Journalism Advice

Over the weekend, I traveled to Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee. Bryan is one of the schools I am considering attending for my degree in Journalism and there, I got the opportunity to visit with the Journalism professor. Over the course of two days, I asked him several questions about how to become a journalist. He had several good responses.
Question 1: How to Get A Good Job In Journalism
According to John Carpenter, there are two ways to get a good journalism job, the one that pays the comfortable sum of a dollar a word and adoring fans devour every phrase ever scrambled from your keyboard and published in the New York Times, USA Today, or Times Magazine.
The first is to go to a college, such as Bryan, get your bachelor’s in Journalism, and work hard and long to reach the top. Your first job will probably be at the village weekly, the small publication where all four of you work long hours for little pay.
“We were almost starving,” recalls Professor Carpenter “but God always provided. When four kids came along, I said I had to stop. I wouldn’t see them from Sunday night to Wednesday because I was working at the newspaper.”
The second option is to go onto graduate school, get your masters in Journalism, and go straight to the cushy job. The only consolation the poorer journalists have is that people who go this route probably have huge school loans to pay off.
Question 2: Developing Your Writing
It occurred to me to ask Professor Carpenter how much daily writing I should do if I want to become a professional writer. I had heard many different answers to the question. I had heard advice such as “write 1000 words a day” to “4 hours every day.” As you can probably guess, it looked like this could be the question where everyone has their own opinion.
John Carpenter’s take on it was practice writing well. Sure, you could blast off 1000 words everyday in a journal, but the writing would lack thought and you wouldn’t have practiced good writing. He told me that posting regularly to my blog should be fine, because, with this blog, I am attempting to communicate and think.
He continued and said that this idea also carries over to reading. He told me we should read deeply, slowly and with our whole mind. This is reading so that we understand what the writer said and also how he said it.
This makes sense to me. If you are practicing good writing, eventually you will get good writing. The method of writing less but with more content is how I got my start in writing. In the beginning, I took a week to write a 500 word essay because I was focusing on what I was saying.
This method of improving my writing will take effort, especially the reading habits. Reading with your whole mind is hard work. It is a much easier task to watch TV. But it will be worth it.
What do you think? Comment below.