How Do You Become a Journalist?

Video Transcript

"I'm Bruce Edwards and I'm the business reporter for the Rutland Herald, and I've been doing this job pretty much strictly business reporting and or editing, actually for nearly twenty years, and I guess that the best way to become a journalist is to have interest in journalism, and that means writing. And I developed, I can share my personal story with you, I had an interest in writing journalism at a, at a fairly young age. I thought I wanted to become a journalist because I was going to be one of these crusading reporters, and in some respects I've been able to fulfill that, that goal. But I had an interest in writing, not so much fiction, but I enjoyed writing non-fiction, I enjoyed mystery. And pretty much, though English can be a boring subject for a lot of people, I, I pretty much excelled at that as well. Now Math and Science I didn't do very well at, so I was kind of limited in terms of, kind of limited in terms of, of my interests. And one of the things I did when, when I got to college, though I didn't do it in high school, they didn't write, a good thing to do if I can just back up, is if you're in high school, every high school, just about every high school has a newspaper, sometimes they have a poetry journal or a quarterly, or something like that. You can get some writing experience doing that. And in college, certainly I think just about every college, again, has some kind of, of newspaper. Many of the larger universities, actually, like the university of Missouri, has a, has a newspaper, publishes a newspaper on a daily basis. So, if I had one suggestion, is if you're really interested in journalism, once, at least once you get to college, and I would recommend going to college to presue a career in journalism. Not necessarily do you have to major in journalism, but that's not a bad idea, but once you get to college, you know, freshmen year, certainly by your sophmore year, volunteer for the school newspaper and any other perhaps quarterly publications they may have, and that's a great way to get experience. Not, I'll also tell you my own personal story, I didn't do that, you know, I was a history major in college, and minored in English and Sociology. So I didn't go to journalism school, but I did again, I had, I had a real interest in history and current affairs, and that, if you don't major in journalism, if you don't go to journalism school, and some of the major universities, such as Syracuse University, University of Missouri, Madill School at, at Northwestern are excellent journalism schools, and they're, they're are plenty of others out there. But if you don't major in journalism, if you don't go to journalism school, certainly a liberal arts background, a real interest in history and current affairs, you can't go wrong with that."