Good journalists,born or made?

Imagine my surprise when I see a booklet telling you how to be journalist fall out of the Guardian yesterday.Two years gone and one to go and I could have spent a few hours instead reading up on it.

In all seriousness though,Simon Jenkin's introduction to the booklet asks a few questions and perhaps the most pertinent is whether good journalists are born or made.
I suppose like any profession,there are exceptions to the rule but for Jenkin's

Journalists are creatures of nature not nurture. The profession develops from instinct, from a peculiar way of seeing and describing the world. It may be objective in practice but it is subjective in motivation.

I think that is a great quote and if ever I am asked in any future role to train journalists,that would be my opening punch on the old PowerPoint projector.

But I like some of his other comments,it may be a science,

The technical skill is that of creating clear and succinct sentences,

but it relies on good sources of material.But even with all the technical training which of course nowadays includes the Web 2.0

They are instruments only. Beyond them lie talents of style and character that are less easy to instruct and without which skill is useless.

And another excellent quote for that PowerPoint slide

The qualities essential to journalism thus extend far beyond an ability to write. They are those of curiosity, an uninhibited mind, native cunning and an eagerness to communicate, summed up in the gift to narrate. Such is the raw material on which the story depends and without which there is nothing to say. There can be a story without journalism, but no journalism without a story.