WORKING AS A JOURNALIST

Work hard, get your dream job

22-year old Monica shares with us her journey from being a journalism student to the chance of doing her dream job.

Climbing the tower of the Old Church in Amsterdam and watching the sunset while covering a story about three young television makers. It’s the best experience I’ve had since I started doing journalism. I may seem dull next to interviews with big names, participating at the European Youth Media Days and finding a great job within a few months after graduating but to me it isn’t.
When I saw the city bathe in a pinkish light, I realized that as a journalist, I was privileged do things few others were able to do. Even the janitor of the church admitted afterwards it was the first time he saw the sunset on top of the building.

At the time of the sunset (March 2007), I was doing my three month internship at the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool. It was my final year of journalism studies in Ghent, Belgium and being a traveller, I wanted to do the internship abroad. I picked Amsterdam because it was obligatory to write in your mother tongue but also because it seemed a multicultural city. Although our language is the same, everything else in the Dutch capital was different. I had to adapt to another culture and an unknown city, I had to make new friends and I had to write interesting articles every day.

Because I was treated like a journalist and not as an intern by the chief editor, I learned the metier very well. Your teacher can tell you how stressful a deadline is or your course book can explain how to write a text, but until you’ve experienced it yourself, you don’t know what it is. Along with the job, I got to know the city without my map and I found friends to crash parties.

After three months, I left Amsterdam with pain in my heart because in Belgium my graduation project waited. I managed to finish it somehow and within a month from my graduation I was asked to join the European Youth Media Days Team.

There, I worked with 270 young journalists from 27 different European countries in the European Parliament in Brussels. I practised my English while discussing European social issues and politics. I used my scrappy French to explain how our magazines had to be printed and I explained in German why I liked photography that much. It was an amazing week that left me with lots of foreign contacts and friends.

At the end of June, I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Journalism. After two weeks I was fed up with vacation and I started to send application letters to every company that seemed interesting to me. Meanwhile, the city blog of Ghent asked me to photograph for them during the city festival Gentse Feesten. I covered gigs of Belgian and international artists. In August, I really got bored doing nothing so I called every Flemish newspaper to ask for a job. Het Laatste Nieuws, the most popular newspaper of the country, decided to give it a shot and I started as copy editor at the beginning of September.

I’m happily going to work for almost two months now. I learned a lot of new things and every day is a new challenge because one day everything goes well, the other day a newsflash comes in just before the deadline and it’s a rush to get everything ready for print.

Journalism has gotten under my skin and I can’t imagine myself doing anything else anymore. It’s a way of living. When I hear a story, I wonder if it is something to put in the newspaper. When I see something in the street, I curse myself because I haven’t got my camera with me. It is a hard business and it is hard to find a job, but if you’re passionate enough about telling stories to your public, you will be good enough to find your dream job.

Since the end of December Monica shifted work. She is now part of the photo editors team of The Standaard, a quality newspaper. Her dream of years suddenly became reality.

Written for European Young Journalist Award