Want to be a journalist? Rejection is good for the soul (and other advice from a media veteran)

Two minutes after I published a post today on Neil Gaiman's inspirational commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I was alerted by Commitscion Neelima Bhamidipati (Class of 2012), via Twitter, to another uplifting commencement speech. Veteran CNN-IBN anchor Suhasini Haidar, who spoke to graduating students of WMA (World Media Academy) earlier this month, has posted her speech on her blog.

Haidar told the students she was rejected seven times when she applied for a job as a television journalist. Then, while explaining how rejection can be a boost for aspiring journalists, she listed her five wishes for young people seeking a career in journalism:

I am going to hope for you that each of you gets rejected for a job in exactly the same way because if you don’t understand what your passion is, it helps to have an interviewer that does. Because in the profession you have chosen, there will be many reasons to quit, and only one reason to stay — and that is the passion to tell a story.

1. I wish for you a really mean boss, one who makes you cry. Let’s be honest. This is a tough business, one where you have to push and bully your way to a story, you need to develop a thick skin early on.

2. I wish for you many, many days spent in the heat. So much of our job requires you to stand on someone else’s footpath, waiting for the person who lives inside to come out or go in; it’s a great thing to get used to.

3. I wish for you many unwell colleagues. That does sound horrid, but honestly, it’s how I got most of my early breaks. You get sent on an assignment only because someone else is indisposed.

4. I wish for you assignments in places where telephones and computers don’t work, because the joy of heading out to a remote area, where you work on one story for three days without having to report back, no hour-on-hour deadline pressure is something you must do.

5. I wish for you interviews with many eccentric quirky people… because those are the ones who will give you the story.

Read Suhasini Haidar's commencement address in its entirety on her blog: "Dear journalism students, I wish you many job rejections".

UPDATE (June 16, 2014): Earlier this month, Suhasini Haidar delivered the convocation address at the 9.9 School of Communication, where she asserted that good journalism can change you. Read the address in its entirety here.

• Also read: Wisdom and inspiration in Neil Gaiman's commencement address.

Mike Wallace: An interrogator of the famous and infamous

Before Karan Thapar, there was Mike Wallace.

Wallace, who died earlier this month aged 93, became one of America’s best-known broadcast journalists, according to a New York Times obituary, as an interrogator of the famous and infamous on the CBS news programme, 60 Minutes.

MIKE WALLACE IN HIS CBS OFFICE IN 2006. (PHOTO COURTESY: AP)

The New York Times obituary, written by Tim Weiner, gives us a glimpse into the man and his interviewing, or grilling, style:

A reporter with the presence of a performer, Mr. Wallace went head to head with chiefs of state, celebrities and con artists for more than 50 years, living for when “you forget the lights, the cameras, everything else, and you’re really talking to each other,” he said in an interview with the New York Times videotaped in July 2006 and released on his death as part of the online feature “Last Word.”

Mr. Wallace created enough such moments to become a paragon of television journalism in the heyday of network news. As he grilled his subjects, he said, he walked “a fine line between sadism and intellectual curiosity.”

His success often lay in the questions he hurled, not the answers he received.

The obit continues:

For a 1976 report on Medicaid fraud, the show’s producers set up a simulated health clinic in Chicago. Was the use of deceit to expose deceit justified? Hidden cameras and ambush interviews were all part of the game, Mr. Wallace said, though he abandoned those techniques in later years, when they became clichés and no longer good television.

Some subjects were unfazed by Mr. Wallace’s unblinking stare. When he sat down with the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader, in 1979, he said that President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt “calls you, Imam — forgive me, his words, not mine — a lunatic.” The translator blanched, but the Ayatollah responded, calmly calling Sadat a heretic.

“Forgive me” was a favourite Wallace phrase, the caress before the garrote. “As soon as you hear that,” he told the Times, “you realise the nasty question’s about to come.”

Journalists, especially those working in television, would surely be interested in learning more about Wallace and his reporting techniques. How about the rest of us? Are there any lessons we can draw from Wallace's life? Yes, says Eric Jackson, a Forbes contributor, and they apply whether you care about journalism or not:

1. If you don’t wake up in the morning excited to pick up where you left your work yesterday, you haven’t found your calling yet.

2. When a new medium comes along, embrace its possibilities.

3. If you aren’t breaking the rules a little in your profession, you aren’t going far enough.

4. How would your life be different if your epitaph read “Tough But Fair”?

5. Face your demons head on.

Jackson elaborates on each point on the Forbes website: "5 Lessons from Mike Wallace's Life for All of Us".

Jackson also provides links to highlights of three of Wallace's interviews. Watch the snippet from the 1976 interview with the Shah of Iran and also the nine-and-a-half-minute-long excerpt of Wallace's interview with Ayn Rand. You can watch the full Ayn Rand interview here. It was shot in 1959 in B&W and the production values may not be great. But it's riveting stuff nevertheless.

• Thank you, Kokila Jacob, for the Eric Jackson tip-off.