Journalist: Smalltown news

Introduction
There are three: 1) Get internships in college. Fortunately or unfortunately, in the newspaper industry one can no longer get a job, at even the smallest publication, without having clips to show (that would be articles published in a community, city or college paper). 2) There's no money in it. Which sounds obvious, but many, many people put a lot of time and money into studying journalism, only to immediately give it up because they're poor. And it's worth going into the field knowing beforehand that not only will you work hard, long hours, you won't have money to show for it. 3) You must, must not be afraid to call people. Again, it sounds obvious, but I've met more than a few potential journalists who are too shy or too afraid or too uncreative to identify and track down (read: annoy) the right sources.

Job Function
I love working with people, the feeling of being truly informed about my community and being able to pass that along to others and the rush and creativity of writing and writing on deadline. I don't like competition from other newspapers, mandates from corporate management and the bad pay. Lifestyle
My lifestyle is more work than play, but newspapers (thankfully) often keep to a fairly regular workweek. Newspaper hours are fairly flexible, but they're dictated by the news and not the reporter. If I work a late meeting, I get to sleep in late that morning, but I'm in the newsroom until 11 p.m. Many newspapers, and I think more will come, prefer reporters spend very little time in the office, which is wonderful.
Successful reporters can talk to anyone and do and don't mind feeling out of place (I'm a young woman and I cover a city council with an average age of, oh, 90, of 8 men and one woman). Great reporters find the regular people who are impacted by an issue, they put a well-written face on an issue.

Additional Information
Don't let anyone tell you it's a dying industry, not only because that expression is a cliche, but because it's not. A flexible, Web-savvy, creative, writerly, personable reporter will find somewhere to sell their wares (so to speak).