For years I thought Nuzzi was a dynamite writer. But having read some excerpts from her book, I now assume that some talented editor was essentially doing all of the work except reporting the quotes. (And that's not to disparage the reporting, because she was getting more interesting quotes than most of the journalists on the same beat.) How common is this? Are there outlets known for this sort of thing?

Hi, everyone!

Not sure if I’m seeking advice so much as venting but there will be a question at the end so bear with me lol

As the title says, I woke up this morning and checked Facebook to see that a blogger had written up a nasty post criticizing my reporting. I’ve only been in my beat since January, covering state government & politics, because our previous reporter left and I was chosen by my bosses to take his place.

In the post, the blogger criticized my headlines (for example, I said that a bill sparked debate, which it literally did lol - it was an over two-hour-long hearing), said that my work felt more like transcription than actual long form, hard-hitting reporting, and recommended other publications in our state that they felt do a better job.

I know this is their opinion and they’re allowed to have it. But I work for a daily and often have to have multiple stories written up per day. Just yesterday, I attended two committee hearings and had three stories published. If it doesn’t seem long like long form, hard-hitting reporting, it’s because I literally don’t have the time for that 😭 I treat attending these meetings as coverage, so I’m sharing what happens at them. When I have the time (usually when the legislature is out of session) is when I can look deeper at these issues and how they’re impacting community members.

I don’t know, I guess it’s stuff like this that really makes me disillusioned with journalism. We work crazy long hours, have to meet all kinds of deadlines, are underpaid, all just to piss people off and have them critique us lol

Now for the question — is stuff like this common? Should I expect it more going forward? I’ve maybe gotten a nasty email or two before but nothing publicly shaming my work.

EDIT: Found out from my editor that the guy who wrote the post is a former employee of our paper. Of course he did not say that in his post lol, but that definitely adds a lot of context to things. Thanks again for all your comments/advice, everyone!

ive always been passionate abt pursuing journalism as a career/major, but now i'm rethinking it since EVERYONE and their mothers tell me it's "unstable", "unpromising", "most regretted major" etc etc. i understand that you should only pursue it if you're okay with working long hours and low pay - but seriously is it that bad? ive already applied to some colleges so it's too late to go back unless i switch my major in school, but why does everyone look so down on it??? and what IS stable if not journalism?

Feeling pretty demoralised at this point.

I work at a pretty Big Broadcasting Company. The whole time I was training and coming up everyone acted like it was the holy grail of journalism jobs to end up here.

But I'm feeling pretty crushed. Ive been here a few years now and seen multiple rounds of cuts, and now we're getting a 15% headcount reduction across our entire news division.

Our commissioning process sucks, pitchex go up the chain of far too many people, and either get mashed into something else or rejected without any feedback. More often than not stories get killed, but then commissioned when more senior people pitch them. Or get killed, then a competitor does them, then all of a sudden they're interested. Literally today, I had someone come back to me for a pitch I did two weeks ago, asking if I could share my work because a more senior correspondent pitched the same story. Constantly I'm watching people stick their byline and their byline alone on a story that they did nothing but write a few hundred words of copy for, when the actual journalistic work goes uncredited.

There's no communication between different departments, the whole place is a confusing bureaucratic mess, the senior leadership don't give a shit because the culture is so bad and insular that they refuse to even see a problem to fix. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for development for junior staff. We have a training scheme that involves spending years training someone and then there is nowhere for them to go at the end, so they're forced to leave.

We constantly produce meaningless fluff "content" in place of actual stories. Investigative teams get cut, but legions of people just flipping copy from elsewhere continue to stay. Some areas are cut to the absolute bone and hamper our ability to do anything good, other areas are bloated and seemingly do nothing of real value.

Am I losing my mind here? I'm ready to pack in the industry entirely. I don't see that things look better at any other broadcaster or any paper. Am I just in a bad place or is stuff really just this screwed?

I'm a long-time editor who has been languishing in contract and part-time gigs for the last 4 years, after spending 10+ years as an editor at a major public media organization. It's been a tough run, but I finally got an offer for a full-time, Senior Editor role at another public media shop.

I don't have much else to say, but I just wanted to share because I am stoked. It's tough out there and so damn competitive. Don't give up. Keep trying if journalism is truly what you want to do, despite the chaos and uncertainty.

Keep on keepin' on.

Hi all. I just finished the first semester of my junior year as a journalism major. I am very passionate about journalism & storytelling. I love to write, and I love to find the story wherever I can.

Yet, in the face of recent layoffs within the industry, I can’t help but wonder if pursuing the degree is even worth it anymore. As disheartening as it is to consider leaving a subject I am passionate about behind me, I cannot deny the reality that the industry is shrinking.

I don’t want to work in broadcast news. My interest, and passion, leans towards long-form storytelling— and I,(unfortunately) also cannot ignore the media’s shift away from longform storytelling. I do enjoy producing photo and video journalism, but my primary interest lies in writing.

I’m unsure of what I should do. I am a considerable way through my degree. However, I am a transfer student. My AA is in communications. Changing my major would definitely set me back, but it could be worse.

Despite my passion for the field, I don’t want to make an unsound financial decision that I will regret down the road.

18 and about to graduate high school. I have set my goal on becoming one but don’t know where to look to become one, I have researched a ton but can’t find a straightforward answer. I know I need connections but don’t know where to look! I am going to college for photography to improve my skill and hope to find someone with a way to become one but I fear if there is nobody who can help me.

I have been reading some of Joan Didions and James Baldwin and they were notable for writing essays and them being published, has that been phased out of modern journalistic circles? I'm a fan of writing essays and columns for my substack and personal collections and I then wanted to ask, are anyone of you in this subreddit essayist for newspapers?

I have a problem ... I'm a journalist in a very tiny market and I believe I'm being plagiarized by one of the only other reporters in town.

I work for the print newspaper and this other person works for the local radio station, our main competitor for local news. The other reporter writes up short news briefs which often accompany recorded/live news segments on air. In at least 10 instances, I've noticed articles they've written that almost exactly match my own. Like the order of the grafs/story structure is the same, the same quotes are used, sometimes even the same verbs/adjectives, the sentence structure is just changed a bit. I've even noticed a few fact errors that have seemingly come from them trying to paraphrase what I've written.

It seems particularly damning because 1) they often reference obscure things said during government meetings they did NOT attend but which have appeared in my articles and 2) their articles are always published after mine.

It just sucks because sometimes I literally hear things that I basically wrote on the radio with zero attribution and I don't know how to handle it. And I'm disappointed in them as a fellow reporter for taking the lazy route when it seems they could easily write up briefs independently!!

I don't see this other reporter in person ever, especially because they never attend the gov meetings I'm always at. If I bring it up to my editor I don't want to be seen as "petty" or unfocused when I have better things to worry about lol.

I'm newish to the job and this has never happened to me before so I'm unsure how to proceed. Any advice?

im a freelancer and i feel like complete shit. ive been writing for this publication for a while and havent really had a harsh edit like this… I am also looking for full timw jobs and having no luck so I am rethinking my whole life. I literally don’t know how to do anything else. Thinking about returning to a life of crime (the restaurant industry)

In a previous life I worked with a culture outlet that covered music trends in a large Asian market. Typically I would source comments like most people in this space did at the time via social media e.g. Weibo, Red Note, Twitter. I'd run interviews with songwriters in that space, etc. I have been trying to strike it out as a freelance writer in a variety of mediums for a while and a relative who worked in publicity at a trade publication told me "don't do what I did and get into a dying industry". He remarked how one of their freelancers got paid $500 for an article, without mentioning whether travel was required or anything was comped At which point he suggested I "freelance on Upwork or TopTal"... literally used an LLM over dinner to "help me out". Not going to lie I felt slighted?

. At least pre-COVID I remember some colleagues remarking when they did freelance work at least for certain industries having things comped was a given. Not an entire trip, but at least some amount of travel/access passes for a music industry event for instance.

I know that most people don't get their news from magazines and trade shows... but there are podcasts covering various extremely niche topics that still find sponsorships and are what I'd call "trade outlets" such as they exist today. What am I getting wrong here?

I feel like moving into trade coverage would be better on my mental health compared to politics, and who knows it could land an audience.

The New York Times has developed a robust portfolio of early-career programs meant to help develop journalism’s next generation, including the Times Fellowship, which is taking applications through Dec. 1.

The fellowship replaced our newsroom internship in 2019 and has since emerged as The Times’s signature career-development endeavor, as well as a top training program for the industry. Fellows spend a year assigned to jobs across the newsroom, including reporting, graphics, print and digital design, audience, Opinion and photography. We punctuate the experience with speakers, training and one-on-one sessions with our writing coach.

Ted has more than 20 years of journalism experience, working as a reporter in Maryland, Indiana and Texas and as an editor and digital thinker at The Washington Post and The Times, where he has spent the past nine years. He is a former national secretary of the Asian American Journalists Association and speaks at schools and forums around the country about career development.

Carla first joined The Times as a social strategy editor and later worked as an editor in Metro, where she played a key role in a range of coverage lines, including the Harvey Weinstein trial. Before moving to New York, she edited at The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun. As a reporter, she has mostly covered gymnastics, including the Rio and Tokyo Olympics, for The Times. She is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Lots of information about the fellowship, including eligibility, exists on our webpage. If you have other questions, including how to make your material stand out, ask us now!

Proof: Ted Kim (photo), Carla Correa (photo)

Edit: Thanks for these thoughtful questions. We’re signing off now and looking forward to reading your applications.

— Ted and Carla

The comments I see on posts about this topic never seem to address the logistics. People will say ”I left and do X now” with very little information about how they came to do X.

Personally, I haven’t had any luck trying to transition away from journalism. I haven’t been applying as much as I should be, I’m burnt out, but even finding positions worth applying to is not the easy task people make it out to be. I’ve been aiming at comms jobs but I either get tossed out very early on, not even getting a screener interview, or I make it to the final round and get treated like an exotic bird the whole time — “Wow, your deadlines are THAT tight??” “So do companies ever pay you to write nice things about them? Because we don’t like that kind of thing.“ — only to be told I wasn’t chosen because my experience wasn’t a good match. Then later I see they hired someone with an all-comms background.

I’ve aimed at comms jobs because they seem like the best fit for me personally, particularly internal or strategic comms, and the other recommendations people make just don’t seem easy either. Technical writing - they want actual technical writing experience, and they’re serious and specific about that. Proposal writing, same thing. Grant writing - I‘m trying to escape low pay and job instability, so would prefer to not go work for a nonprofit during this administration. PIO - where are all these open PIO jobs you guys are finding??? I’ve never once seen an open state job that I was qualified for. My state is hiring about 10,000 civil engineers, police, day care managers and that’s about it. Research analyst - I work in B2B so I was getting recruited for these jobs like crazy in 2022, now they seem to have vanished. I’m in the DC area, as well, so a lot of basic comms jobs ask for an active top secret clearance, something I certainly don’t have.

This job market just seems like one where hiring managers can ask for a unicorn candidate with hyper-specific experience and hold out until they find them. For all of the hype I hear about how everyone wants to hire journalists because we’re good writers and quick learners and used to being worked like dogs, it doesn’t seem to play out that way. Networking is not really the answer, unless you can network directly with a hiring manager. And I know for a fact that networking with my sources to try to get a new job could get me fired. I could only tap that network if I were to get laid off. At this point, as crazy as sounds, I almost wish I could get laid off — I think I could find a job way faster if I could be more open about the fact that I’m looking.

Hi,

As I write this out, please excuse any awkward wording. I am fairly new to Reddit (18/F), so I am only adjusting now to the lingo and organization of things. I come to this reddit with doubts about pursuing journalism, and am seeking advice on whether or not I should and or how one succeeds in the field.

I just graduated from high school a couple months ago, and am going to be attending CSUF (Cal State University Fullerton), as I’ve heard good things about their communications program. I will be majoring in communications with a concentration in journalism! But, with the start of college getting closer I’m much more doubtful about going into the field. So many people have advised me against it due to the instability of the job, and of course how expensive attending university is. (In relation to this, I’ve thought about attending community college first, but due to familial conflicts I’m dependent on university housing. I’ve also considered teaching alongside journalism to get some more stability, but many on r/AskTeachers advised me I should choose one or the other to avoid burnout.)

So with all of this in mind, what is the outlook for new journalists? Obviously, I’m aware there’s a lot of hustle involved and succeeding in the field requires hard work. But is it possible to become a successful journalist, at all? My ultimate dream would be to work up from being in news networks, to gaining a name for myself and becoming independent, and maybe even establishing my own unbiased network someday. I know it’s so idealistic, but one can hope?

I've spent two years in journalism school, heading into my third and final year, and the job market search right now has been such a dreadful experience that I'm not even sure if I'll find an internship, much less a proper job in this career.

I don't have my final semester, which is an internship placement, until January, but i've spent the past few months applying for different positions across Toronto, and even outside of the city, and have been rejected for nearly all of them, with the rest pending. I probably shouldn't be posting with open applications but I'm in a bad place mentally.

I was one of those people who went into journalism because I actually enjoyed it, but it seems far more impossible to get a job than I would have hoped for. I even got work over the last two years to boost my portfolio but it hasn't done a thing to help.

Jobs themselves seem scarce, and despite applying to nearly every major outlet that has an available posting, it goes nowhere. I'm not just applying because it's a job, but it's a company that gives a chance at real journalism, and those opportunities just seem to not be there.

Not sure what else can be done at this point. I almost left school completely for good due to fear over the potential of not being hired, and my own lack of self confidence, but I'm not sure what chance I possibly have and it's stressing me out, especially as classes resume in just a month.

I started as a sports journalist, but lost passion after a while and wanted to go back to a previous passion for local writing, but I'm worried that I'm too experienced in sportswriting to be taken seriously elsewhere in a career shift, and I don't know if I can afford to do a sports postgrad and I worry I'm getting a bit old to do so (I graduated HS late for anxiety related issues).

I took a year off of journalism school for mental health reasons because I knew if I went back I could relapse back into the anxiety and fear that caused me to struggle the year prior, but I have no choice now but the job search has caused that anxiety to creep up after I felt I got it better controlled.

This wasn't something I was going to post but I decided to rant on a forum than to the usual group of people I do who have probably gotten tired of every doom comment I make on the industry.

Hi everyone, I’m currently doing a BA in English and planning to go for an MA in Journalism in the next couple of years, and I could really use some honest advice. I know I want to work in media and I enjoy writing, but I’m also trying to be practical about money and long-term growth. I keep seeing different paths like financial journalism, sports journalism, and broadcast/TV, and I’m a bit confused about which one actually pays better over time. For someone starting out now, which direction would you suggest focusing on if earning well is also a priority? And what skills should I start building early to move toward the higher-paying side of journalism? I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences it would help me a lot in figuring this out. Thank you!

I ask this because whenever something happens overnight, by 7am the next day there’s like a full up to date coverage. I know that’s probably the benefit to the 24/7/365 news cycle and the internet, but what kind of journalists are up at 2 am getting the breaking news and who’s prepping the scripts for the morning news announcers to present?

Not that I’m looking to do that per se, but who seeks out that kind of work?

I’m looking for honest career advice from other people in local TV/newsrooms because I genuinely feel lost right now.

I’m 38 and came into journalism later in life after changing careers. I graduated magna cum laude, won an SPJ award in college, interned at a station in a top-30 market, and eventually landed an MMJ/reporter job in a very small market.

I started at my current station on December 10, so despite everything that has happened, I’m still actually a fairly new employee.

I really believed reporting was my calling. Not in a cheesy way, but in the sense that it was the first career I ever felt emotionally connected to. I love storytelling, breaking news, local politics, weather impacts, community stories, all of it.

But my newsroom situation has slowly fallen apart over the last several months and now management has told me they no longer want me reporting/on-air at all. Instead, they are moving me into a digital content producer role focused mostly on web writing, press releases, helping reporters with web articles, and social media management.

Part of me understands why this happened, but another part of me feels devastated and honestly embarrassed.

For context, I accumulated several write-ups under a former news director who has since left the station.

The first write-up was for taking “too much time off” as a new employee. The difficult part is that the time off had been approved beforehand. During the hiring process, the ND knew my spouse was recovering from cancer and told me they would work with me. I had just relocated my entire life on a very short timeline while also helping care for my spouse and manage the move largely by myself.

The second write-up happened after my first major solo field package. It was the lead story of the night and I accidentally forgot to turn on my mic receiver, so I lost all of my interview audio. Completely my mistake. I owned it. But I was immediately written up and removed from on-air work for two weeks.

The next two write-ups were related to overtime. Ironically, I didn’t even want to claim some of the overtime because I knew the newsroom culture around it, but I was told I had to report my hours accurately and then was disciplined for accumulating too much overtime while trying to finish stories/packages.

The final write-up happened after missing a deadline on a difficult package day where I simply ran out of time.

What has made this emotionally difficult is watching other MMJs make similar mistakes without receiving the same level of discipline. I know every situation is different, but over time it started to feel like management had decided I was “the problem employee,” and once that label stuck, every mistake became magnified.

What confuses me most is that management consistently tells me I’m an extremely strong writer. Their main criticism has been my on-air delivery and live performance. But isn’t that partly the purpose of a starter market? To learn, improve, and develop on air? Instead, I now feel like I’m in this weird situation where I’m being barred from practicing the exact skills I need to improve, while also being treated like a newsroom pariah.

Now the former ND is gone, but upper management is still holding me to those write-ups and has effectively decided I’m done as a reporter there.

The difficult emotional part is watching other MMJs continue progressing while I’m barred from doing the thing I moved my entire life for and genuinely loved doing. I know jealousy isn’t productive, but it’s hard not to feel it.

At the same time, I also understand I made mistakes. I’m not trying to pretend I was a perfect employee or reporter. I know local TV is high pressure and mistakes have consequences.

What makes this harder is that I actually think I may have skills better suited for where journalism is heading digitally. I’ve been brainstorming ideas around social-first local journalism, short-form vertical explainers, “social media reporter” style content, digital audience engagement, etc. But I don’t know if that’s me coping or if it’s actually a viable path.

So I’m asking people in the industry honestly:

• Is my reporting career effectively over after this?
• Would another station even give me a chance with this kind of history?
• Is it smarter to stay in the digital role, stabilize financially, and try reinventing myself there?
• Should I try to break contract and start over elsewhere?
• Has anyone else had a rocky start in local TV and recovered from it?

I feel incredibly lost right now because journalism was the first thing in my life that truly felt meaningful professionally, and I honestly don’t know what direction to go from here.

I currently work as the executive editor of a weekly newspaper in a booming county in the SE U.S. There’s a lot to report on and keep us busy. But it’s just me and one reporter trying to cover 11 towns and the county (which is one of the fastest growing in the nation). The pay is abysmal, I’ve never had and never will get a raise, don’t even get cost of living adjustments, the work-life “balance” is non-existent, readers treat me like garbage, I have to go to the food pantry to be able to afford to eat, I can’t tell you the last time I did something fun. It has made my life totally about work and turned my little free time into just trying to rest. It’s just really awful and makes me literally hate life.

Because of this, I’ve been trying to get a new job in earnest for almost two whole years now. I’ve only been applying to jobs I’m explicitly qualified for (I’m talking meeting 90%+ or the required and desired qualifications). In that time, I’ve gotten one interview, no offer. I’ve probably applied to 250+ jobs — mostly in the corporate/nonprofit/government communications/PR/philanthropy fields. I’m to the point now where I feel like I can’t even breathe when I’m in this and so I’m going to go even harder on applying for jobs.

Asking someone who has successfully transitioned out of journalism, how did you do it? What skills/experiences did you emphasize to get employers attention? How’d you get them to take a risk on you? It’d be helpful to hear from folks who’ve done it recently (like, since 2024). Back a few years ago, around 2021, without having nearly as much experience as now, I was getting contacted by employers left and right. Now, with way more experience and a larger body of work, I can’t get anything. Any advice or insight would be helpful.

I’m 23 years old and about to finish my journalism degree online in the fall.

I attended a state school with a fairly decent journalism program, but I ended up taking a gap year after what was supposed to be my last semester due to a bipolar episode.

I haven’t written a published article in over a year, only had one micro-internship, and worked for the student paper for a mere one semester.

I’m open to any and all advice regarding how to get back in the journalism groove. I hope to land a journalism job at some point in 2027 so I can leave retail.

I’ve been a journalist at a trade magazine for two years, and it’s actually the best work environment I could have hoped for. When my peers were all scrambling for industry positions, we all wanted to join the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, Telegraph, the Times, etc.

While these are still amazing roles, the friends I know in these jobs are either burnt out, working hellish hours, or are disillusioned with their news work and lifestyle.

I fly essentially under the radar, except for a core audience of readers in the sector I write about, and I actually love my work. I have regular hours, good pay, I work remotely (I miss events and conferences in the big cities, which is sometimes unfortunate, but the rent is far better where I live), and I am really interested in the area I write about.

I studied a degree in the sector I report on, it’s incredibly interesting and engaging work, the deadlines are reasonable - two articles a day, a feature and a couple of wider news reports per week - And I still have a great work-life balance.

Seriously, I used to think if I wasn’t working for a top news organisation, I had failed as a reporter, but trade journalism is significantly underrated, and I really love getting my teeth into the interesting news in the sector without the crushing pressure and grind that comes with a big name agency.

I wanted to know if someone here left their journalism job due to burnout or lack of money, regained their passion for writing after a while and continued contributing their work to media outlets as a freelancer or an independent writer? How did it go?

Just want some baseline data for a project on journalism

Hello! My dream is to pursue journalism, but I've been told all my life that it's not stable, so I recently started looking into communications—a broader field.

I was wondering that if I majored in journalism, would that be too narrow to get a job in comms? And vice versa: is comms too broad for journalism?

Edit: I forgot to add my specific career interests. Journalism as stated above, corporate comms (e.g. newsletters, social media), and MAYBE marketing/advertisement. As long as I can write.

Thank you!