Monday, October 26, 2009

Ratto recommends writing

With journalism students in a tizzy trying to find their next big opportunity, advice on how to get jobs is going around like a bad flu. From learning different languages to becoming a walking news production studio, it seems that skills for these journalism jobs is becoming less about the craft of reporting and more about becoming a software engineer.

San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ray Ratto, however, thinks the answer is much simpler than becoming a technological guru. His advice to the class? “Write, write a lot, and be brutal on yourself.” So journalism students should focus their attention on becoming good writers? What a novel concept.

It’s funny how something so simple, something journalism students do everyday, yet something that can be so refined, could be the key to landing (gasp!) a journalism job. And even if newspapers are still on life support for the foreseeable future, Ratto insists that, “There’s still a need for content, still a need for ideas and still a need for brains.”

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