The life of a professional journalist can vary day to day. Depending on your specialization, your strengths, and your weaknesses, each journalist lives different, extraordinary, and important lives. To further dive into the life of a journalist, USA Today writer David Oliver gives insight into his life as a lifestyle and wellness journalist.
To begin, Oliver describes how he became interested in the field. Oliver has a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. He always wanted to be a writer since he was a kid. Oliver used to write plays, stories, television shows, dramas, enjoyed English and was a part of the newspaper club in high school. “It just made sense,” Oliver says. Journalism would put him on a career path. He picked a major, started applying to schools, and ended up at University of Maryland, where he currently teaches.
Oliver states that his day-to-day life is never boring. He further explains that it depends on what you’re covering. Oliver goes looking around the news and looking at social media apps daily. From there he writes about three stories a week. It varies. Oliver does not travel much, it depends on what kind of journalist you are. Oliver typically works around 40 hours a week, pretty much during the day. Oliver says he is never tied to hours but honors his time.
When asked about what Oliver enjoys most about his work as a journalist, he replied with learning new things, talking to people/sources, new perspectives, and being able to tell someone’s story. Oliver explains the benefits of being a journalist and states that he loves learning, it is fun to help people in a unique way, and that you become a better citizen in the world when in this field. You begin to pay more attention to the world around you.
On the other hand, being a journalist comes with a lot of difficulties. For example, the pay is not ideal. Oliver says figuring out what works for you is key, hours are always everywhere and vary, typically not 9-5. It’s hard to cover certain topics, immersing yourself in the world is difficult You also have to be very careful about your personal life, meaning giving up a bit of public autonomy. But in the end it will be worth it.
Difficulties also include being unbiased and not implementing one’s views into their work. Oliver states that it’s complicated. Being unbiased is very difficult. Originally, straight white men are where a lot of the views came from in journalism. This means there needs to be more power given to the minority groups to get more direct perspectives. However, bias is all objective, and unbiased is not accurate. “We all have stories to share and objectives to tell them from.,”Oliver explains. A story that is truthful and shares multiple perspectives is important! In general: it’s difficult to not let your personal opinions get in the way of your work. It’s not just LGBTQ+ journalists, or black journalists, it’s for everyone to figure out who is best equipped to write a story.
Oliver was then asked if it is difficult to balance his work and life. “I luckily don’t.” Oliver finds it easy to make time for everything. If you cover breaking news, or politics, it may become harder to find free time. It sometimes will interfere with your personal life, and so you must know what you’re getting into when joining this field.
A major issue journalists face are deadlines. However Oliver thrives on deadlines. If you give him a deadline he will do it. He has many ways in which he accomplished this. Organization is key. Figure out how much time it will take, who you need to talk to, create a checklist, ect. And most importantly, time management!
Oliver was asked what qualities he thinks people should have when going into this field. First he said curiosity, to always think about other people’s perspectives. Patience and persistence follow. Being able to take criticism, accepting you’re not perfect as well. Then Oliver gave advice for being a journalist. Oliver says talking to journalists, continuing to write, keep on reading, starting a journal/google docs for thoughts and observations are important. And especially keep on going, if you really want to do it and fight for it, keep doing it!
