Hey there, aspiring journalists!

Three famous Montreal broadcasters came to speak at Concordia University on February 8^th for the first of the JSA’s lecture series.

They were invited to talk about their job, and offer some advice to aspiring journalists.

Starting off as a young journalist in the broadcasting world when you just graduated from journalism school is not easy.

If you don’t have confidence in yourself, or are not motivated enough by the profession, applying for your first job might be a totally depressing experience.

You will get tons of no’s, many employers won’t even bother following up on your applications, and you might have to send out over fifty resumes before someone actually calls you back.

But, as Jamie Orchard, Global Montreal’s anchor, suggests, if you do your best to gather all the experience you can get, doors will open for you.

“A lot of people think it’s just going to happen, and it’s really not just going to happen until you make it happen. You’re not just going to walk into Global and get a job. You’re going to have to have some kind of experience somewhere else. It’s very very rare that you would just walk in and get a job, so you need to think about where can I go where they will hire me and get that experience and then come back if this is the market you want to be in, you know.”

So this might mean that you will have to leave the comfort of your home and move to another province in order to gather the experience that you need to find a job in Montreal.

But as a young student, now is the time to travel and discover the world, and this might just be the experience of a lifetime.

After, you might come back to Montreal and get the job of your dreams.

Working in the broadcasting field is quite a challenge, and it is not always easy to deliver the facts to the audience in an objective way.

As Barry Wilson puts it, being yourself helps your credibility.

“You got to be who you are, because viewers, and I’m sure listeners too, you know, they’ll pick it up.”

Mike Finnerty agreed.

“They definitely can tell fake, you definitely have to put yourself out there, otherwise, it doesn’t sound real, it doesn’t sound genuine.”

Journalism is a hard profession, because you always have to be on top of everything,  and you have to know what you are talking about.

Being a broadcaster might be really stressful at times, and you might have varying schedules, but it still is possible to raise a family and manage your time well.

Being prepared and organized is a key skill for a journalist, and you have got to respect your deadlines when you are assigned a story to cover.

But overall, it is normal to make mistakes when we start, and all those skills will come naturally with time.

The lecture was very interesting and was very helpful for the journalism students gathered to listen to it.

To learn more about the Journalism Student Association and the events they hold, visit the JSA Concordia Facebook page.

Audrey Folliot, CJLO News