’s good to get to know your EBITDA from your net profits and underlying profits from like-for-like profits (not the same thing; usually it’s the last one you’re interested in). Being able to decode a balance sheet and tell readers whether a company has made a profit or loss in under 15 minutes is a perennially useful and required skill. The financial news agency Bloomberg is – apart from a recessionary blip – always hiring in its London office; Reuters has a trainee scheme (you need two foreign languages, but hey) as does the FT. And in terms of impressing editors, to say you have sound economic and financial know-how is always a good card to play.

Just as an example, Andrew Gilligan won Journalist of the Year at the 2008 British Press Awards for his work on the London Evening Standard exposing Ken Livingstone’s dodgy and still mostly unexplained and unaccounted for payments to charity groups linked to his staff. He did this by mixture of good contacts, digging and looking up Companies House accounts from the comfort of his home office. “Follow the money” is indeed a good maxim to live by.

Work your contacts, keep in touch

Every single person you meet along the way might be someone that helps you out in future. If you make a good contact on a titles you want to work for, drop them a line now and then to ask how things are, maybe drop in a few story ideas, ask if there are any shifts going. I’m always surprised by how few people do this.

The key for freelancers is find out who the person to speak to is – in most cases when you’re starting it’s a waste of time to just email the editor speculatively; there’s usually a section or deputy editor that is more open to taking ideas.