The art of communication
Why soft skills still matter. Pick up the phone. It works.
Ian created this picture of an old fashioned red telephone using Ai. But can you see the error. For people who are blind Ian never saw it either.
If you're going to be a journalist, you need to know how to talk to people. That might sound obvious, but it goes far beyond writing news scripts or turning in polished copy. It's about getting ideas across in a way that actually makes sense to other people.
And before any of that, there's the simple act of having a conversation with potential contributors and contacts.
We’ve somehow lost the knack for just picking up the phone or showing up in person. These days, people rely on text messages, emails or social media to make contact. Fine, in the right context. But they're not a substitute for an actual chat. You can’t pick up tone or instinct from an emoji.
For my generation, that’s not such a big deal. We grew up with landlines and human interaction. But I’ve noticed younger people seem less keen. That’s not a dig. I know plenty of young journalists who are excellent communicators. But I’ve also met plenty more who treat picking up the phone like it’s about to explode the second they try to make an actual call. Some are genuinely scared of talking to a stranger. Which is a problem if you’re investigating a story.
And it’s not just me saying this. At Nottingham College, Phone anxiety training they’ve actually started running workshops to help students get over their fear of phone conversations. One of the course tutors said many young people “simply don’t have the confidence to use the telephone” because they’ve never really had to. The sessions include role-play calls to businesses and basic phone etiquette. It's part of helping them get used to something that was once second nature.
If you're booking someone for radio or telly, don’t you want to know what they sound like? Can they string a sentence together? Will they freeze when the mic’s on?
A few years ago I worked with a young producer who booked guests without ever actually speaking to them. Just a few emails, then straight on air. Unsurprisingly, some of them were, let’s say, less than broadcast-ready.
So what’s going on? Some blame COVID. Others say it's because we work remotely now. But I noticed this long before the pandemic. Recently a colleague pointed out to me that People don’t even know how to answer the phone anymore. They just grunt down the handset like a gorilla. You’re left wondering if you’ve even called the right number.”
The thing is, proper communication is everything in journalism. And I don’t just mean writing emails or replying to comments. I mean speaking to real people.
Not long ago, my producer and I were trying to track down case studies. We’d sent a few emails, made a number of calls. Nothing. So we got in the car. The plan was to knock on doors, pop into community centres and visit the local library. You know the kind of thing. Just showed up and talked to living, breathing people. How analogue of us!
First stop, the library. And straight away, we hit gold. Librarians know everything. Who's who, what's going on, what matters to people locally. We had a quick chat with the head librarian, explained what we were looking for, and within minutes she’d pointed us to exactly the right group. Job done. All because we left the office and made the effort.
Decades ago, even before my time, journalists would hang around in pubs for story leads. And yes, this usually meant men. Some of them drank themselves into an early grave, which I’m definitely not recommending. But they were out there. They listened. They chatted. They built networks of real people, who they had met in real time.
A journalist I know started out in local newspapers. Same generation as me. On her first week, her editor gave her a very clear instruction: “Get out the door and don’t come back until you’ve got a story.” I’m not sure he was that polite. She told me she learned more from that one sentence than anything else, by getting off her backside, leaving the office and actually talking to people in her community.
I’ve always relied on that kind of personal connection. When I need to convince someone to go on the radio or TV, often against their better judgement, that takes trust. You don’t get that trust from an email. It comes from having a proper conversation. Being present. Making someone feel safe. Making sure they know they’re not about to be exploited.
These days, people think a WhatsApp voice note or a DM counts as proper interaction. It doesn’t. It’s not enough. Especially if you’re asking someone to tell you something personal or go public with their story.
So if you're thinking of going into journalism, and you're someone who’s good with people, who doesn’t mind picking up the phone or chatting in person, with good soft social skills, that’s your edge. That’s your superpower.
Use it. Because in the end, it’s not just about journalism. It’s about being a decent human being, with good social skills.
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