Student Journalists: Include These Six Skills Among Your Learning Objectives This Fall

-first published in Substack blog “The “Last Editor” on August 27, 2025

Fall classes are back in session this week at my institution (MIZ!), as they are at journalism and mass communication programs all over the country. Faculty members have spent the summer preparing new courses and sprucing up existing ones to be ready to teach the students what they need to know to become journalism professionals.

I speak from experience when I say that some skills are a lot harder to teach than others. I can get a student writing short, sharp active voice sentences in no time; but teaching that same student to fearlessly face down a hostile politician isn’t so easy. It takes hands-on experience and the student’s own will to learn to get those harder lessons through. Unlike many other disciplines, students can’t just memorize the “journalism” book and know everything there is to know about the profession. Ultimately in our craft, it’s never up to the professors to be sure students learn the lessons in front of them. Each student must work to pick up all the skills of a good journalist and hone them with repeated trial and error.

So, journalism students: while you’re learning to focus a camera, write a voiceover and make a social media post, don’t forget to focus on these six intangible skills that are part of the toolkit of any great journalist:

Curiosity
Some say curiosity is something a person is born with, but I disagree. I believe it’s possible to train yourself to open up to what’s going on in the world and pay more attention to details never noticed before. Sometimes, it’s giving yourself permission to break away from the task at hand and just run with it. I’ll never forget when a former student who had moved into a PR job at a local establishment called me to let me know two student reporters had been in to speak to her and, as they were leaving, saw a team of firefighters rush into the building right past them. My former student called to let me know the reporters walked straight out of the building and never even turned around to see where the firefighters were headed. In their case, I’m guessing they had some curiosity about what was going on, but that urge was outgunned by the deadline pressure they felt to get the stories they were doing done on time. It's so important to let curiosity take the win from time to time and follow your nose when you sniff something interesting. Your editors will understand if you have to set one story aside temporarily to chase something that could be bigger and better. We’re all born with natural curiosity that helps us explore the world and learn everything from language to social skills. Listen to your naturally urges and become the curious person you born to be.

Promptness
In all my years running KOMU-TV, Channel 8 in Columbia, I got used to hearing people take a cheap shot at us when they saw a story they didn’t like or thought we were just plain doing it wrong. Those comments didn’t bother me because I knew they came with the job. But the insult I could never stand was when they called us “Channel Late.” I knew that meant we had a reputation for being late to news conferences and other staged events. That made us look unprofessional—at a time in our students’ careers when they needed more than anything to look like professionals and not amateurs. Promptness is built into the very fabric of journalism. Deadlines happen multiple times a day and, in the case of broadcasting, those deadlines are measured by the second. I can’t think of another profession that would schedule one of its events to start at 5:58:50 instead of 6 o’clock—but we do it every day for the evening newscast. The best way to learn this skill is to learn to be on time for everything. Class starts at 9:00—be there at 8:55 to get the right seat. The movie is at 7:30—better get there by 7:15 in case there’s a line at concessions. The doctor’s appointment is set for 1:45—get there at 1:30 just in case there’s paperwork to do. Building in some extra time for unseen delays means you’ll always be there when you need to be there. And by the way, living in California has definitely taught me that the ETA Apple Maps or Waze gives you is only an estimate.  

Skepticism
I can still vividly remember the day teaching a reporting class when I decided to tell students that on their next reporting shift at the TV station, almost everyone they would talk to that day would lie to them. I was trying to dramatically make the point that people are often untruthful when speaking with reporters. But I remember this specific class because of how hurt everyone looked after I said it. It was as if I had taken away their sense of trust in the people around them. This was, I’ll point out, a group of Millennial students, a cohort that seemed to be born with no sense of skepticism. Or maybe I saw them that way because they followed Gen X, a generation that had skepticism as a central tenet and which, to this day, I still think is the greatest journalism generation ever. Gen Xers are skeptical, independent, resourceful and, best of all, don’t give a damn about what you think of them. Today’s journalism students would benefit from all of those traits, but most of all skepticism. Consider this: if there’s nothing else we’ve learned from the last ten years of politics in America, we now know there’s no penalty for lying. And many of the sources you’ll speak to when reporting—not just politicians—know this and will blatantly lie because they know they can get away with it. The first step to recognizing and dealing with lies is to be skeptical. Perhaps the oldest adage applied to journalism is “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Be skeptical about everything someone tells you. Double-check facts and try to determine if a source has a reason to lie to you. And when you do encounter a lie, call it out. Name the liars by name in your pieces and show how you know it’s a lie. We as journalists must bring back the penalties for lying.

Perseverance
This profession is hard. Your peers who are studying in other disciplines will not have to work as hard as you will to succeed in their jobs. And journalism just keeps getting harder. Within the span of my career, we’ve added newscasts around the clock, more live shots, social media posting and so much more. The job will keep getting harder and more challenging as the news business tries to figure out how to sustain itself. Those who will be the most successful and will survive whatever lies ahead will be the ones who can stick with it when the others fall behind. Many times students have told me they want to ultimately get to a job at the highest level of our business—international correspondent, network anchor, etc. I tell them the way to make it to that level is to never give up. I know that sounds a bit trite, but the reason most people don’t make it to that level is that they do give up. Whatever sort of career you have in mind now, the first and most important skill to master to get to that career is to never give up on it.

Ingenuity
It may be surprising when you think about it, but much of what we do to put a newscast on the air today is pretty much the same as I did to put on a newscast when I was a student 45 years ago. We go out into the field with cameras and microphones to gather footage and sound. We write stories with characters and sound bites and leave places for natural sound. A producer tells us where our stories will be in the show. And then we hand in a finished story that has an anchor intro to deliver it to viewers. All of that is the same now as it has been for decades. One of the things that has changed is, of course, the technology to capture, write and deliver your stories. You’re learning that new technology in your classes now. But the other major change is the room for ingenuity and innovation. In 1980, we were locked into a very rigid format for almost everything we did. Today, while there are still plenty of guardrails in place, you have so much more latitude to create your own approach—especially in the digital space. Your generation will be the architects of a thousand different ways to deliver news on social media apps and methods we haven’t even invented yet. I see enough TikTok videos to know that many of them are copies of what some other creator has come up with. But someone had to be the original person to come up with a particular viral idea. So I’m always impressed when I see journalists using the platform in original ways to bring content to a generation of people who will never sit down to watch television news. And the beauty of the freedom you have on the digital platforms is that if something doesn’t work, toss it out and try something new. There’s almost no end to what you can try. And those who can put together a reel with the most inventive approaches to delivering the news will be the first hired by news managers who are need your youthful ingenuity.

Empathy
I’ve saved the most important skill for last. As the country seems to grow more polarized and hateful, there’s a special place for any journalist who can build some empathy into how they work with their sources and their audiences. Television news can be lacking in this skill as we rush about to get that soundbite and make deadline. This became crystal clear to me when I made the shift in teaching from television news to running our new documentary center at Mizzou. As I met more and more documentary filmmakers—most of them journalists in their own right—I saw that the documentary approach to storytelling has the empathy already built in. TV news can be very transactional in a one-sided way. We get an interview or a bit of information and the person we get it from gets nothing in return except perhaps the dubious honor of appearing on TV. Documentary filmmakers build a rapport with their characters in a way each has a stake in the story being told. Now, that is admittedly hard to reproduce on a daily, tight deadline schedule. But meet your sources with a readiness to let them know what’s in it for them to work with you. Sometimes it’s easy, as in the case when someone just wants to be heard. Other times you can appeal to the betterment of a problem by amplifying the voices trying to fix it. TV reporters have the reputation of being rude, though I know the opposite is often true. Don’t leave that impression by just taking what you want and leaving. Have some empathy for the people you meet—and the people you hope will watch your work—and you’ll find it goes a long way to make everyone’s experience with journalism that much better.

Students, pay attention and bear down hard on the lessons your professors have prepared for you. But on top of those important classes, build your own syllabus around these six skills and make them part of your journalism routine. You won’t get a grade for your effort, but you’ll see something even more valuable than an “A” at the end.