Specialisms: Introducing Masterclasses 26 to 33

We are moving in these masterclasses to a new area – that of specialisms

For most newly-qualified journalists, general reporting is their starting point – unless they choose the subbing and production route

If you want to remain a reporter long-term it’s often a good idea to specialise: to choose an area of news that you cover intensively and on which you become a trusted expert and authority.
There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that specialist knowledge, and the provision of reliable, authoritative information, has a value above that of general news.
As we are seeing, it is almost impossible to get people to pay for general news online. In the UK, it is very hard to make general news pay. You have the massively well-resourced BBC pumping out a huge volume of general news, without needing to heed the commercial realities that other, private media outfits are governed by.
So, as a reporter, you need to be a purveyor of information that is valuable to the audience you are targeting – perhaps for their work, or for informing commercial decisions that they must make. Or, it may be information that gives them depth of coverage in an area of interest to them: a hobby or pastime perhaps.
The rise in social media has further devalued the work of the general reporter.
Because so much general news coverage is contributed by citizens in some way – whether through their eye-witness stills or video, or through celebrities tweeting what is happening to them – the general reporter sees their stock falling.
We are going to look at a number of very different specialisms in this run of masterclasses:

• International Journalism
• Political Journalism
• Sport
• Financial Journalism
• Travel Writing
• Environment, Health and Science
• Arts, Celebrity and Showbiz reporting
• Fashion

There are loads of others we could cover. But whatever the specialism you choose, there are general principles of how to be a good specialist reporter that we can apply across the board.
So in this general guide to specialisms we’ll start off by looking at how to be a specialist reporter, and I’ll link to the areas of learning in previous masterclasses, and in the book version of MMJ and the companion website, that give you the general approach to take and the tools to use.
The last five linked masterclasses, Numbers 22 to 25 are particularly relevant, because they show you how to apply specialist reporting to the modern media world.
A good specialist reporter is locked in to social media. Just look at how many stories in tabloids are sparked by a celebrity’s tweet. Tabloids don’t always tell readers that they are sourcing so many stories on Twitter, but it has become a vital hunting ground for the showbiz specialist reporter.

Next: How to choose your specialism

Publish your own magazine: how to get the help you will need

However entrepreneurial you are, you can't do everything well yourself. In creating a successful magazine, you'll need to bring in experts to cover the areas you don't shine in.

In the clip, David Howell talks of how, for him, the areas he needed to bring others in on were layout and design, and advertising and promotion.
He says: “I particularly needed help with advertising, and there are plenty of freelance advertising execs around who you can hire.”
You can find the rest of David's masterclass on magazine publishing here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/749/edit and the full Entreprensurialism masterclass, Build Your Own Job, at http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/698