“Fake news is cheap to produce. Genuine journalism is expensive,” said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, an Estonian politician who served as the fourth president of Estonia from 2006 until 2016.
Journalism has been one of the leading career options for modern-day media and entertainment. With the huge rise of new channels and online media platforms, more and more people are trying their luck in starting their careers as a journalist. As most of us are completely rely on media channels and online platforms to get information about the news and events around the world.
Steve Ladurantaye is a successful journalist and writer who writes about media and many other things. Steve Ladurantaye was offered a job as the head of news and current affairs (editor-in-chief) at STV from October 2018 to October 2020. Just like all other broadcasters, STV News was undergoing a massive change.
Here are five essential skills for a journalist:
Knowledge of journalism:
Well, the most common thing to succeed in any field or industry sector is to have good knowledge and understanding about the relevant sector. The same goes for journalism. You must gain solid journalism knowledge to understand the realms of journalism and online media to enter the field of professional. This requires a deep knowledge of both the theory and practical aspects of journalism.
Communication:
Effective communication is necessary to succeed in the career of journalists, as it helps them to connect the audience more deeply and able to make their points more clear. Effective communication is important if you want to enter the role of journalism such as anchor, voiceover artist, and press reporter. The career of journalism requires a lot of writing, editing, research, and development of scripts.
Digital literacy:
Well, it has been visible how the world is completely driven towards digital technology and it’s also clear how journalists are taking full advantage of the various social media platforms, websites, online apps, smartphones, and different other broadcast mediums. Digital literacy will be the future of the world and as more audience is shifting towards broadcast journalism, a journalist needs to focus on digital literacy to use this platform for storytelling and to show visual content.
Grasping power:
Journalists need to have a better grasping power to stay effective in their role and to gain new information about their career options. Broadcast journalists are believed to be quick learners and can able to help their audience understand more hectic information with ease.
Research and attention to detail:
Journalism is all about research work and attention to detail. A news report is believed to have a sense of credibility that can only happen with complete research work. Journalists need to do a complete breakdown of the topic that they are going to present so that they can able to help their audience understand the main issue and reason.