What qualities make someone a good journalist?

The Society of Professional Journalists,” or SPJ, had an event in Kansas City last week, and at one panel, “participants put their brains together to think of qualities of a good journalist and qualities of a good leader,” according to an SPJ Instagram feed. “Many of them overlap.”

Here’s a tweet from Ayana Stewart, a journalism student at the University of Florida, that shows some of those traits:

Traits of a good #journalist. #SPJScripps pic.twitter.com/byqFzvfeH3

— Ayana Stewart (@AyanaStewart) March 7, 2014

I can see: Curious, well-read, timely, persistent, people-person, accuracy, informative, unafraid, thoughtful, proactive, skeptical, researchers, versatile, team players, prepared, listeners.

From the Instagram photo, I can also spot: Ethical, fair, integrity, frugal, individual, realistically balanced. I have no idea what that last one means—as opposed to unrealistically balanced? I also don’t know what it means that there’s a heart with an “X” through it next to the word “math.”

I don’t know whether good journalists need to love math or not, but they do need to be smart about it. In my days as a copy editor, I learned that whenever there’s math in a story, you have to check it and double-check it. There’s almost always a problem.

Nothing much to add. I just find it interesting to think about what qualities or traits make up a successful anything. Any qualities missing from that list? One Twitter wag suggested “workaholic.”

By the way, the SPJ Blog Network is a pretty good collection of blogs for writers and other journalist types.