There's no such thing as writer’s block when you are reporting real-time news. Time is tight and you have to know what the financial industry wants. Early mornings, liaising with investors and analysts and reporting on results, reactions and fallout are all part of a day’s work. “It’s definitely an adrenaline rush,” says Lilly Vitorovich, a reporter at Dow Jones Newswire. “You’re the first to report the news.”

Accuracy is vital, Rachel Sanderson, the European retail and luxury goods correspondent for Reuters, says. “Your client is trading on the back of what you’re reporting, so it has to be accurate.” After graduating with an English degree from Cambridge in 1997, Sanderson worked in the City before applying to the Reuters graduate trainee programme. All the major companies – Dow Jones, Reuters and Bloomberg – offer internships. “We want to see someone who has demonstrated a commitment to journalism, whether that is a qualification, working on the university newspaper or work experience,” says Nigel Stephenson, the editorial training manager at Reuters.

This is a view shared by Adam Smallman, the managing editor of energy and commodities at Dow Jones Newswire. “I don’t mind whether it’s financial news or poetry – I want to see examples of intelligent creative writing; I look for an entrepreneurial spirit in a reporter.”

Language skills and a finance or business qualification are looked on favourably, and an interest and awareness of financial markets are essential. Technical knowledge can be taught, but there are two things that can’t: instinct and curiosity. “We work in a business where there are thousands of stories a day,” Smallman says. “It is not about reproducing numbers in a press release. You have to create something unique from a story everyone is writing about.”

“It should be in a journalist’s DNA,” Stephenson says. “You have to be curious, to find the story behind the numbers.”

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