Journalism...its a contacts game

Anyone who is trying to get into the world of journalism will have been told many times its not what you know it's who you know. That being said most places still desire someone who has a degree especially in media law so they know the rules of journalism. However, it is all about who you know.

So how do you get to know people? Well work experience is of course the easiest way, as a student you probably think your far too good to work for free and your time will be wasted if it was spent walking around making tea for people who are doing a job you want to do. Well a) most places don't actually make work experience people just make tea and b) if they do then you really don't want to be working there no matter how established they sound and c) don't try to aim too high in your search.

Most journalists I have spoken to have told me they started in local news and built it up from there, local news is a very exciting and interesting job which is great to start in especially with work experience. Most local news companies are aware that you are young and want to work so as a result they want to throw work at you and give you a real experience of this world of journalism.

Although not all major companies are unlikely to get work experience with. It's just a case of making contacts. Twitter is a great way to make contacts as it lets you interact with editors and writers and show them your work via Twitter and show off your talent. If they see a tweet from you they'd probably prefer to reply to that than a long email which is the same as every email they get from many young aspiring journalists.

Overall, if you truly want to get work experience do something to make yourself stand out and make friends. Once your in maintain the connection send tweets/emails about there lives not just how much you love their work. Keep at it and remember its all just a big contacts game.