Welcome to the forum and good luck with your plans to move here
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I will be looking for jobs as well as touring schools. Any advice on tracking down jobs that would qualify for a work visa?
Honestly, if you're looking at grad schools, the easiest way to move here would be to get a student visa, which would also then allow you to work for up to 20 hours per week during term-time (full-time during vacations) without needing a work visa. However, you would not be able to take any permanent positions and you would need to show you can fund your studies (1 year of tuition plus £9,000 in living costs in London are needed in order to qualify for the visa) without needing to work in the UK.
In terms of getting work visas, this is much harder, because in order for a UK company to sponsor and hire you, they would either need to show that the job is listed on the skills shortage list (but journalists are not in shortage in the UK, so this wouldn't work) or they would need pass the resident labour market test... i.e. prove that they couldn't find a single qualified journalist in the entire UK or the EU (that's 500 million people) before they would be allowed to hire you. Considering that unemployment in the UK is high and there are currently dozens of UK applicants for every job vacancy (especially newly-qualified graduates), this is extremely unlikely.
However, having said that, if you were to gain a masters degree from a UK university, I believe that if you wanted to get a sponsored work visa to stay in the UK, you would be exempt from having to pass the resident market labour test (due to having a UK degree), and so it may be easier for you to qualify for a work visa than with just a US degree.
