In a question and answer session with Time Magazine he offers this as his advice to young journalists
The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.
The radical thought is that it is life and not journalism schools in which a budding journalist will get his knowledge and his ability to write.
No doubt the purveyors of journalism degrees will be throwing their arms up at the very suggestion.But maybe he is not that far wrong.
Whilst journalism courses will teach you the tools of the trade,they will not and cannot give you the specialist subject knowledge that a journalist needs to hammer his unique furrow in the world of media.
In the changing climate,where the career start in local newspapers and magazines is rapidly vanishing,the journalist needs to offer unique skills.One of them is learning how to use the tools of new media but the other is to offer a specialist insight into the world.
This is why Gladwell is to some extent correct.
Get a life skill and then learn journalism
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