At an event in London late last year, three young journalists discussed how blogging helped to kickstart their careers. As reported at the time by Journalism.co.uk, Guardian technology and media reporter Josh Halliday stated that “The most important thing I did at university, including my degree, was to blog and get online. That’s what got me the job.”
The growing list of student bloggers who have found their way into good ‘pro’ jobs also includesHannah Waldram, who founded the Bournville Village blog, ended up taking to professional local blogging as the Cardiff ‘beatblogger‘ for The Guardian’s now mothballed Local project before becoming a community coordinator for the same newspaper, and Dave Lee, who founded The Linc newspaper and website in his university town of Lincoln before moving on to a varied career that currently sees him covering technology news for the BBC.
So, is blogging the perfect way for student journalists to get a foot on the ladder? Paul Bradshaw, leader of the MA Journalism course at Birmingham City University and Visiting Professor at City University London in the UK, believes so. “It’s definitely something I’ve been encouraging my students to do for a few years now,” he says.
“I think students entering the marketplace who have never run their own news website are at an increasing disadvantage,” explains Bradshaw. “Pretty much every employer I talk to says that they would ask serious questions about why an applicant was not already doing their journalism on some sort of online platform. There’s also a new opportunity for students to build assets – a URL, a network, a reputation – that employers will be looking for.”
The ability for anyone to set up a blog in minutes, at no cost, makes it a no-brainer that someone wanting to find paid work as a journalist would want to cut their teeth with some form of news blogging.
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