The profession of journalism is much more prosaic than sublime poetry. Journalism is not a very creative occupation, not always grateful and often poorly paid.
You shouldn’t have too many ambitious hopes in your heart: a journalist and a writer are completely different professions. The fruits of their labor are fundamentally different. A journalist is tasked with bringing to light not a novel, not a play, not an essay, not even a long and boring opus from the series “reflections at the front door” – by the way, this is the most popular genre among novice authors.
Journalistic articles are, first and foremost, competently, interestingly and easily accessible information. The article should be interesting to the reader, not just to the author – novice journalists are often discouraged when they are asked to write in a way that is “understandable to everyone.” They need to produce articles in a conveyor belt mode, squeezing more and more “non-banal” events and endings out of their brains. The obsessive need to write can eventually become a reason for hatred of the blank page and the printed word, or it can develop into a chronic illness, when everything that happens around you is perceived as an informational reason for another article.
If you are fascinated by the examples of great publicists of the past and present, make allowances for the fact that you will most likely have to do something completely different. The demand for Belinskys is not high today. Mostly specialists of other profiles are needed. The most popular are young investigators who are able to regularly get sensations for their publication or unearth deeply buried secrets. If there is no sensation, they need to invent one. Such professionals are called “muckrakers,” and they will always find a use for their talent.
Don’t be in a hurry to smile dismissively: if you want to make a living in journalism, you will have to do the same thing every day. The main concern of a correspondent is to “sell” information by showing the product in person, and for this you need to find the “bomb” in any event. Every day you will discover Americas in places where these Americas are not provided for by nature at all.
Journalism is a lifelong business trip. From now on, you will be woken up by your boss’s nightly calls, urgent matters and emergency trips, and you will have nightmares about giving up your room. You will be in the very center of the bustling press industry, which every time, because of any minor flaw, tries to fall and bury you under the rubble.
However, you should not expect public recognition for such a phenomenal sacrifice. The vast majority of people, from the accounting department in your own newsroom to those comrades you will tell the world about in your own articles, will treat you ironically, or even meet you with hostility. Journalists are not liked in our society. Lies, lack of education, illicit earnings, belonging to the “rotten bohemia” are the things they are accused of. And very few people are willing to accept on faith that you are not such a person, but, on the contrary, an educated and principled professional.
In short, journalism is a hell of a job. Looking at the crowds of young men and women scurrying through the corridors of, for example, a journalism faculty, it is difficult to understand where in the world there are so many workaholics who are ready to exchange their peace of mind for a gambling race with obstacles at any moment. However, those of them who eventually start working in their specialty would never trade their restless profession for anything else. It is like a special disease: communication with people and an active lifestyle can replace sleep and rest for a journalist.