How To Start Your Career in Journalism in 2026
At a Glance
Learning how to start a journalism career in 2026 requires digital media, audience engagement, and building an independent portfolio. While degrees can help, they’re not essential. Practical experience, storytelling ability, technical skills, and sustained passion are the key factors for entering and succeeding in modern journalism.
How to Get into Journalism
There’s no denying the effect that digital media has had on the world of journalism. Blogs, podcasts, and social media platforms have utterly transformed the way we think about and share news. If you want to know how to get into journalism then understanding new media should be your starting point.
Whether you’re becoming a journalist at 30 or you’re just leaving school and wondering what to do next, the key to success in this field is to know the landscape and learn the skills. Qualifications can help but in 2026, the world of journalism is all about experience and audience engagement.
The Steps to Becoming a Journalist
Years ago there was basically one path into journalism. You studied at university, you did an internship or two with a paper, and eventually you got hired on. Some were able to skip the university part – particularly by working on local papers – but the end result was much the same. If you wanted to get hired you needed a portfolio to point to.
That much hasn’t changed although the way you build the portfolio and gain that experience can be quite different. Many still study at university and this is especially useful for those looking to go into more academic fields of journalism. Others however start their career solo by building an audience online.
A blog, vlog, or substack can be an excellent place to start sharing your work and the bigger your audience the more an established company will be willing to work with you. This path is best for those who already have an area of expertise they can share information about. If you’re changing over from another career then this could be the path for you.
Alternatively you could learn a journalism adjacent skill such as videography or media and communications. This is often the path people take if they’re looking to get into broadcast journalism specifically. The reason people take this route is that they can come on board with a specific technical skill and parlay that into a journalism career.
What Degree Do You Need to Become a Journalist?
Short answer: you don’t need one.
As we said earlier, university study can help, but a journalist’s biggest skill is their proactivity. It’s a job role that rewards independent people who know how to find and build a story.
Never forget that journalism is a form of entertainment. While a commitment to factual rigour is important – especially if you don’t want to run into legal trouble – most journalists don’t get hired because of how much they know. They’re brought on to tell an engaging story that will keep people reading, watching, and clicking.
That’s why, no matter which path you’re following, producing your own work online is the most important thing you can do. You need to show that you’re passionate and that you can translate that passion into a loyal audience.
Should You Start a Career in Journalism?
We really can’t underestimate the importance of passion for journalists. Much of the time a journalist’s work hours will be all over the place. This is not the kind of job you can do on a 9-5.
Chasing down an interesting story means being able to live on other people’s timetables, responding to phone calls and emails at all hours of the day and night. It can also mean doing a lot of boring legwork to find a nugget of interesting truth. And on top of all of that you have to be able to construct that truth into an entertaining story, writing persuasively, and making your audience really care.
Some people love that lifestyle and if that’s you then now’s the time to start getting your name out there. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed about journalism in 2026 it’s this: the best journalists are the ones who do the leg work.
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