by Audrey Levine

Created on: January 05, 2010

     Experience, experience, experience. It's really the only way to fully prepare for a career in print journalism while in college. Yes, it's absolutely important to attend a school with a strong journalism program, attend classes and learn the basics of writing for a newspaper and covering meetings, events and other important news, but the only way to truly understand how the newspaper business works is to live it.

     I was a journalism major at The College of New Jersey, and, while there, I took classes in media law, ethics, news writing, production, feature writing, all these courses which taught me a lot about the basics of writing and gave me an understanding of the media industry itself. But the one part of the program that the college, and all my professors, emphasized beyond all the classes was getting the experience of actually writing professionally. In my journalism introduction class, the professor actually required all students to do an "internship" with the college newspaper, meaning we were required to write two articles in either the news, sports or feature sections, so long as interviews were required and we were able to remain completely objective on the topics. This was our first foray into dealing with actual officials and conducting real interviews.

     But outside of the classes, I made sure to get to take as many opportunities as possible to write and write some more. In high school, I was co-editor-in-chief of the school newspaper for two years, and in my freshman year of college, I immediately began writing for the college paper before the class "internship" even began. After my freshman year of college, I began writing freelance for a local newspaper, then worked directly in the newsroom the following summer before interning there the year after. And all the while, I continued writing for the college newspaper, and served as an editor and production manager for more than a year.

     I would be remiss if I didn't say I learned a great deal about writing style, language, law and other important topics during my classes, all of which have benefited me in my career as a newspaper reporter thus far. But one of the most important things a reporter does is interact with people, and that is something you can only learn by doing. I met so many different people throughout college, from celebrities to politicians to ordinary citizens, and I learned how to speak

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>