Journalist CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a reporter with about seven years who moved from a city daily placement to a regional TV newsroom's digital desk and now covers the council and schools for a regional daily. The name and outlets are made up. Broadcast reporters, freelancers and students can keep the layout and swap in the personal statements below.

Editors hire from clips, but the CV decides whether they open them. Newsroom recruiters and news editors told us they scan for four things.

• The clips link, working, in the header. A personal site, a Muck Rack page or an author page at your outlet. Three to five best pieces, not fifty. Broadcast: a showreel of 2 to 3 minutes on YouTube or Vimeo.
• Patch, outlets and qualifications. What you have covered (council, courts, health, sport, business), for whom, and for how long, plus your NCTJ status: many UK newsroom adverts ask for the Diploma, often with 100 wpm shorthand, or for you to be working towards them. A specialist reporter who knows council budgets is a different hire from a general news reporter.
• Output and pace. Stories a week, packages a week, newsletter or podcast frequency. Daily newsrooms need to know you can file on deadline every day; magazines and investigations teams need to see you can sustain a long project.
• One story that did something. A resignation, an independent review, a policy change, national pick-up, an award. Editors call it impact; on your CV it is the sentence after the number.

“I open the clips before I finish the CV, so the link has to be in the first two lines. Then I want to know the beat and how many stories a week. A CV that says "strong writer with a passion for storytelling" and no numbers goes to the bottom of the pile.”

Three or four lines: your role and patch, years and outlets, output, one result, and your qualifications and tools. People also search for a "journalist career objective"; the student example below does that job while still leading with published work.

Each bullet point needs a patch or story type, an output number and, where you have it, what the story did. Use newsroom verbs (reported, broke, filed, presented, produced, edited) and name the platform. Seven common journalism CV lines rewritten:

Keep 10 to 15 skills and make them concrete. "Writing" and "communication" are assumed for a journalist. The patch knowledge, the shorthand and records skills and the tools are what set you apart.

Reporting and editorial skills:

• Patch or specialism (name it): local government, courts, education, health, business, sport, politics
• Records: Freedom of Information requests, court lists and court documents, council meeting papers and spending data, Companies House, HM Land Registry, Electoral Commission donations data
• Interviewing, contact building and verification
• Deadline writing in house style; Teeline shorthand at 100 wpm or above; feature, explanatory and long-form writing
• Data journalism: Excel or Google Sheets (pivot tables, VLOOKUP), Datawrapper, Flourish; Python, R or SQL if you use them
• Media law and regulation: defamation, contempt of court, reporting restrictions (including anonymity for victims of sexual offences and for children), privacy; the IPSO Editors' Code (or IMPRESS Standards Code), the Ofcom Broadcasting Code for broadcast
• Subbing and headline writing; SEO for news
• Second language (name it) for interviews and community reporting; Welsh is an asset for outlets in Wales

Multimedia and newsroom tools (list what you have actually used on air or in print):

• CMS: WordPress, Arc XP, Brightspot, Chorus; newsroom systems such as ENPS, iNEWS, Dalet
• Video: Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro; LiveU or TVU live units; DSLR and mirrorless cameras
• Audio: Adobe Audition, Pro Tools, Hindenburg; field recorders
• Photo: Lightroom, Photoshop
• Audience: Chartbeat, Parse.ly, Google Analytics, Mailchimp or Substack for newsletters
• Social and verification: X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook; reverse image search, InVID, geolocation basics

Your work is the credential. There is no licence for journalists in the UK; the NCTJ Diploma is the qualification many newsroom adverts ask for, so the CV's job is to show it and get the editor to your clips. Awards and professional training go in a short section after skills.

• Put one clips link in the header (personal site, Muck Rack, author page). Make sure it loads without a paywall or add a note that PDFs are available.
• Under each job, name one or two specific stories with what they did. Editors remember stories, not duties.
• Optional "Selected work" section: 3 to 5 headlines with outlet and date, each with a one-line note ("led to independent review", "picked up nationally"). Keep it under a third of a page.
• Broadcast: a 2 to 3 minute showreel link (YouTube or Vimeo, unlisted is fine) with your best live, package and presenting work.
• Awards: name, organisation, category and year (regional press awards, Royal Television Society awards, the NCTJ Awards for Excellence, Student Publication Association awards for students). Skip "highly commended" once you have a win or a shortlisting.
• Qualifications, training and memberships: NCTJ Diploma and shorthand speed, the National Qualification in Journalism (NQJ) once you pass it, Centre for Investigative Journalism courses, NUJ membership if you hold it, safety training. Real and recent only.
• Education: degree, university, year, and student media roles. A journalism degree is common but not required; an NCTJ-accredited course or fast-track Diploma is what many regional newsrooms look for, and clips outweigh both after your first job.

Journalism students have more publishable experience than they think. Student media, work placements, freelance pieces for a local outlet, a podcast, a newsletter and a course data project are all bylines and clips. The CV needs to count them and link to them. If you are not at university, an NCTJ fast-track course or a journalism apprenticeship is the other common route in.

1. 1Get a clips page up before you apply, even with five pieces. A free site or a Muck Rack profile works. Put the link in your header.
2. 2Lead with a three-line personal statement: degree and date, NCTJ progress and shorthand speed, your student media role, byline count, placements, and the type of role you want.
3. 3Treat student media as a job: title, outlet, dates, stories a week, staff you edited, stories with impact (a senior manager's resignation, a policy change, a story picked up by professional media).
4. 4Count everything you published: student paper, placement bylines, freelance pieces, a podcast episode count, a newsletter's subscriber number.
5. 5Add one bullet point per work placement with numbers and the best story. Add course projects only if they were published or won an award.
6. 6List the tools you can use without help: CMS, Premiere or Audition, Google Sheets, Canva or Datawrapper, a second language, and your current shorthand speed.
7. 7One page. Education (with NCTJ exams) at the top until you have a full-time newsroom job, then move it to the bottom.

Two pages is the UK norm for experienced reporters; students and trainees should fit on one. Go no longer than two pages even as a senior editor or an investigative reporter with many projects; the clips page carries the rest. No photo (broadcast reporters put the showreel link, not a headshot), no date of birth. Header with clips link, personal statement, experience, selected work if you use it, skills, qualifications (NCTJ, shorthand), awards and training, education. Large media groups use applicant tracking systems (ATS), so the words in the advert matter.

• Mirror the role words: "reporter", "trainee reporter", "senior reporter", "multimedia journalist", "video journalist", "local democracy reporter", "producer", "digital producer", "correspondent", "editor", and the patch as they name it.
• Name the tools they list: the CMS, Adobe Premiere, ENPS, Chartbeat, specific social platforms.
• Include the skill phrases they use: "breaking news", "off-diary stories", "FOI", "court reporting", "data analysis", "audience engagement", "SEO", "live blogs", "shorthand", "NCTJ", "IPSO Editors' Code".
• Save as PDF, use plain headings, and keep links as full URLs so they survive parsing and printing.
• Do not paste clips into the CV. Link to them. A cover letter or pitch note is where you talk about the stories you want to do for that outlet.