Nadia Dala, freelance journalist and writer, gave a group of young and aspiring George Mason University journalists some insightful advice on April 4.
After first starting from the bottom working as a fulltime journalist for a Brussels based newspaper to then later traveling as a reporter to Arab, Islamic countries such as Egypt, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and Yemen, Dala had 3 very important things to share.
Dala told the group her initial thoughts when she first entered the world of journalism.
“I said, oh my god, this is a hard job,” Dala admitted. She also told the group her shyness didn’t help but the difficultly of the job and her timidness didn’t deter her.
“I wanted to give a voice to people, everyone has a voice,” said Dala, who believes journalism gave her a voice too and changed her for the better.
The first thing Dala talked about was storytelling.
Storytelling is something that needs to be practiced. Practicing your writing skills, and wording and rewording sentence structure can mean the biggest difference in a story. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
Second was integrity. “Don’t copy and paste,” Dala said.
Journalists have huge responsibilities to disperse correct and factual information. Questioning, researching and investigating is half of the work.
“It makes you a richer person — opens your mind,” Dala said.
And Last, there is no 9 to 5.
“I will be up late saturday night researching not because I have to, but because I want to, you just need to love your job,” Dala said.
And it was plain to see that she had. She ended with encouraging us to continue on our journalistic journey.