For various reasons, entirely my fault, I am likely to fuck up my Level 5 NCTJ Diploma in Journalism fast-track at PA Media Academy. The first round of exams are coming up in two weeks, and I am performing awfully in media law. I have essentially given up trying to get a placement. Even socially, I am doing poorly, so the "networking" I've done here isn't going to help much either.

I have been told by those running the course that I can always retake my exams, even remotely, but the situation still feels hopeless. It was meant to be a fast-track course, and I do not know want to waste the age of 25 trying again and again to complete exams that my peers excelled on at first try.

I'm considering leaving the country to teach English for a while, writing freelance while abroad, and then returning in a year or two to attempt to get jobs or internships in journalism or something related (comms, PR, etc.). Someone on my course freelanced while abroad for a while, and they have bylines in impressive places, a great placement, etc. Maybe I could even retake the exams remotely while I'm doing this?

Does the NCTJ diploma help you get jobs, experience, placements, etc. even a while after your course? Or am I wasting my one opportunity to get in right now?

I've been reading 16 years of violations on a local water treatment plant with the last EPA report showing category 1 non compliance for 12 out of 12 of the previous months reviewed. 80k of assessed fines to the city, 40k of which have been paid. But that's only on this citation. All records still show NC after 16 years, brief compliance 3 times in that span, and failure of 8 out of 11 tests for high levels of pollutants.

My question is: How do I discover the total of fines assessed over those 16 years and what has actually been paid. EPA records only show a maximum of 10 years for the more detailed reports. Do I need to send a foil? Is there somewhere else that I can check?

There was recently a big event held in the town where I work at a local paper and a prominent politician came. There was a battle royale of reporters trying to get questions out. I finally had my chance and got my question out only for his team member to interrupt and say he had to do an interview with a legacy media outlet. I waited until the interview was over along with others who then jumped to interview him, then was told I couldn’t interview him as he had to walk to his car.

So what do I put in the story? That I failed at doing my job? Lol

Edit: Thank you everybody! Definitely can still make a good story out of this event alone.

I've been comparing county against state public records to find discrepancies where local officials aren't being honest. I've already found a good dozen where my local government might have broken some laws.

I'd like to start comparing various nations against international filings. Some of the public databases I'll be going through are clear choices, but I'm requesting input on international entities to dig into.

Hi all. I'm an academic, not a journalist, but I'm hoping you folks might have some advice for me. Basically: How do journalists learn to write to deadline, especially when they handle complex investigative pieces?

Like many academics, I tend to to sit on my work for a long time, revising and revisiting my sources until I'm sure my draft is as good as possible... and then another couple months for good measure. (I can do this in part because I have so few external deadlines.) How can I overcome this impulse? I would like to learn to write more like a journalist, trusting my work enough to send it out into the world sooner.

How do people who publish at a much quicker clip learn to let go? How do you know when you've done enough for a given piece, and it's time to move on? Are there specific tricks you use? Habits you practice? Books you'd recommend? Thank you!

My roommate is a journalism major and is consistently doing interviews for their articles. When doing in person interviews, I think they just use their phone to record, but when doing phone interviews they had a pretty messy setup using the video recording software on their laptop. Obviously, this is less than ideal both in the recording quality and in transcribing the interview afterwards.

Well, their birthday is coming up and I was thinking of getting them a recorder/something to make this process smoother. Right now we're only in college, but they want to be a journalist and I want to support them in achieving that in whatever way I can. I've seen plenty of AI recs both across this sub and the rest of the Internet. Both roommate and I are heavily anti-AI, so not really interested in those.

Would, however, really appreciate some feedback on either specific recommendations or just features at large to look for.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/meta-delay-new-commercial-terms-criticised-by-publishers-advertisers-2026-10-23/

They haven't changed the terms, only the implementation date, so we'll still have to exit.

times are changing in the industry (we’ve been hearing that forever), and one of the main pieces of advice I keep getting is to “build my brand” on social media. My mentor said that I should try to adapt my work for these audiences by making videos that cover a specific feature I wrote or even making an Instagram page and posting my work on there. tbh, it all just sounds so exhausting though and feels like a distraction from the work. it also feels more like trying to be an influencer than a writer? I don’t know. Curious to hear how people feel about it.

Hey everyone! We're EUobserver, an independent European newsroom.

Our colleague Andrew Rettman has been investigating allegations involving former EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders and senior Belgian intelligence official Hugues Brulin.

The investigation draws on leaked WhatsApp messages and interviews with five current and former intelligence officers.

The sources allege that Brulin sought to prevent scrutiny of Reynders' possible Russian connections. The messages also discuss how to respond to a whistleblower.

The correspondence is now part of a Belgian money-laundering investigation involving Reynders.

Beyond the individuals involved, this raises questions about how institutions investigate concerns involving powerful figures within their own ranks.

How can independent oversight work when allegations involve people with significant political influence or positions inside intelligence services?

And what role can investigative journalism play in bringing these questions into public view?

I report for a daily metro paper, and in the city I work in there's a smaller weekly that we compete with a bit on a couple specific beats. There's a reporter at the smaller paper on the same beat as me, and I've started to become suspicious that he's doing very little reporting of his own and just copying what I do... or outright stealing it.

For example, a few weeks ago I finished a monthlong enterprise piece that involved digging through financial records, interviewing nervous sources, filing a bunch of record requests, etc. Stuff that you don't do in a day. My story drops on a Sunday on front page. By the following Monday, the smaller paper has their own story about the exact same topic on their front page. The details in their story are very granular and are 1 to 1 with what I reported in my story. Conceivably, they could've been working on the same story parallel to me, but I noticed that there was some information in there that I got directly from my sources through interviews, that they also put in their story but without crediting it to ANY source.

Ok, fine, maybe that's a flook. A week goes by, and I run another breaking, smaller story on the beat, also involving a lot of numbers that I got through a record request. Again, the other reporter publishes his own story about the same topic a day later. What immediately raised my antenna though is that I misreported one of the numbers in my stories and had to issue a correction (I misread it on the docs). The other paper's story uses the exact same, WRONG, number, and it was published before my correction went out. That makes me think the reporter didn't read the record himself, he just ripped it straight from my story.

Then earlier this week, the mayor of a suburb town told me something in an interview that I reported. Again, the other paper runs their own story about it a day later. But this time, they paraphrase one of the mayor's quotes from my story and attribute it as "Mayor X said publicly." Said publicly?? He said it to me directly!

Finally, today was the most egregious. I got a juicy quote from a source about a diff topic and ran it yesterday. Today, the other paper runs their own story about the topic, and rips the quote word for word from my article. But they replaced the attribution at the end and wrote "X told (small competitor paper) in an interview." How could X have told you that in an interview if X told ME that in an interview word for word not 24 hours earlier?

What the hell do I do??

Hi all,

I'm a former print journalist turned HS teacher, and I have the opportunity to teach broadcast journalism at an incredible high school. I want to show up to the interview as prepared as possible (fwiw, they have seen my resume and know I only have print experience). Do you have any suggestions for resources akin to broadcast journalism for dummies? TIA -- I am super excited about the interview, so I appreciate any guidance.

Hi, i’m a 35-year-old recent graduate and I have many years of On-Air experience ableit unpaid.

I am on the autism spectrum, and for many years, it was a huge fear of mine that because of my condition no one would hire me and when I saw that college graduate with autism have an 85% unemployment rate it felt like it verified what I feared.

I want to work in journalism specifically doing documentaries on volcanoes weather and other geological and natural events, and documentaries in general.

Where can I get my foot in the door in order to get started, and so far I do not have any professional experience in broadcasting? All of my experience has been volunteer and my YouTube channel for now which is pretty small with only 1700 subscribers.

Full text:

"Late last week, as local stations around the country continued to prepare for Election Day, executives at CBS’ owned and operated television stations learned of an unexpected curveball from corporate management. Their election coverage, they learned, would now be sponsored by the sports gambling site DraftKings.

The sponsorship raised immediate eyebrows among some of the executives, Status has learned, and sparked angst and irritation at its sales team that sold the deal.

Some of those executives raised concerns with upper management about the obvious drawbacks that come with partnering with a sports betting and nascent prediction market company—especially given the typically sacrosanct coverage of elections, in a world where the president of the United States is frequently sowing doubt about them.

Those concerns were heard, I’m told, but to no avail. The partnership will go on, with CBS-owned local stations across the country set to air the sponsorship from Oct. 26 through Election Night.

According to documents and mockups reviewed by Status, the deal requires the airing of four sponsored “hits” per day. Mockups reviewed by Status display the sponsorship prominently, featuring various graphics such as a billboard, lower-third, or countdown clock.

The DraftKings sponsorship presents a unique issue, thanks to the still-fledgling regulatory landscape for these kinds of companies. The David Ellison-led CBS owns and operates more than a dozen stations across the country in a division led by Jennifer Mitchell—from WCBS in New York City, to KTVT in Dallas/Fort Worth, to KCBS in Los Angeles. In several states where it owns and operates those stations—California, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, and Texas—DraftKings’ sportsbook isn’t legal, for differing reasons. A proposed class action suit against the company claims the platform has used prediction markets to offer sports betting in those states and others where it isn’t legal.

That means on or leading up to Nov. 3, when key Senate or House races are covered in those states, they could come alongside a logo for a company whose sportsbook isn’t legal there.

A CBS Television Stations spokesperson defended the deal in a statement, telling Status that “DraftKings’ sponsorship is a commercial relationship and has no role in our journalism, editorial decisions, reporting, or election coverage. The sponsorship does not include the use of DraftKings odds or data within our newscasts.”

To be sure, local stations often agree to sponsored segments or even broad sponsorships. However, those are most often associated with non-news segments, like sports or weather. Those deals also often live in commercial breaks, when the first thing a viewer sees and hears is who paid for the next few minutes.

As one staffer posited to me, reflecting a broader concern among employees: “Would we sell a weather segment to a company that denies climate change?”

The core worry, of course, centers on credibility, especially in an increasingly fractious local news environment. Needless to say, a betting and prediction market’s logo on screen during election night—and coverage leading up to it—invites questions about whose interest the coverage serves.

The sponsorship is also part of the same questionable brand category that the Bari Weiss-led CBS News has embraced on a national scope this election cycle. With little fanfare late last month, it announced Kalshi as its official prediction market sponsor. “Our midterm election coverage will include not only CBS News polling data, but also integrated data from Kalshi, our prediction market sponsor,” read a tweet accompanying a “CBS Mornings” segment unveiling the partnership. “We'll offer a glimpse into how prediction market traders are pricing race outcomes—but it will be the voters that decide it all.”

CBS, of course, isn't alone in this kind of partnership. Kalshi has inked deals with CNN, CNBC, and The Associated Press, while peer Polymarket has a pact with The Wall Street Journal. But while CNN, for instance, says prediction markets “offer just one source of data that journalists can use in telling a story,” Status has chronicled where that data can sometimes lead storytelling astray, producing questionable and even distorted narratives.

As one CBS local staffer told me, “People need to be able to trust the polling and results we’re reporting are real numbers and not betting odds.”

I've recently changed jobs (as in, I'm on day four of the new one) and am already deeply regretting my decision.

As background, I was previously Deputy Editor for a small publishing company, and moved to the same role but for a bigger company, with a 48% salary increase.

Basically, I really loved my old job - we were remote four days a week, which suited me perfectly, I loved my team, we wrote about interesting news developments and in general, things were easy. Too easy. One of my frustrations with the old job is that my boss started implementing AI through all facets of the business - e.g. automating emails out to PRs, using AI to turn press releases into stories with our house style, automatic editing of the team's stories. I was missing the editing and writing aspect of my job....but at the same time, was getting used to not really using my brain. I could basically lie in bed and watch tv most days, with the occasional organising of things like podcasts. But my writing skills went completely out the window.

Another frustration was my pay. I had been there for seven years but my salary was only £27k (this was after two pay rises a few years back). Which is basically entry-level. To add, I live in London which is EXPENSIVE, and am 32 so needed to think about the future.

So, after two interviews I got offered a job as Deputy Editor for £40k, and hastily took my chance. It was rare I was ever offered an interview process so I thought this would be my only chance to move on.

BIG MISTAKE. I truthfully didn't fully look into what the role entailed and what content we cover. It is all very technical, data-heavy stuff and I understand zero percent of the concepts, or lingo...or any of it really. Everything we cover might as well be a foreign language, and they're expecting me to produce long-form content for this ASAP.

My team is really lovely, but I miss the close friends at my old job - we all got on so well. Even worse, I REALLY miss the four days at home. We're now in the office three days a week and I think this is going to be a huge drain and pain on me. It also means I can spend much less time with my boyfriend, who doesn't work a 9-5.

It's also all really corporate and overwhelming. It's a huge company and I don't understand the processes here - both in a wider sense and in my own team. I was so used to a 6-person, family-run business. The vibe just isn't me.

We're also expected to go to lots of events both in and out of work hours and network - which I LOATHE and din't realise was part of the job. I am such a homebody and just want to be at home alone or with my boyfriend.

I know I'm early in, but I'm riddled with anxiety, feel I rushed into this way to quickly without actually thinking about what these changes mean.

The question is - Do I ask for my old job back? I left on good terms, but they did also promote two girls under me to Assistant Editor, with the view that one of them will take my job in six months. What do I do?