How to Become a Radio News Writer

Ever wonder who writes all the news that radio newscasters talk about? Depending on the size of the radio station, it may be a radio news writer. Becoming a radio news writer takes talent, dedication, and above all, speed.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Journalism degree
• Writing talent
• Perseverance

1. Get a degree in journalism, preferably broadcast journalism. Print journalists often find it hard to conver their writing style to the shorter, faster, tighter style needed in radio news.
2. Practice radio news writing. Get a hold of longer newspaper articles, wire stories and other news sources, and try to type short, tight, interesting versions of those news stories using six lines or less. Work on speed and accuracy, as news readers can trip over typos and overly-intricate sentence structure.
3. Find radio stations that use newswriters. The larger, network-owned stations often use news writers, as do all-news and news-sports stations.
4. Apply for part time or per diem news writing jobs. Radio stations rarely hire new graduates right off the bat as full time news writers.
5. When full time openings come up, let management know you are interested in them.
6. Be prepared to join a union. Many radio network news writers are members of the Writers Guild of America as a requirement of the job.

Tips & Warnings

• Radio news is short, tight and fast. If you can't type out 15 news stories of six lines each in under an hour, than this is not the job for you.

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