>> You've got to be persistent.
You have to be nosy.
I'm not going to skirt that, but pushy.
I'd say pushy without being totally annoying.
Knowing how to get your foot in the door for an interview.
Not being afraid to call somebody at a weird time.
Those are the types of intangibles I would say are very good for the journalism profession.
Not being scared.
If you're in a media scrum, and you want to ask a question, not being frightened to ask
that question because your peers are there.
Just spit it out.
If you need that information, get it right away, and ask that question.
And something else which I think is really,
really important in journalism is it's a word-based business, OK,
meaning that your vocabulary needs to be really strong, and reading is very important.
Magazine articles, newspaper articles, books, and you're not only reading,
but you're critiquing as you read.
You're critiquing for sentence structure, for grammar, for word usage, for,
say there's a word you don't know or understand, write it down, and look up the definition,
and then, you know, try to remember that so you can use
that word the next time in the proper context.
And also. So passive versus active.
You want to write tight sentences, and you want to avoid the passive voice.
You want to write in the active.
You want to, you don't want to say that Mike was taken to the shopping center by John.
You want to say John took Mike to the shopping center.
It sounds simple, but it takes a little while to refine.