Newsrooms across the country are continuing to evolve and adapt to the opportunities and challenges of digital journalism.

As the NCTJ prepares to conduct an in-depth review of the structure and content of the Diploma in Journalism, NCTJ alumnus and senior reporter for the Sheffield Star, Alex Evans, explains the responsibilities of a young reporter and the skills needed in the modern newsroom.

A specialist in multimedia-focused, social savvy reporting, Alex is responsible for producing eye-catching web content and strong, exclusive front pages.

Born and raised in Sheffield, the Cardiff University English graduate returned to the city to study the NCTJ-accredited post-graduate in journalism at the University of Sheffield in 2010.  He then cut his teeth on The Weston Mercury, a weekly newspaper in Somerset, for two and a half years, before returning to the big city in early 2014.

The newspaper is dead. Or at least, that’s what industry nay-sayers would have you believe. It isn’t of course – it’s just become one part of the platform puzzle whole that every regional newsroom has been slowly piecing together for the past decade.

But what of the journalistic foot-soldiers? What does a news reporter going into a newsroom today need to be able to do to get ahead, and how have those responsibilities changed as rapid digital expansion continues apace?

I get asked this question a lot, and the answer is both simple and complex. In short: you need to be a multi-skilled, versatile, one-man band of multimedia capabilities and traditional print skills.
In long…

There will always be a place for the key journalism skills which remain unchanged since the inception of the craft, formalised in the NCTJ training: shorthand, law knowledge, writing and interviewing skills. Even in a world of websites and video, these are key skills you’ll need every single day.

But no matter how good you are at them, in my experience, newsdesks are not looking for these skills in isolation – they want them married to a raft of multimedia and social skills too. And for you to be able to juggle all of these things at once, switching gear from note-taking to multimedia and back at the drop of a hat.

The example I always give is one of a funeral I covered last year: a heart-wrenching story of a teenage girl who had been killed in a tragic hit-and-run.

Tasked with covering the event, I immediately grabbed a few minutes of video at the start, sent it back to the office via Google Drive and asked them to get it online while I was there. Then I took photos and put them on Twitter, before settling in to take notes for the print story.

While there, I noticed that music was being played through the speakers. I pulled out my phone and recorded it, and later set the music to a slideshow of photos taken by myself and our own photographer.

This is what you need to be: a jack-of-all trades, comfortable in every aspect of reporting old and new, capable of juggling it all, doing it very quickly and identifying opportunities to be creative along the way.

My NCTJ training was fantastic for instilling the traditional values, and my time at the University of Sheffield gave me a fantastic grounding for a multimedia focus. It would be great, of course, if more multimedia could be applied to the NCTJ training – but those who want to do well will seek out video, photo and web skills anyway.

I’m also often asked how reporters find time to dig out stories among all the responsibilities we’ve got these days. For me, it’s two things: contacts and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Every reporter is always expected to have a burgeoning contacts book chock full of people ready to call up with a story, or who can be relied upon for a good quote, a tip-off, or who can be approached with ideas when you’re short of a lead. No matter how busy you are, if these people call you with a great exclusive, you’ll find the time to prioritise it.

FOIs are also key. On any given week, I’ll take 20 minutes out of a day and dedicate it to dreaming up and firing off a raft of FOI requests. In the past two months, I’ve had front pages on gun crime, closing pubs and housing crisis, all from FOIs. They are an invaluable tool for any investigative journalist.

Yes there’s pressure in a newsroom: time pressure, quality and quantity demands, with an ever-increasing set of multimedia expectations. I’ve always felt motivated by it – and from my time talking to students over the past year, the next generation of reporters – brimming with story-telling ideas around newer platforms like WhatsApp, Snapchat and Vine – are all champing at the bit to make their multimedia mark and keep steering regional newsrooms into a bright digital future.