I'm a pretty big Malcolm Gladwell fan. Say what you want about his quirky approach to writing (or his hair) and the leaps and liberties he takes with the science he presents, the fact of the matter is that the guy opens up your mind to ideas and experiences you wouldn't normally consider. His books and his New Yorker articles are a must read and, to me, he is an excellent example of the magazine journalist.

That being said, he should be a pretty good source for advice on a career in journalism, right? Time has a great Q&A with Gladwell that covers topics like how he chooses a story, his thoughts on education and what advice he has for aspiring writers:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

This sounds like some pretty sound advice to me. Look, traditionally, to be a journalist, you needed to be flexible. Over the course of your career you may cover a number of different beats. I have a friend who started out covering real estate. She moved to the local crime beat and ended up the bureau chief in Iraq. That's flexibility.

But one trend I see in a number of journalists that I interview for The Blank Page is that they have formally studied something other than journalism. Journalism is something that you learn on the job, in the field, much better than you can in a classroom. Economics, statistics and political science are the exact opposite. They are steeped in research and theory and are better understood from a scholarly angle than in the thick of the action (if anything related to statistics can be termed "Action").

So I have to agree with Gladwell here. If you are a graduating J-student or a recent grad thinking of Grad School, consider strengthening another core knowledge area and using that specialization to land yourself a job.

A perfect example of this is The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin, a mergers and acquisitions columnist and reporter, whose newest book Too Big To Fail tackles the economic crisis and releases today. Andrew will be a guest next week on ThinkTalk, where among other things, we will discuss collegiate background at Cornell. If you have questions for Andrew, make sure you get them in right away.

And since we're on the topic of journalism, and I promised to post bites from our National Book Festival show each day this week, here's our interview with PBS's Gwen Ifill. Enjoy!

"Malcolm Gladwell" courtesy schipulites via Flickr Creative Commons

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