Advice from an Established Entertainment Reporter

Daniel Rubino is an established entertainment reporter, whose article on computer game researchers I recently blogged. We started a friendly conversation in the comments, and I asked, him if he had advice for students who might want to become an entertainment reporter. What he says should sound very familiar to anyone who took my "Practice of Journalism" course last year:

One learns to write by writing. I have been on deadline for a quarter century. Ground yourself in the toughest sort of reporting first. I started as a police reporter, and worked a career before moving to entertainment. Way back, in Norfolk, Virginia in the beginning of the 1980s, I covered police, fire and federal courts, and no one wanted to cover a Weather Report show. I volunteered, and quickly added The Pretenders, B52, U2, the Romantics, Stranglers, Springsteen etc.. Then continued on the straight and narrow, reporting on Naval supply thefts, serious stuff, moving to Louisville, where I just did investigative reporting, and then to Philly. I chose entertainment this fall after finishing three years in Berlin, as the European Bureau chief for Knight Ridder, which owns the Inquirer and others. This was safer than dodging bullets in the Balkans and Israel, which I did a lot. So my new beat is the business of entertainment, and I cover what I have missed in the past three years: how dessert in America became the main course. I am drawn to marketing, new media and music. I do a couple stories a week, typically, and get to choose about half my assignments - stuff like spam poetry, the politics of the iPod, downloading ethics, and now, edifying gaming. My advice, to recap is read and write. Then read some more, and talk it over with a friend. Then write like it keeps you from sinking.