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When you get your first job as a journalist, do not expect to make much money. I have already told you about my first job. Although I stayed with the paper after graduation and was brought into the office as a full time employee, I still wasn’t making much money. I found out that everyone in the news room was in the same boat. Journalism, at least on the smaller scale levels, does not pay very well.

Online journalism is the way of the future and needs to be acknowledged by anyone who is seriously considering pursuing a career in this field. Many traditional newspapers are having a hard time maintaining their circulation due to the fact that people can get their news right on the internet, and much quicker than they could if they waited for the latest edition of the paper. We are gradually moving towards the internet for the latest news and the traditional newspapers are being left in the dust.

After you have achieved your BA in journalism, you may want to consider furthering your education. You can choose to embark on getting a post graduate degree and get a Master’s Degree in Arts if you want to open up more doors for yourself. These days, a Bachelor’s Degree is like a high school diploma used to be 20 years ago. If you want to go far in any career field, you should consider getting a post graduate degree in that field, including journalism.

A copy editor goes over your work, corrects style errors and also makes sure there are no grammatical errors or spelling. In some cases, especially when you are first starting out, the copy editor will rewrite certain parts of your story. They will make sure that the article makes sense and conforms with the media for which it is written.

Many papers today are asking writers to do their own copy editing. This is the same when it comes to some online venues. As news and entertainment media are trying to trim their budgets, many are cutting out copy editing as much as possible.

Style allows for all writing to be consistent. There are two main style guides that most papers use. They are the Associated Press Style Guide and the Chicago Style Guide. They have to do with using commas, what to capitalize, writing out numbers and other matters of form. It is desirable for any media to use the same style as it makes everything more consistent and easier to read. Here is an example of poor style:

On Friday, April 23, 2008, John Smith stole 12 oranges from Gallo’s Supermarket. Smith was arrested and detained on three charges for stealing the twelve oranges. In addition to oranges, Smith also stole apples, tomatoes, and pears.

Earlier, we talked about a portfolio and how important it is to have one. Your education will not get you in the door unless you have some experience to back it up. Fortunately, there are ways we discussed that will enable you to write even if you do not have your degree and get your name out there.

There are two ways to build a portfolio of your writing samples and you should use both of them if you are gong to look for jobs in journalism. Just like a resume, the portfolio needs to be updated often. You never know when you are going to need to look for a job, so it makes sense to have a resume and portfolio ready to go.

Earlier, I talked about the rules of journalism. That your stories need to be timely. That they have to be fact checked. That they have to be unbiased. Other rules are not to fall in love with your own work and, of course, to always quote your sources. At one time or another, I broke all of these rules. I’m going to give you examples of the rules, how I broke them and what should be done in the same situation.

So, you made up your mind to be a journalist and enrolled in school – congratulations! That is the first step towards carving out a career for yourself in the world of journalism. But do not think that you are going to walk out of college and land the dream job of working for a travel magazine and taking exotic trips. It doesn’t work that way. Before anyone will hire you full time, you are going to need experience. This is just the same thing as any other college graduate who finds it difficult to land a job without experience. This is why students often intern while in college – to gain experience. The good news about a career in journalism is that you internship can pay.

If you are serious about becoming a journalist, then you need to go to school so that you can get a job in this field. Newspapers and online venues are looking for those who have a four year liberal arts degree in journalism. If you plan to get a job in the field, you need an education. While you can get some jobs reporting for local papers without a degree, you will never move up in the world unless you have that piece of sheepskin that says that you went to college to study journalism – no matter how talented you are as a writer.

A Beginner’s Guide To Becoming a Journalist

By John Abbott

Article 1 – What Is A Journalist?

A great many people who want to be writers say that they want to have a career in journalism. They may envision themselves going to exotic locales to cover stories or winning a Pulitzer prize. While these things do happen to journalists, it takes a long time to make your bones before you are sent on any interesting assignments.