10 Things, They never told me before I became a journalist

Venkatesh Kanniah, a Knight Fellow, is a Bangalore based Journalist who holds E-Governance workshops mostly in South India for Journalists and activists. He aims to provide a platform to share common ideas and built a website based on these experiences in next 3-4 months. He has worked with Sunday Mail, UNI, Financial Express, Sunday observer, SIFY, AOL and many others in last 18 years.
He shared 10 mantras which he claims that he never knew and was never told of before becoming a journalist.
1. Passion: Know your passion and focus on it. Identify that you are passionate about Sports or politics or environment or health or Economics or any other field.

2. Time: Get the habit of organizing your time. You get a lot of spare time while you are made to wait for a politician or some event to happen, you can probably read a book about your field. Your time may be less valued for others, but try to utilize it.

3. Career: Mostly people don`t think Journalism as a career which needs to be planned and after 10-15 years they ask, Is this a career? Unfortunately, most of the media companies don`t have counseling cells, so you have do the planning.

4. Training: Most companies don`t spend for training their employees, you have to work hard in learning new skills. Skills are your most important resource.

5. Burn-Out: After 8-10 years, Journalists reach the stage of burn-out and stop listening to others. You have to be passionate in what you do to escape burn-out.

6. Ethics: Journalists have a position where what they write can affect other lives. You have to decide for yourself what is moral, legal and ethical. There are very thin lines in our society.

7. Competition: Journalism is always a competitive career where everyone tries to be best. If you are not passionate, you won`t feel comfortable and other guys may score over you.

8. Communication: Journalists are good in communicating with their fellow journalists but they are really poor in communicating with other people. You should learn how to communicate well with marketing, Sales, Printing departments and also outside areas.

9. New Trends: Journalism is changing as new trends are evolving. You don’t have to master them, but have some knowledge of new trends evolving in your field of reporting.

10. Learn the business: At the end of day, every media house works for money. When you reach a senior position, you will be required to take decision on financial matters too. You should try to learn the business of your field.