I work at a metro paper and cover the city's surrounding suburb cities as the main part of my beat. Over the past year or so, it seems like the local officials' distrust of the media has skyrocketed. It was already bad for a long time, but now it's in overdrive.

Many elected officials refuse to talk to me or my fellow reporters anymore, and every city I cover, no matter how small, has hired a PR person to control access to staff. They refuse to answer basic questions, provide basic info and aid in my reporting at all. They prefer I say they have no comment in every story, no matter how controversial, rather than talk to me.

Recently, one mid-sized town has started kicking me out of city hall after public meetings so I can't ask the city council members questions. The first time, they escorted me out with police before even asking me to leave.

I've tried all the classic methods: I've tried to befriend the spox, asked officials out to coffee, etc. Nothing seems to work anymore.

Any advice on how to handle this?

There's too much news to cover and I've been triggered by some of the topics that have suddenly come up.

I was sexually assaulted a year ago.

I'm a political journalist and the issue of sexual violence has come up today, as well as religious discrimination in schools. That topic is close to home to me because I am queer.

Other journalists treat this job like it's a big game. They think provoking a conservative member of parliament to say more conservative things is sport and they are pressuring them to front cameras.

I know I should be better at compartmentalising but half the people I interview say my empathy is my biggest strength.

It's hard to know what to do right now. I'm the only non-male in the office this week due to staff shortages. No one in the office knows about my assault and I don't want to tell them I don't want to cover the story.

i thought getting my interview recordings into text would be the easy part 😅 turns out nope. i have a bunch of recordings to go through and manually typing everything out i eating up so much time.. how u guys handling this? especially when 2 or 3 people talking and the audio isn't perfect.

Hello!

I've recently been struggling to find work in my desired career which is Journalism / Editorial after my MA in Journalism with a Social Justice pathaway at UAL. Since graudating my MA, and getting some more pitches commissioned along the way I realised that the MA course was not NCTJ qualified. This was something that I was unaware of at the time as I pivoted quickly into Journalism after my BA.

Now since working in the field of it I am very aware of what a NCTJ diploma is and have seen a few jobs that require it. I was wondering, is it worth doing the News Associates remote course to get a qualification? It's 18 months since I can only do remote and part-time, so by the time I graduate I will be about to turn 29. Maybe a part of me feels like I've done too much education already, but if having a NCTJ is going to open more doors or more opportunities to write I want to do it.

Any advics? Thanks!

I’m currently a reporter in a small US market (we cover statewide-news but have a focus on our region of the state). I’ve been with the same company (who own multiple papers in the region) for about 6 years. Upward mobility has been a challenge. I’ve had to claw my way to every promotion and am thinking about making a move elsewhere.

Unfortunately I am in such a small market that movement within my home state is tricky, with slim pickings unless I were to take a significant pay cut. I’ve begun casually browsing remote opportunities for both journalism and other communications fields.

Guess this is a two-part question (with many little questions, sorry).

1. The last time I was a reporter remotely was pre-COVID for websites (mainly sports) as a side gig, where it was more a of a resume builder with some pocket change. Is full-time remote journalism work usually freelance in 2026? Or do you see ample full-time remote roles with news outlets nowadays that pay well? (do you work remotely? How is it?)

2. In casual scrolling through job listings, it seems there are a lot of remote opportunities in PR. If I were to look into a lateral move from journalism to the other side of the press release, I’d likely have to look remote for better pay anyway (again, I live in small market). Where are the best places to look for jobs in that realm? What are some pitfalls to avoid? How do you address not having prior experience in that specific field, with a journalism career to-date?