SOFT SKILLS OF JOURNALISTS

Mindset

Having the desire and motivation to exercise personal influence over journalism at the level of both the story and the institution requires a mix of awareness, confidence, imagination and ability. The idea of the “entrepreneurial” journalist is becoming a familiar one. Individual journalists in whatever area of expertise need to think of experimentation with the aim of innovation as something they practice rather than endure.

Being “Networked”

All journalists carry with them a network and always have, whether it is a network of sources and contacts, or a network of those with similar professional knowledge, or a network of a community that follows and helps them. As the individual connectedness of each member of their network increases, journalists with effective network skills can leverage more help or efficiency. Editing, assigning and reporting all become tasks wholly or partially delegated to the network. Creating and maintaining an effective network is a soft skill, with hard edges. It requires time, thought and process. It requires judgment, not least because networks imply proximity and journalism requires distance, so building for both is hard. The credibility of individual reporters and their reliability and expertise are already judged through the composition of their network.

Persona

Personal presence, accessibility and accountability are important components of journalism. So, too, is the narrative ability. The more we feel engaged with a journalist through his persona, the more we want to hear what he has to say about the world.

Public persona was once the exclusive territory of the high-profile columnist. Now it is part of the job of every journalist; editors and reporters, designers, photographers, videographers, data scientists and social media specialists all have their own perspectives and accountability for storytelling. This requires judgment exercised consistently and publicly; whatever the medium of publication, information is now instantly shared, discussed, annotated, criticized and praised in a live, uncontrolled environment.

Integrity and judgment are attributes that journalists carry with them, as part of their public persona. These are not so much soft skills as values. The nature of search and continual publication means these attributes can be established more easily, but once lost are hard to regain. Plagiarism, dishonesty and covert bias are harder to conceal, while factual inaccuracies, self-copying of material and rudeness can erode reputation quickly and irreparably. By contrast, good journalism, in whatever realm, can gain authority without institutional endorsement.

How a journalist constructs a good reputation—by maintaining integrity, adding value to information for an audience, demonstrating knowledge, linking to sources and explaining methodologies—now has to be done in a public, real time realm. The old model of a handshake around source protection is no longer enough; journalists who want to work with confidential sources must be able to provide enough information security to prevent their sources from being identified by determined attackers, both governmental and non-governmental.

News institutions need to balance the needs of the individual journalists with the default mechanisms set to safeguard institutional reputation. These mechanisms are not necessarily inimical to building individual reputations, but the requirements of publishing securely, accurately, coherently and to a schedule or within a product can be in tension with how journalists work most effectively.