What Does a Journalist Do? A Teen's Career Guide
TL;DR
Journalists find facts, verify them, and tell true stories through writing, video, audio, or photos. The job blends curiosity, ethics, and clear communication. Median pay is around $62,200 in the U.S., and digital reporting roles are still growing even as traditional print shrinks.
What a Journalist Actually Does
A journalist's job is deceptively simple to describe: find out what happened, check that it is true, and share it with the people who need to know. The everyday work is messier. Reporters make phone calls, read documents, sit through public meetings, interview strangers, and rewrite the same paragraph six times to make sure a single fact lands clearly. The story is the visible part. Verification is the hidden part, and it takes most of the day.
Good reporting sits between two forces. On one side, the public has a right to information. On the other, sources, subjects, and communities can be harmed by careless or premature reporting. Journalists spend their careers learning to balance those forces without slipping into propaganda or gossip.
Types of Journalism (There Are More Than You Think)
People often picture a journalist as someone on TV holding a microphone. That is one path, but there are many others. Each type asks for a slightly different mix of skills.
| Type | What They Cover | Common Formats |
|---|---|---|
| News reporter | Local events, politics, crime, community stories | Newspaper, website, radio |
| Investigative | Corruption, fraud, misconduct, hidden systems | Long-form articles, documentaries |
| Broadcast | Breaking news, live events | TV, streaming, podcasts |
| Sports | Games, players, leagues, sports business | Print, podcasts, video |
| Features | Culture, human interest, profiles | Magazines, longform sites |
| Data journalism | Stories built from spreadsheets and datasets | Web with interactive graphics |
| Photojournalism | News told through images | Print, digital, wire services |
| Opinion / column | Analysis and commentary | Op-ed, newsletter, video essay |
A Realistic Day in the Life
There is no single template, but a working reporter's day often looks like this:
- Morning: scan news, email tips, and social media for anything to chase
- Late morning: pitch story ideas to an editor, get feedback, pick one
- Midday: make calls, request records, set up interviews
- Afternoon: attend a meeting, event, or scene; take notes and record audio
- Late afternoon: draft the story, fact-check every name, number, and quote
- Evening: file to the editor, revise, publish, then start on tomorrow
Deadlines are real. Breaking news can rip up your plan in ten minutes. That unpredictability is part of what people love about the job, and part of why burnout is a risk.
Skills You Will Actually Use
Journalism rewards a specific mix of skills. If you enjoy any of these already, you have a head start.
- Clear writing. Short sentences. Concrete nouns. No showing off.
- Interviewing. Asking open questions and then shutting up long enough to hear the answer.
- Research. Reading court filings, budgets, and reports without getting lost.
- Skepticism. Assuming a claim is wrong until you can prove it is right.
- Ethics. Knowing when to protect a source and when to name one.
- Digital fluency. Filming, editing, publishing, and building an audience across platforms.
Notice what is not on the list: talking fast, being fearless, or knowing everything already. Most great reporters are quiet, careful, and comfortable saying "I don't understand, can you explain that again?"
The Ethics Part Matters More Than People Think
The Society of Professional Journalists organizes its Code of Ethics around four ideas: seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent. These are not slogans. They shape real choices: whether to name a minor suspect, whether to publish leaked documents, whether to accept a free trip from a company you cover. Getting the ethics wrong once can end a career. Getting them right, day after day, is what earns audience trust.
Education and the Path In
You do not need a journalism degree to be a journalist. Many working reporters studied English, history, political science, economics, or a specific beat like biology or computer science. What you do need is practice publishing. That means:
- Write for your school paper, yearbook, or website.
- Start a blog, newsletter, or podcast about something you care about.
- Pitch a local outlet or student magazine. Get edited by someone tougher than you.
- Learn the tools of the trade: audio editing, basic video, a bit of HTML, spreadsheets.
- Apply for internships in high school or college. Local newsrooms are still the best training ground.
The path is less about credentials and more about a body of work you can show. Editors hire people who have already been doing the job on a smaller scale.
Salary and Job Outlook
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for news analysts, reporters, and journalists was about $62,200 in May 2025. Entry-level roles often pay $30,000 to $45,000. Mid-career reporters in bigger markets can reach $50,000 to $75,000 or more, and specialized roles (data reporting, investigative, national beat coverage) pay well above that.
Total employment in the field is projected to decline about 6 percent from 2025 to 2035, mostly driven by shrinking local newspapers. That headline hides a real story: digital newsrooms, podcast networks, independent newsletters, and video-first outlets are hiring. The industry is not going away. It is moving.
Journalism in the AI Era
AI has changed the newsroom already. Some of it is boring and useful: transcribing interviews, summarizing long documents, translating quotes. Some of it is harder: generative tools can spit out convincing but false text at scale, which puts more pressure on real reporters to verify. The winners will be journalists who use AI to move faster on the mechanical parts of the job, then spend their extra time doing what a machine cannot: showing up in person, asking a source a follow-up question, noticing what is missing.
Being a smart AI user is now part of the skill set. That is also true if you are still in school. Learning to fact-check AI answers and to ask better questions is exactly the muscle journalism requires.
How to Start Reporting Right Now (Even as a Teen)
- Pick a beat you actually care about: your school, your town, a sport, a scene.
- Write one 400-word story a week. Publish it somewhere, even your own Substack.
- Interview one real person for each story. Record it, quote them accurately, let them see how they were quoted.
- Read the outlets you want to work for. Notice how their leads are built.
- Take a communications or English class seriously. Take a stats class too, it will pay off in data stories.
If you want a structured way to build the underlying skills, LEAI's I Will Become and Knowledge & Skills courses cover clear writing, critical thinking, and research techniques that translate directly into reporting. You can try LEAI free, and the Preview plan is enough to get started.
Is Journalism Right For You?
Journalism is not a stable, quiet career. It rewards people who are stubbornly curious, who like talking to strangers, who care about accuracy more than about being liked, and who can handle criticism without falling apart. If that sounds like you, the industry is smaller than it used to be, but the people it needs are exactly the same as they always were.