Finding Your Journalistic Niche: News or Features Reporting

Upon graduation, you might want to consider what kind of reporter you are to best select the objectives that are right for you.

In Quill magazine, Bruce L. Plopper, journalism professor at the University of Arkansas, wrote about the human landscape of today's newsrooms. He said that young journalists entering the field will now see two broad divisions of labor: the features writers and the hard news reporters.

In his article, "Alice in Journalism" within the December 2006 issue, he profiled each type.

Using data from a SPJ data collection, these were his findings:

-Hard news reporters gravitate much more toward jobs that investigate corruption in the business community or assignments that expose failing school districts. They think covering these types of news stories is much more important than reporting on existing social problems and injustices.

-Features writers are much less idealistic than hard news reporters.

-Features writers aren't all that excited about serving as the people's "watchdog" over government, leaving that job for the hard news personnel.

It's good to know how to cover both features and hard news, but most reporters lean toward one more than the other. A lot of entry-level reporters start out as GA (General Assignment) reporters and act as a utility player, valued for their versatility.

Their willingness and ability to cover a broad range of stories serves as an asset, through many editors' eyes. Beat writers typically don't get hired full-time without a few years under their belt of doing GA, but that's not to say that it never happens. It's just not as common.

If you know what you lean more toward, I say go for it. Hard news reporters usually start out covering cops, courts and breaking news, while features writers usually start out covering people, local issues and community news. Ultimately, it's your choice.

Other Findings in the Article

Continuing with this study, Plopper went on to further demographic analysis of the differences between genders and age. For instance, how older professionals rate their grammar skills higher and ability to accept rejection better than younger professionals. He wrote that young reporters are more willing to work overtime than older professionals (after 6-10 years, according to Plopper).

The article also enclosed that women reporters have much better people skills than men reporters but are much more prone to headaches. Females also need more variety in their work than men, according to the study.