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Planning to become a journalist? Look at these pros and cons of working as a journalist before you start starry-eyed on the fame you will get. A career in journalism requires a lot of hard work and learning skills. For you to survive in this ever-demanding field, you have to work for long hours, endure low pay, and have strict deadlines.

Pros:

1. Free entry to exclusive events: You will be able to gain free entry to some exclusive events you reporting on.

2. Learn more skills: To be successful as a journalist, you have to develop several skills like writing, reporting, editing. Headline writing, interviewing, and photography among others.

3. More acquaintance: You will be more acquainted with several business owners, government officials, and other public figures.
You can meet and talk to people from all walks of life.

4. Embed your name to published stories: You can write stories from various topics to publish on websites, print media, and have your name embedded on them.

5. Paid to write: You can get paid to write entertaining and informative articles for newspaper agencies. Their published stories can bring a sense of achievement based on the number of followers gathered through the articles.

6. Invitations: You can get invitations to cover theatre performances and products reviews for free.

7. A chance to inform: Being a journalist gives you the opportunity to present a complex topic in a way everyone can understand. You keep the public informed about what’s happening in the global market and political environment.

8. Change the perception of the public: They have the ability to inform, educate and shape the perception of the public concerning a particular issue.

9. Being on the know: As a journalist, you should always know what is happening within your surroundings. You should know the news that’s happening here, there, and everywhere.

10. You get to travel: Reporters get to travel to different areas to get information. You can travel to rural areas to get stories or report the happenings there.

Cons:

1. Low pay: During the early years of your career, you receive low wages and may take a lot of time to work your way up.

2. Challenging and demanding: Journalism is very demanding and most of the time you find yourself working in a very challenging, demanding, and ever-changing industry.

3. Long and odd hours: You may find yourself working during weekends, nights, holidays, and sometimes working for long hours.

4. Risk affair: It is very risky and sometimes may result in death or injuries when covering events in war zone areas or riots.

5. Stress: You will always work under strict deadlines and you always have to work under pressure and deliver an effective story and non-biased report. You will always be stressed up especially after a major news story breaks.

6. Changing job market: There are a lot of changes in the media industry and to remain competitive as a journalist, you have to keep up with the tremendous changes. You will always have to re-invent yourself.

7. Technological changes: With the advancement in technology, journalists can cover stories using their mobile devices, and sometimes the mobile footage can be of poor quality making it difficult for the public to trust the story.

8. Few employment opportunities: The economic recession has affected companies spending on advertising forcing media houses to lay off some staff. It is also difficult for a journalist to secure employment.

9. Work conditions: Journalists always work under pressure to deliver professional write-ups and reports. Due to the level of competition in the market, journalists have to come up with the best-selling story without compromising their work ethic.

10. Internet journalism: If you’re an internet journalist you need to keep on updating information, answering questions from the audience and it can be tedious if you have fewer journalists for the task.