Halperin will be one of thousands of political journalists focusing all their professional skills on Election Day 2004. But journalists cover topics as broad as life itself: from crime to business, from sports to the environment, from celebrities and pop music to food and travel.

Journalists deliver news on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet. Each form demands special skills and a unique approach to communicating the news. Television, for example, depends on visual images, which give TV news reports an immediacy the other forms are hard-pressed to match. A story is told through images, with words added by the reporter to stitch the story together.

Print stories, however, rely mostly on words and a limited number of well-chosen photos to tell the story. Newspaper and magazine reporters must depend on vivid writing and details to make a story come alive for readers. The Internet also relies on the written word. But unlike a daily newspaper, Internet reports are updated around the clock. That means Internet reporters must be quick to respond to changing news with a speed that is closer to that of TV and radio, even though they are essentially print journalists.

Radio depends on sound and voice. Radio journalists report news the way old-fashioned storytellers do--each story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. With a radio report, listeners can't go back a few paragraphs to check on a detail, as they can when reading a newspaper article.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, currently a correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), has worked as a print, television, and radio reporter. During her days as a TV correspondent covering Asia for World Monitor, Hagerty rode on a longboat up a jungle river in Burma (now Myanmar) to meet with rebel fighters opposed to the Burmese government. For another story, she traveled to remote villages in Siberia.

She calls those challenges "the adventures of a lifetime." But they weren't the dream of a lifetime. Hagerty didn't plan to become a reporter in high school or even in college. It wasn't until she got an internship at the Christian Science Monitor in her early 20s that, as she explains' it, she was "bit by the bug."

What attracts people to journalism? Whether they had always dreamed of becoming reporters or came to the profession later in life, most journalists say they are motivated by a strong love of language and story-telling and a desire to investigate.

During her internship, Hagerty says, she found that what she had always loved to do meshed perfectly with news gathering. "I love asking questions," she says. "I love telling stories. I love writing. I love putting my nose in other people's business--and someone was paying me for it."

At NPR, Hagerty started as an editor on the foreign desk, where she helped organize international coverage. Later she became a legal correspondent. Hagerty reported on two men who were held on Oklahoma's death row for 12 years until DNA evidence proved neither one had committed the murder for which the two had been convicted. Her report helped make listeners aware of the potential danger of wrongful convictions. "I could alert people," she says, "and then see an effect of a report I did."

That desire to write about issues important to people can also be satisfied at the local level, says Byron Dobson, a community and religion reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. In today's fast-paced world where people are deluged with national and international news on TV and the Web, Dobson's greatest satisfaction as a newspaper reporter is telling his readers what's going on right under their noses in their hometown. "People are hungry for local news," he says. "They want to read stories about their neighborhoods. They want to see you active in their community. That means showing up, and it means writing about people and about how they're affected by the issues. You're the watchdog for the readers."

Television, radio, and print journalists all have the same basic goals: to report news and to inform their audiences about the issues. But each medium requires its own approach to news gathering and offers a variety of job opportunities for would-be journalists.

In television journalism, a news team might be assigned to cover a story in the field, such as a speech by one of the presidential candidates. The on-scene producer works with the story's reporters to decide what to film, whom to interview, and how to shape the overall direction of the story. Production assistants arrange interviews and handle details such as where and when the interviews will take place. Reporters, many of whom never appear on camera, gather the information for the story. The reporters often write the script that will be read by an on-air reporter, the familiar face viewers see on television regularly.

Film is sent by satellite link to the station's headquarters, where producers work with tape editors to put it all together--sometimes working frantically to ready a story for broadcast only minutes before it airs.

When that moment arrives, the anchor announces the story on the air. The program's director, sitting before a bank of television screens, orders technicians to cut to the story.

At newspapers, the scene may be less high-tech, but the process is similar. Editors, working with reporters, choose the stories to cover. Reporters work the phones and hit the pavement to cover events and interview key people. Once the reporter has gathered the facts, he or she writes the story and sends it to an editor, who helps shape the story so that readers won't bump into any unanswered questions. Other editors decide where the story will appear on the newspaper's pages or Web site and choose photos to run with the story.

Radio reporters tape-record their interviews. Back at the station, they work with tape editors to tell the story using bits of sound and snippets from the recorded interviews.

How do most journalists get their start? Some begin by working on their high school and college newspapers. Roger Simon is a columnist and political editor of U.S. News & World Report, a weekly national newsmagazine. He is a frequent guest political analyst on national television programs such as Meet the Press. But at the University of Illinois in the late 1960s, he was a beginning reporter and editor on his campus newspaper. During that turbulent era, Simon covered the civil rights movement and campus protests of the Vietnam War--stories of national significance, as the 2004 presidential election and the conflict in Iraq are today.

"In shaping my life and my career," Simon says, "those years working on my college newspaper were the most important." After college, he honed his skills at a news service in Chicago. "I learned how to cover a floating body in a river, a fire, or a parade," Simon says. Those basic reporting skills serve him well even today as he interviews the president or presents an election analysis.

For many journalists, internships at news organizations jump started their careers. Mark Halperin of ABC News interned as a desk assistant. He spent much of his days making copies and answering phones. The internship got him noticed and promoted, but perhaps just as important, it helped him understand why he wanted to be a journalist.

"This business is attractive to a lot of young people because it seems glamorous, powerful, and lucrative, and it can be all of those things," Halperin says. He believes that the journalist must look beyond the glitz and report the facts, such as how those who hold power may act in their own interests rather than in the public's interest. In an election, he says, reporters must tell the news in an objective way that allows "voters to connect how they vote with what the government will do."

Today, dozens of interns and assistants at ABC News, most just out of college, learn the ropes and gain insight into journalistic tradition and practice. Asher Levine, a desk assistant, answers phones, makes copies, and generally plays the role of jack-of-all-trades at ABC. The job has netted him many late nights at ABC's New York offices. (ABC News personnel work in the New York City headquarters 24 hours a day.)

Levine was on duty at 3 a.m. on December 14, 2003. An ABC reporter called from Iraq, saying he'd heard a rumor that U.S. forces had captured Saddam Hussein.

Levine's job that night was to phone some of the most powerful producers at ABC, wake them up, and tell them about the rumor. Within an hour, those top officials, many wearing sweatpants, had gathered at ABC News headquarters to organize coverage of what was either going to be a huge story or a false alarm. As it turned out, the report was true. ABC was able to confirm the story and break the news before the other TV networks.

"What was amazing that night," says Levine, "is how I was calling all of these really important people at home and waking them up. ... Not one of them said, 'Why are you bothering me?' They all just said, 'We need to come in.'"

Election night 2004 will be the end of a long, busy time for journalists and editors in the news media. Many will have spent months on the road, living in motel rooms and surviving on coffee in Styrofoam cups and doughnuts grabbed on the run to catch the flight to the next campaign stop.

The work can be grueling, but a career in journalism has its payoffs. Simon says covering a national political campaign is "like summer camp for adults." But it's summer camp with a serious purpose. Simon finds his greatest rewards "when I can lift the curtain and give a view behind the professional façade the campaign presents and show the wizards behind the curtain pulling the levers."

Perhaps it's that combination of seriousness and pure enjoyment that gives rise to the kind of journalism that the public can't tune out. "Our goal [at NPR]," says Hagerty, "is to make you late for work. You have to sit in your car and wait to hear the end of the story."

"Writing, grammar, literature, spelling ... these are just a small part of the puzzle. Journalism is more than good writing. Study current events. Spend a lot of time reading different periodicals and newspapers. Brush up on different subjects; study social sciences, psychology, history, political science. These are the things you deal with every day as a journalist"

Journalism.org's "Tools for Students" page provides general information on the news media and the business of good reporting. www.journalism.org/resources/tools/students.asp

The Detroit Free Press has a Web site for high school students interested in careers in newspaper journalism. Click on "FREE: Journalism Career Guide" to order exactly that.

www.freep.com/jobspage/high/index.htm

The American Society of Newspaper Editors' Web site for high school journalists offers links to more than 400 high school newspapers, information on journalism scholarships and summer programs. and an "Ask a Pro" section.

www.highschooljournalism.org

National Public Radio's Next Generation Radio project offers weeklong training opportunities for students interested in radio journalism. Check out the archives to listen to student radio training projects. The Web site also has many useful, links to other good journalism resources for students.

www.npr.org/about/nextgen/index.html.