The Early Career Guide is here
How to hone your organization, communication, and relationship building
I’ve had the privilege of working with many early career journalists throughout my career, from hiring entry-level reporters at Fortune to launching fellowship programs at Gannett. In my own experience and in talking with other managers, the most common complaints are not about journalism skills. They are about things like prioritization, time management, professional communication, relationship building, and receiving feedback.
Managers are more time constrained than ever, and mentoring and coaching can naturally take a back seat. I partnered with the Reynolds Journalism Institute to research and report a guide for entry level journalists to improve their workplace skills, nurture important relationships, and put their best foot forward for coveted assignments and promotions.
Some of our findings:
The top skill that managers wanted their entry level journalists to work on was being resourceful. More than 70% of respondents said that being more resourceful and proactive problem solving was lacking in the early career journalists in their newsroom.
Editors said that early career journalists were skilled in more concrete areas such as creating meeting agendas and understanding who to include on emails than task prioritization, project management, and articulating how new ideas ladder up to the organization’s greater mission.
Managers connected accepting edits and taking feedback well to emotional maturity and professional communication.
The guide covers non-journalism workplace skills like prioritization, time management, professional communication, relationship building, and how to receive feedback. Each section contains actionable advice that you can put into practice right away, along with links to some resources for those who want to dive in deeper.
This guide was informed by a survey of newsroom managers, interviews with journalists and editors, and research from leading workplace institutions. The survey collected insights from 58 editors across the United States working in digital, newspaper, magazine, television, and radio newsrooms who oversee and/or work with early career journalists. Major thanks to the editors and early career journalists who reviewed the guide and provided invaluable feedback.
I’ll be speaking at the Public Media Journalists Association conference in June to dive into the guide more deeply IRL.
Please share widely, and reach out with feedback.
What I’m reading
Buzzfeed’s Anti-SNARF Manifesto
Feed Me: Brands are starting to launch personality-driven Substacks
The Wall Street Journal: How Flunking a Personality Test Can Cost You Your Dream Job
For The Record: Explaining the news on Instagram in the Trump era
Nieman Lab: If you ask New York Times reporters to spend less time on Twitter, will they?
The best thing I made this week
I made this avocado corn salad for the first time while sharing a beach house with friends last week.
See you next week,
Rachel
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