Are you in high school and have a hankering to be the next Katie Curic or Chris Matthews ?

Or maybe you just want to find out what it would be like to be a reporter, and are curious as to what you could do to find out?

Here are a few tips to get you started.  

• Consider the possibility of writing outside of school.
• Find out if you can be a contributor to your local newspaper, city newsletters or church bulletins
• Try the occasional letter to the editor of your local paper.  This is  something you could print out and keep in your files.
• Try your hand at  interning for your local paper.
• Visit the journalism department at a neaqrby university  and talk to the students
• Sit in on one of their classes
• Talk to an alumni  
• Discuss your goals with your guidance counselor; let them know of your aspirations and see what suggestions they can offer.
• For broadcast journalism, drama instruction might help and it will give you  poise and presence on-air presentations.
• The same advice goes for the debate team
• Above all keep writing - write every single day, even if it's only in a personal journal or a blog.

Start up your own newspaper!

Don't think in terms of a gossip mag with big blowups of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears but something a tad more simple and more content-oriented.

Try this: Make your plans known to your journalism teacher. Tell them that you want to start a small school newspaper, perhaps twice a month, or just once a month. Get the teacher behind the idea (this requires persistence and salesmanship) so that you, and anyone else who wishes to have journalism experience can participate on the paper.

Think in terms of beginning with four pages ( which is two sheets, front and back) of 8.5x11" paper.

The teacher can have the school run it off on the photocopy machines, then you and your staff (you need a staff) can collate (organize) the two pages and staple them or attach in some way at the top left hand corner and then distribute them around the school.

You have a ready-made audience for your writing, after all, which is a big plus!

If there are say thiry in your class multiplied by four classes, it comes to 120 copies which would be plenty ( and remember that teachers, your family and others parents, administration and yes even the school board are going to want to read your new paper).

• Now you gather together the interested students (include the ones NOT enrolled in journalism too if they are interested) and
• get a meeting going,
• choose an editor (maybe you),
• make a list of the staff/story assignments,
• pick a catchy name for the paper,
• get a computer geek type to lay out the paper on the computer (and don't forget photos...pics can MAKE a paper work!)
• print it out...a laser printer is almost mandatory if you are going to have pics.