Journalism Jobs

Before I know it I'm going to be out on work placement and getting some "real world" experience. I put real world in brackets because a lot of the things we do in CreComm are the same things we'll probably be doing on the job, we just do them at school.

As I'm thinking about where I'd like to have my work placement, I think about where I want to end up when I graduate. I don't want to be working as someone's assistant or teaching english to kids in Africa. Both of those jobs are great for those who like that kind of thing, but that's not just for me.

So I started thinking, what is my dream job? Well obviously CNN or BBC anchor, but that's setting the bar pretty high for a 21-year-old brand new journalist. So what's my dream first job? I would love love love to work in tv. Reporter would be ideal, but when you're first starting out it's kind of that "take anything you can get for experience" kind of thing.

So I set out to look for some TV jobs in Manitoba (I would love to stay in the province close to my family friends and boyfriend). Low and behold, there weren't any. 

During the summer the internet job posting websites were full of TV news jobs. From reporter, to anchor, to weather, etc. All summer I was thinking "oh man I wish I was done CreComm so I could apply for these." There was a lot of change that went on this summer and I feel like that doesn't happen very often.

I'm hoping that this drought for TV news jobs at home doesn't last. I'm also well aware of the "who you know" clause. So my plan for finding an awesome first journalism job: make a lot of connections at work placements and scour all the media job websites I can find.

Here's a list of ones I used for those who are looking:

Jeff Gaulin Journalism Jobs

Media Job Search Canada

Workopolis

Kenton Larsen's CreComm Grad Jobs

Simply Hired

Wow Jobs

I'd love to know what other resources people use to find jobs, and what your "first dream job" is.

A new kind of Journalism

In first year journalism classes last year the first, and main thing we learnt was writing for print. Sure we could've published those stories online, or on a news app. We learnt about blogging too, but generally we learnt how to write longer style news stories.

This year in the journalism major we're still learning that, but through other classes we're expanding our horizons.

In radio and broadcast journalism classes we're learning how to write for their prospective mediums.

At first I thought - Oh, Crap! I have no idea how to do this. I'm for sure doing this all wrong. But that's part of learning so I was okay with it.

I think radio has been the hardest for me. Though it's similar to writing for tv, with short, concise, easy to understand information - it's harder to do without any visuals.

I like the challenge of writing for radio but I've discovered that I love writing for TV.

Writing for TV is pretty hard because you are constantly having to think about what the viewer is going to get out of your story. Why do they care? I definitely made this mistake in the first couple weeks but I'm proud of my last story and hope I did it right!

The visuals definitely help, but add another challenge - to write to your video. But it's fun and I'm slowly falling in love with television writing. Next step...on air reporting!

The nice thing about CreComm is that they might throw you into something you don't know how to do, but then once you do it you know what you did wrong. I hope that most students are like me and