As you said, the first level is the language syntax, var, control flow etc.
Second level, data structures, list and list comprehension, dictionaries etc.
Third level, recursion and algorithms, or how to solve problems in python, what you'll often see it referred as "the pythonic way".
Don't be too academic with these that it becomes boring, but just enough that you start feeling comfortable building some small console apps, that can read and write files, crawl some pages from the web, that kind of thing.
Once you're good with that, you can start with frameworks. The danger you want to avoid is to start too soon, and have a hard time separating the complexities of the language with the ones from the framework.
The MOST IMPORTANT thing is to start practicing, and keep practicing.
Very few people stay motivated to study, unless they have some kind of goal.
So try finding your goal first. Perhaps it would be to create something that would help your life as a journalist.
Then, once you have your goal, try to create it. You'll discover what you're missing. It might be that you don't know how to store things so that they can be found flexibly -- so you then study databases. It might be that your code is far too slow -- so you study algorithms. It might be that you need to plug in functionality that others have written -- so you study frameworks.
Don't be too academic with these that it becomes boring, but just enough that you start feeling comfortable building some small console apps, that can read and write files, crawl some pages from the web, that kind of thing.
Once you're good with that, you can start with frameworks. The danger you want to avoid is to start too soon, and have a hard time separating the complexities of the language with the ones from the framework.