Soft Skills for the New Journalist: Cultivating the Inner Resources You Need to Succeed

by Colleen Steffen

Overview

Journalism is a pool staffed by distracted lifeguards and no matter how fancy your school is, your first week in a real newsroom will feel like a shove in the small of the back into 15 feet of water. Most of us come up for air eventually, but if you’re like journalist and educator Colleen Steffen, you may still be left feeling like all that training in inverted pyramids and question lists left something important out: you!

Journalism is people managing, wrestling truth and story out of the messy, confusing raw material that is a human being, and the messiest human involved can often be the reporter themselves. So it’s time to talk about it. Instead of nervously skirting the sizable EQ (emotional intelligence) portion of this IQ (intelligence intelligence) enterprise, Soft Skills for the New Journalist explores how it FEELS to do this strange, hard, amazing job—and how to use those feelings to better your work and yourself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138593152
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/08/2019
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

A Kentucky native, Colleen Steffen earned her B.A. in journalism from Franklin College (go Grizzlies!) in Franklin, Ind., and her M.A. in English literature from the University of North Florida—but honestly she learned most what'she knows the hard way, at four different daily newspapers in three different states. Stereotypically restless, she has dabbled in PR, historic preservation, 100-year-old crime investigation, and keeping a small child out of traffic. She also spent more than five years teaching future journalists at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., where she currently freelances and lives with her husband, daughter and vicious weiner-mutt. She decided to be a writer when she was 7, and she’s never been sorry yet.

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Welcome and congratulations! You’ve chosen well

Chapter 1: A is for Attitude

Chapter 2: I went to college with an electric typewriter, and other cautionary tales

Chapter 3: Finally we get to the important stuff

Chapter 4: So something shiny caught your eye

Chapter 5: Working on your pitch (not the sports kind, sorry)

Chapter 6: Editors have the worst ideas

Chapter 7: Hi, stranger! The in-person approach

Chapter 8: Can’t I just email???

Chapter 9: The shy person’s guide to not dying inside while on assignments

Chapter 10: Not everyone is going to like you (unreasonable but true)

Chapter 11: All about sources

Chapter 12: Take a flying (imaginative) leap

Chapter 13: The all-important nutgraf

Chapter 14: So … I’m supposed to say what to this person?

Chapter 15: OK! Finally! Interviewing!

Chapter 16: Journalism magic—it’s a thing!

Chapter 17: Or maybe just shut up for a minute

Chapter 18: Don’t rush off to lunch just yet

Chapter 19: Yes, you still need a notebook

Chapter 20: Don’t be a banker

Chapter 21: Get in shape

Chapter 22: To outline or not to outline

Chapter 23: "I hate writing; I love having written."—Dorothy Parker

Chapter 24: But also … try this to love writing a little more

Chapter 25: Get your crap together

Chapter 26: How to tell when you’re done

Chapter 27: A word about grammar

Chapter 28: Developing a journalist’s conscience

Chapter 29: The day after

Chapter 30: Speaking of what other people think …

Chapter 31: You did it! You’re done!

Chapter 32: WWNBD? (What would Nellie Bly do?)

Chapter 33: Keep your head in the game

Chapter 34: I believe in you! Goodbye!