Paul Bradshaw’s list on how to be a journalism student put “Read the news” at the top, which matched practice at the UBC School of Journalism, where students sat a weekly current affairs quiz run more like a television game show than a test.
Mindy McAdams, commenting on the list, added that curiosity is the thing that matters: to succeed as a journalist you have to engage with the world wanting to find something out.
One addition worth making to Bradshaw’s list is flexibility. The students of 2007 were entering an industry in transition, where the chance of spending a whole career in newspapers alone, or in television alone, was slim; they needed to be able to work across print, audio, video and online as demand shifted. Asked at the start of term to name the qualities they thought they would need, that year’s intake put flexibility alongside the traditional journalistic skills.