How to Become a Journalist

Video Transcript

"I'm Bruce Edwards and I'm the business reporter for the Rutland Herald. I've been doing it for about 20 years pretty much doing that for 20 years and doing some other reporting as well. I think that if you are finding or you are looking for a job in journalism, my first job was actually in radio journalism. I actually got started as a disc jockey because I enjoyed radio and people said I had a good voice so I got into radio first and then I got into doing news and public affairs interviews talk show. Then I got an offer to work for the Rutland Herald. I like my broadcast news and there was an opening here at The Herald and so I went form radio to newspaper to print which is a little bit different. Finding a job can be a little bit discouraging, any job and jobs in journalism ebb and flow sometimes there are more jobs than others in this business. But I, you know, send out resumes, I guess I'm trying to think of something creative but actually you have to pound the pavement kind of or throw a lot of resumes in the mailbox. You'll get back a lot of rejections because there are just so many jobs for X number of people but don't get discouraged. There are jobs out there in journalism in various forms. It is not just newspapers. There are magazines and periodicals, quarterlies, etc. and some weekly newspapers as well so if you have the determination to pursue a career in journalism there is a job out there for you. The idea is to get your foot in the door, literally, get your foot in the door and get that first job and then you can go from there and get a wealth of experience. You know when I started there wasn't any on line resume business at all. There wasn't any careers.com or monster.com or any of that. It makes it easier today in some respects to file your resume and cover letter whatever additional information on line and another way to find journalism jobs is there is a number of journalism publications on line as well. There is Columbia Journalism Review. There is Editor and Publisher and those are good sources in the back of the magazine. Help wanted ads. I wouldn't suggest looking, and sometimes even newspapers when they advertise for or they are looking for reports will have help wanted ads in their own newspaper but that is kind of really narrow. I would suggest going on line and searching monster.com or some more journalism specific publications."