Every working journalist can remember it: the first time they saw their own name at the top of an article.
Maybe you’ve done some reporting already. Maybe you want to be a reporter, but don’t know how to break in. Either way, you are wondering how to get that first job and break into the industry.
There are lots of different pathways. Freelancing. Internships. Fellowships. Social media. Starting your own thing. Becoming a newsroom assistant. We’ll be discussing them all, plus some things you may not have thought of.
We’ve gathered advice from reporters and editors who work at daily newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Newsday, The Miami Herald, The Dallas Morning News, The Los Angeles Times, The Arizona Republic, The Independent, The Houston Chronicle, The Denver Post, The Seattle Times, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Sacramento Bee, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Biloxi Sun Herald, Deseret News, The Lehigh Valley News and The Syracuse Post-Standard; magazines such as The Atlantic, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, ELLE, Fortune, Wired, New York, SELF, No Depression, Scientific American, Mother Jones, The New Republic, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, Teen Vogue, Inc., Billboard, Smithsonian, Scientific American, and The Atavist; wire services such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News and Agence France-Presse, broadcast outlets such as NPR, CNN, NBC News, ABC News, “PBS NewsHour,” KVUE and KPBS and shows such as “60 Minutes;” online news sites such as Politico, Politico Europe, Slate, Axios, Bustle, Wonkette, Digiday, Morning Brew, The Daily Beast, Business Insider, HuffPost, Vox, Puck, Vice News, The Verge, The Information, LitHub, Apple News, The Cut, Puck, Yahoo News, The Hill, The Bulwark, Polygon, EdScoop, Cardinal & Pine, The Messenger, THE CITY, Defector, U.S. News and NOTUS; niche news sites like Law360, Bisnow, KFF Health News, Grist, Science News, E&E News, Crain’s Chicago Business, Gulf States Newsroom, MLex Market Insight, TechCrunch, Boston Business Journal, Heatmap News, New York Amsterdam News, Bolts, USNI News and FreightWaves; local news sites such as LAist, San Antonio Report, BridgeDetroit, Brookline.News, the North Star Reporter, Honolulu Civil Beat, Iowa Starting Line, West Virginia Watch, Votebeat and Technical.ly; freelance reporters; and the founders of The 19th News, Dirt Media, the Heated newsletter, Floodlight, The Dig, The Counteroffensive, Political Wire, Discourse Blog, User Mag, The Present Age, Central Desi, The Freelance Writing Network, Bleeding Heartland, The Gallery Pass and Wake Up to Politics.
The goal here is to help you crack the code, to give you the advice you need to get a job in journalism — and your first byline.
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