Fundamentals of Reporting

As a journalist, certain skills are expected of you. These are the fundamentals of reporting. On the 3rd of April 2013, the JN1001 class of James Cook University learnt about these values and how to correctly and incorrectly apply them to our careers as journalists. As a future journo, it is my hope that I shall be able to report the news in an appropriate manner effectively using these fundamentals.

When it comes to interviewing someone, our lecturer, Marie, was adamant about the rule of letting the interviewee know whether the interview being held was on or off the record. "On the record" meaning that anything they say can and will be included in the article  "off the record" means the opposite, that the interviewee is free to say whatever they want to without it being printed. As a person who believes that everyone should have the right to their own privacy, I believe that this is an important fundamental to incorporate into my job as a journalist. This ties in with another of the fundamentals, which is to be curious, not nosey.

The difference between being curious and nosey can be a fine line. Curiosity (in my eyes at least), is asking someone when their baby is due. Nosey is digging through all of their private files and ultra-sounds to find out what the sex of child is. Nosey is something that, as a journalist and human being, I hope never to be.

Being a journalist for me has been something that I've always been able to picture my self doing one day (If I'm being honest, my inspiration to get into journalism was Chloe on the television show "Smallville"). Whilst it wasn't always my first choice, I always believed that I would one day be doing it. This course has pushed me to learn more about the subject and has made me realize that this is what I want to be doing with my life. I want to be able to make difference in the world.

The classes are enabling me do this by helping me become the person I want to be. Particularly JN1001. In my first week of university I thought that Effective Writing would be my favourite class. English is something that I've always thought be quite good at. (How wrong was I!) To be frank, the Journalist and Society scared me. A lot. But over the past couple of weeks I've found myself looking forward to going to the lectures (even though the lecture is at 8am) and tutorials. I think I enjoy the class because it teaches us about the fundamentals of journalism in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm being swept away in a tsunami of information (Which how I felt in my first week. Too much information, too fast). 

For now, I am quite enjoying this ride. Although I know it's only the beginning. I hope that one day I am able to look back at this and know that I got the best out of it and became the best journalist that I could be.