First, Chris mentions some reading material to diversify your knowledge sources. He lists a various pool of periodicals for the picking, although he dances a fine line.

“I also encourage you to run through People Magazine, The National Enquirer, and similar magazines. They’re not necessarily the source for new words, but their writers are allowed to get away with bold headlines and more creative pieces of content.”

But beware. I’ve read People magazine, and a good portion of their journalism amounts to trickery for spreading gossip as conventional wisdom. While it is a good magazine to get another perspective from, be wary of some of the techniques they use. Being a gossip-esque magazine, they’re entitled to get away from such things.

Chris does go forward to mention you should research information and sources extensively, which can forgive this his lack of explanation here. However you need to be wary of your sources as well. Chances are if you’re doing research on Kotaku, you should double up the info from another site as well.

The human nature bit has “nothing” to do with good journalism. Unless you’ve lived in a cave alone all your life, it’s well known flirting is sometimes used as leverage. It’s good knowledge, but knowing this won’t make you a better journalist. It will simply keep you out of trouble, as it would in any aspect of your life.

All together, I think Chris gave a good rudimentary guide to some of the skills an aspiring journalist needs to posses. Although there’s much more involved, this is enough to get someone started.

I’d like to make my own suggestion at this point. Join a discussion forum. That alone has improved my research skills, writing skills and thought patterns. I remember the first post I made, and I was GRILLED for the assumptions I made and the inaccuracies I was basing my opinions off of. Needless to say, that didn’t happen again. It served as a good testing ground for discussions, debates, as well as developing those PR relationships Chris talked about.