Perseverance and resilience are qualities that lie at the root of all professional journalism. I am certainly learning the ropes at this stage of my journalism career, but persistence is the one value that I have associated as being the most important with my work. Whether it be ringing a media contact for the fifth time in two hours, finding new talent after dealing with people who refuse to talk to you or finding a completely new story idea after your previous one fell through, you always have to have a plan B in this game. Things are bound to go sideways, so perseverance is a vital ingredient to producing a quality end product. Perseverance also means not settling for less after setbacks. It’s crucial to have the ability to not get discouraged by failures and continue to strive for the best content. In the landscape of journalism’s uncertain and ever-changing business model, perseverance within the industry is important because there are bound to be setbacks for young aspiring journos like me. After all, I was warned all throughout high school that there aren’t any jobs in journalism these days.
Perseverance is useful with journalism technologies because new technologies are sometimes difficult to wrap your head around and can be easily used incorrectly by inexperienced journalists. Learning new skills with different technologies can be testing just like any new skill. Not all millennials are skilled with technology and for me, it isn’t the most exciting aspect of the job, so perseverance is important when incorporating content with technology.
Criticism for journalists is abundant on social media platforms so you have to have thick skin at times. Even from my year and a half of experience, I was criticised on twitter for posting a court report on my blog by the defendant, even though she was found guilty and I was in my right to publish it with all of the correct details.
An article telling the story of Qantas flight QF72 demonstrates perseverance because journalist Matt O’Sullivan had to wait three years for information from the pilot due to sensitivities within Qantas about him talking. The perseverance shown by O’Sullivan made the article possible, as three years after the original contact the pilot stopped working at Qantas and was available to talk about his story.
