A day in the life of a journalist

 

I’ve posted news on KidsBlogClub of a fab opportunity for young girls to be magazine journalists for a day.day in the life of a journalist

But the surprising thing about the day as a journalist that’s on offer is that it doesn’t involve any writing. But maybe that’s how it is when you work in house. Working as a freelance journalist from home is very different. Your day may involve:

Pitching to editors – If any more than 1 in 10 pitches gets a response you’re doing well.

Panicking that if the editor doesn’t respond that they are actually in a meeting discussing how terrible you are – this is quite the time sucker.

Dealing with PRs – Note that bloggers work with PRs (as if you were all part of the same team), whereas journalists deal with PRs (as if they were some kind of wild animal you’re trying to fend off).

Cleaning the kitchen/playing spider solitaire/reading random guff off the internet – the amount of this varies proportionately depending on the size of your to do list and the closer you are to deadline. If your deadline is looming and you’d struggle to fit your to do list on a giraffe’s neck then your kitchen will never have been sparklier.

Dark thoughts about your enemies – if you can get this down to once a week you’re doing well.

Checking your emails every 30 seconds or so – otherwise you might miss that AMAZING INCREDIBLE THING that might show up. Try not to let this distract you from the amazing incredible thing you’re already doing.

Tweeting/Facebooking about how INCREDIBLY BUSY you are – So much so that you don’t have time to be on Twitter or Facebook. Oh hang on…

Feeling paranoid that everyone else is doing better than you – A daily occurence.

Wine O Clock – or alternately Chocolate O’Clock, which is similar but easier to co-ordinate with the school run.

Interviewing! Actual writing! – Nowhere near as much time as you’d like. But enough to make it worthwhile.

 

Have I missed anything?

image credit – chefranden