What Are You All About, Then?
This is How To Journalist, a newsletter about doing the news.
~deep breath~
Hello everyone!
Welcome to How To Journalist, a guide to the joys of reporting on news and current events, and some of the mistakes you can make.
I have spent the last decade working in London, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi in about a dozen different newsrooms, the bulk of it covering business topics at Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and The National, and have a journalism master's from City University London. This newsletter will contain the things I wish I'd known at the beginning.
You should read this newsletter if you are an early-career journalist looking to know how it’s done, an experienced hack with stories of your own to share, or if you have any interest in current affairs and want to know how the news is made. It will cover writing, interviewing, data analysis, sourcing, and navigating office politics.
I'm not arrogant enough to think that this is the only way to do things, and I would love to have a discussion about other ways.
This will be a limited-run publication, consisting of eight articles - one a week between now and the end of the year. The tone will be earnest and cheerful; politically neutral; lawful good on the D&D alignment chart. I regret nothing!1
This will be free, but if you like what you read and want to share it with friends, you can do so right here.
There will also be footnotes.