Journalist skills for your resume and career

Anyone who wants to do journalism professionally has to be able to talk with people, all sorts of people. They have to be a self-starter; someone who sees an idea and will go after it immediately. And they need to network, even while they are still in college. Follow the journalists you would like to emulate on Twitter. Reach out to them and tell them who you are. And anytime someone from the journalism industry comes to campus, go to their events and talk with them if possible.

Journalism graduates need to know how to shoot and edit videos. It doesn’t matter if they’re going to work at a newspaper or a website or a TV station. They need to be able to shoot and edit videos and do it well. We live in a visual world now, and those are skills every journalist needs.

No one location is better than the rest. The wider the graduates cast their nets, the luckier they will be in landing a job.

Being able to adapt, on the fly, to get the story is, and always has been, essential in journalism. Today, however, journalists and media professionals require a wider repertoire and more flexibility than ever. Face-to-face interviews vs. virtual video interviews, for example, warrant different technique and technology considerations, including necessary equipment, set-up, and/or networking capabilities. Graduating professionals will ideally have experience creating high-quality audio, photography, and video stories using various professional production equipment. They should be able to comfortably work both behind and in front of the camera, photographing, recording, reporting, and writing in AP Style.

Not to be discounted, a crucial skill is knowing how to professionally edit and master media and then, deliver it remotely, at a moment's notice, for various mediums spanning online, broadcast, and/or print distribution. It's essential for journalists to possess the drive and the motivation to work alone, or in a very small team, as self-sufficient producers, in a profession that, now, more than ever, prioritizes the work of 'one-man-band' backpack journalists who are less expensive and more efficient.