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Topic: journalism student seeking advice!
| Author | Message |
| robynone | Posted – 6/17/2007 11:31:34 PM | show profile I'm currently in my second year of college working towards a journalism bachelor of arts degree. I'm debating a few different minors, or possibly a double major in political science (ba). For a career, I would like to work for a daily newspaper, doing general reporting. What do editors like to see when they're looking for journalists to add to their staff? I know experience and clips is a must but what about degree-wise? Is it better to have knowledge of several topics, or be an expert in a specific topic? Any advice is appreciated! |
| candylilacs | Posted – 6/18/2007 2:34:50 AM | show profile I think there's a small percentage of editors who still want journalism degrees, but most don't care. What is important, however, are *internships*. Please get one or two of those at a daily, those will greatly help your chances of being hired! Good luck! ------ http://www.mswritesguide.blogspot.com |
| mkelly | Posted – 6/18/2007 9:20:57 AM | show profile You absolutely must work at the school newspaper or get local internships. After that, really, I couldn't care less that you have a journalism degree-- rest assured, I've met plenty of people with journalism degrees who are idiots when it comes to reporting. (Most seem to come from Columbia, but anyway...) You're also spot-on about getting a minor in some field to which you can apply your reporting degree. I'd say accounting, since the essence of almost every news story is money and accounting lets you learn how to follow the money. Or try science if that's your thing, or a foreign language if you want to work overseas (Spanish if you want to work at a major U.S. metro). Don't bother with poly sci. |
| HisGirlFriday | Posted – 6/18/2007 9:21:36 AM | show profile Will ditto candy's reply - the most important thing that editors look for is experience - get internships, summer jobs at your local paper. When I graduated from college I had professional clips from four or five "real" newspapers (beyond my campus daily) and I think that was about average for the jobs I was seeking. So I'd say that I'd focus less on getting a double major - spend your efforts and energy on getting real writing/reporting jobs. Start with your campus paper (If you're not there already) and use those clips to land summer internships _ or part-time jobs at the local daily/weekly. Good luck! |
| robynone | Posted – 6/19/2007 5:07:59 PM | show profile thanks for all the help! I neglected to mention I have over 40 clips to date from my school paper, and I'm doing an internship at a small paper now. I talked to my advisor again and between that and you guys I feel I have more direction. :) |
| Mr. Beemis | Posted – 6/19/2007 5:56:32 PM | show profile I would take a few business classes, in case you wind up doing financial reporting or work for some kind of trade pub. Anyone can do general reporting but if you have some math/business background it make you more marketable. |
| bjoconnorfla | Posted – 6/20/2007 9:27:33 AM | show profile Skip any undergrad journalism degree if you want to be a writer or reporter (not the same thing, btw). Economics, poly sci, literature, art history, something that puts you in touch with the history and development of ideas and culture. Biggest challenge is how to write about change and ideas, not just 10 inches on the zoning board. And, of course, you should do it all online and in multi-media. Skip covering another student council meeting for the campus paper and learn how to produce and edit sound at the campus radio station, or how to shoot and edit video at any affiliated TV station, even if its unpaid or not for credit. And, if you can take some hands-on courses in training, do that, too. Don't waste university $$$ and time on tech courses, like PhotoShop or web design or how to use Excel or Access; take those in the summer at community college. On clips, skip the college publication once you have a dozen good clips. You won't get much beyond basic training there, unless its one of the school papers that's well established and professionally managed. For example, the Univ. of Florida Independent Alligator is one, and its alumns (mostly non-j-degree) seem to constitute a bit of a UF mafia in Southeastern newspapers. So, if the paper can help you network with former staffers, keep up with it, but concentrate on stories that will boost your portfolio and prepare you for the kind of job you want when you get out. Think enterprise and investigative. Work up a CAR project looking at university donors or boosters -- there's always some sleazy situation with the nonprofit associations that raise money on the side for the univ. or the president. Use the univ resources -- computer geeks, law school profs and TAs, business school nerds -- to develop a project that will allow you to walk in to a small- or mid-sized daily as an experienced CAR reporter, for example. Besides internships, freelance. It's a good way to network and stretch and it can put a broader type of publication in your portfolio and expose you to what working there would be like. Experiment with a local magazine, biz journal, alt weekly, etc., and see if any of them appeal to you. All along the way, you are building a Rolodex (or Outlook .pst) that will help you when it comes time to hunt for a job. You want a list of people -- alumns from your school, prof. journalists who worked on the paper, editors and others from freelance and intern gigs -- that you can call on to say -- I want to do XX type of work in XX type of location and here is my background -- what would you suggest? Try as much as possible to casually meet with these folks when you can and get their advice and input while you're finishing school. Buy, read and use a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute (10 Speed Press). Most of all, figure out where you THINK you want to be in journalism, and talk to people about that career track. If you want to be a national reporter for a big paper, what would you have to do to get there? Move every two years? Get a graduate degree or fellowship? Write a book? What would that do to your family or marriage plans? How much monehy would you make and what kind of lifestyle would you be able to afford? If you want to work at, say the Wash Post, what papers do they hire from, and how do you get into those papers and do the work that will move you on? Look at the bigger picture and view each option or decision with the gauge of whether it helps get you toward your goal. Then don't be afraid to change your goal as you learn along the way. (For example, you'll learn that if you want to be the top editor of a chain-owned daily you need to become a complete and total jerk. Many have achieved that in spades, but maybe you'll decide it's not for you.) Plus, try to have fun, and take at least one course a year that you think has absolutely no value for you professionally. Good luck. |
| robynone | Posted – 6/20/2007 11:20:09 PM | show profile will anyone actually let a student pitch to them? and by the way- I go to UCF and I know enough about UF and the journalism school there to understand what you meant- the regional SPJ conference was in Gainesville in March. What angle can I use for papers to let me write for them as a freelance student? |
| seeattleme | Posted – 6/20/2007 11:51:24 PM | show profile Foreign language and experience abroad. If i did it all again and had the year to burn, I would sign up for the peace corp and go to Africa and learn Swahili. Seriously, learn one of two languages, and go abroad if you can. Pick fruit, whatever. More than anything else, editors value this most (for a newsweekly or magazine that covers such topics). If it's a fashion magazine you want to work at, spend some time in paris learning french. If it's a women's magazine you're interested in--I have noidea. But a degree in much of anything won't help you there. Study trends. Get a job with Faith Popcorn. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 6/20/2007 11:53:32 PM | show profile oh, and a student publication just won a Pulitzer, I believe--I think the paper at Virginia tech is up for something, or will be, and a piece on student loans got accolades. Features on local campus bands will get you a job at Rolling Stone--other than that, get your teeth into a meaty issue/investigative story that has national relevance. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 6/20/2007 11:59:31 PM | show profile Finally (I just spotted this questioninyour post) absolutely try to be an expert in many topics. The layoffs at SI recently had many people who've done and do nothing but sports chewing their nails down to the flesh. Never just write about one topic. Especially for a daily--chances are you'll be moved a round a great deal. And moved up--and to wherever you want --if you're good. While at a daily myself, I covered sports, features, health, bsuiness, and spot reporting. I also was a columnist. That was all in a year and a half. And my raises reflected the amount I was willing to do and where I was willing to go--to a skateboard park, to the mall, to a gay wedding, to a wifebeater's house, to a woman who makes sugar free chocolate. In that sense I was invaluable to the paper--and have been asked to return three times since leaving. |
| robynone | Posted – 6/21/2007 12:21:22 AM | show profile i've done a few national stories-pluto not being a planet, obama visiting etc. I've also done several articles about the med school we're getting. I've done reporting and writing on a variety of topics-as my clips show. how do I pitch to newspapers/magazines though? |
| bjoconnorfla | Posted – 6/21/2007 7:57:31 AM | show profile For other newspapers, you need a strong news hook to the story and it needs to be something their staffers normally wouldn't write. Try travel and entertainment ideas, and just call and ask for the features editor to start. Basically you'l be writing on spec, which is OK now but you don't want to do it after you've done a few stories or when you are more established. Also get a copy of the larger, better (ha!) dailies around and see where they already use freelancers. My paper, far from Fla., uses freelancers for a section of local business profiles. All a freelancer needs is a decent angle on an interesting business and some clips in English. Pay is low, but right now for your it's not about the money. Since you are in Florida and it's a big travel/tourism destination, look for good offbeat stories there. Most newspapers don't have their own travel writers anymore, so they take a lot of freelance and wire (again, pay is low). Florida is a HUGE honeymoon destination, so next year pitch some kind of most romantic Fla. honeymoon locations or some such around Feb. to papers in Wichita. Florida's secret beaches. Florida's nude beaches. Florida's oddest tourist stops. Florida eco-tours. How a tourist can go hunt an alligator in Florida. Whatever - needs to be an attention-grabbing kind of pitch. Find out what your friends are doing and see about developing that into something. Also, watch for breaking news and pitch the hometown paper. Nobody in Florida is from there. We had a cops reporter in Palm Beach who had interned in Detroit, and when a fairly prominent Detroiter got busted in Palm Beach, she freelanced the whole thing for The News, for example. All it took was one phone call, since no one really wants a pitch letter on breaking stuff. So, when a tourist from Cleveland gets kidnapped at Sea World, you need to be on the phone to the Plain Dealer pronto, offering to be their man in Florida. Do a good job, take your own pix, and do you think it would be, say, very easy to get an interview there? "Hi, Phil, this is Roby. I did the stories on the Johnson murder. I'm graduating in six months and was wondering who can I talk to about sending in an application?" Much better than being one of 60 resumes on some overworked AME's desk, don't you think? |
| harryfred | Posted – 6/21/2007 9:44:44 AM | show profile You are Way Ahead robynone: That's what it sounds like to me. The most important thing is to continue with that daily-paper internship. Or get another next year. Maybe segway it into a summer job. There also is a prestigous national summer journalism internship (out of Northwestern I think) where they place 12-20 students per summer in major urban dailies around the country like the Chicago Tribune, Wash. Post, with a well-paid stipend. I can't remember the name of it. To echo others, I think your minor does not matter except to deepen an area you are interested in. I'd recommend economics over political science. Economics is more difficult on your own to understand. American history would be useful. Amy science, if you want to pursue that. Accounting would make you a rare commodity, I bet. The best books of political science I have ever read are by Robert Caro, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in history. He has one volume on Robert Moses (amazing, eye-opening), and three volumes so far on LBJ. |
| Eeep | Posted – 6/21/2007 10:09:47 PM | show profile Don't be an English major That's my advice to all aspiring journalists. It's a waste. If you want to cover the news, get a degree in political science, economics, finance, sociology, environmental science, comp sci, Spanish -- anything that has something to do with the real world. Anything, that is, besides journalism. If you find you don't have the skills you want after a few years in the field, get a master's. I was an English major because I thought it would help my writing. You'll write just as much -- if not more -- as a history major. And you won't have to spend a lot of time in bullshit "cultural studies" classes that won't teach you a goddamn thing that you'll ever use after you graduate. Study something else. It's just not worth it. |
| Lizard Breath | Posted – 6/22/2007 12:28:57 AM | show profile I just graduated about six months ago and I haven't been able to find a job, so I can tell you what editors AREN'T looking for: a dual degree with poli sci. I loved my classes, but I really haven't gained anything but self satisfaction. I even hoped that it would help in my efforts to report on the primaries, but nobody cares. I do seem to notice, though, a lot of job openings for people who are educated or experienced in technology or business. Learn multimedia techniques, even if you can't find a journalism job right out of college, I have been asked about my skills in every office job I have interviewed for. Also, learn a second language and/or travel abroad (and try to do journalism there too). Do something that stands out. And like everybody here has said, do as much reporting through internships as possible. I went to school full time (and took summer school) at a tough school and worked 40 hours a week and only did a couple internships. Nobody seems to care about all my great waitressing experience. It's hard, but do as much as you can and get some great experiences that you can bring up in a cover letter or interview. It is hard for those who actually have to work to support themselves in college (unlike many it seems), but it is worth it to bust your butt now than work a crappy temp job that you are overqualified for. Ok, this post was half advice and half venting. I apologize. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 6/22/2007 2:22:16 AM | show profile It;s important to have EMPLYED experience during college. Great if it's a presti-internship with NPR or whatthe fuckever YOU can afford (because someone else is paying your rent and expenses--these are the people who accetp these non-paying jobs) but always get a paying job during college. And the more experience you get in a related field the better. Not just a job on the college paper--even if it pays. That's crap. But a Real. Paying.Job. And to be honest, if you have worked in high school, that helps. When you are 22, your resume will not be brimming with high scale employment. Unless mom went to school with Matt Lauer or something. So any job you take helps. List it --and references--with pride. Employers don't want scholars and they don't want academics and they don't want kids whose paretns' money bought them the ability to go do a bunch of high falutin internships the po folkk can't do. Employers want people who can sit behinfd a cubicle for nine or ten hours a day stapling and opening mail and not bitch about it for a year or two. That's a smaller number of college grads than you;d think are out there. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 6/22/2007 2:32:05 AM | show profile Lizard breath, that's what you need to get across to your interviewers. "I waitressed to put myself through college. I didn't have time for the non paying internships at KRAP decorating my cubicle with Rastafarian posters and Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers, picking up the station manager's dry cleaning so I could go out and interview people on the street on what they thought about thong underwear so i could get a co-producer credit. I fished pennies out of wine glasses and cleaned up baby vomit and took orders from people who thought it was fun to change their orders every ten minutes. I worked hard as a waitress, and if you've ever waitressed, you'll know from your experience as a waitress that if I could do that job well I can do this job well. No one works harder than a waitress. You wanna hard worker who's used to cleaning up other people's messes. getting people what they want--fast, without interruption--and making their experience as enjoyable and seamless as possible? Someone who's used to being on their feet all day (a few hours seated behind a desk? heaven to me!) Than hire me." Oh and by the way, I have a dual degree in poli sci. With that election coming up--and giuven the latest poll numbers, possibly a political revolution, you may need help from someone who is actually interested in Political Science and not Paris Hilton. " |
| HisGirlFriday | Posted – 6/22/2007 9:45:23 AM | show profile You are well on your way - very good suggestions on emphasizing Spanish and accounting. Editors I know would faint to have someone versed in those subjects. Just thought of something else - If you are interested in covrering politics - the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism runs a good internship. It's 4 months, paid $3k (yes, it's miserable) and you go to seminars run by politicans, wonks, reporters, etc and intern in DC buros of major papers. Some intrepid reporters end up with front-page, solo-byline clips covering major DC stories. |
| Lizard Breath | Posted – 6/24/2007 1:21:10 PM | show profile Thanks doglady, it is refreshing to hear from somebody that understands the plight of a working college student. I was forced to take an unpaid internship while I was in college, and I almost lost my sanity in the process. The editor was great and understanding, but I was going to summer school and working full time. I was literally sitting on the floor in the hallway of a building on campus doing phone interviews for my articles. I would love to bring up this experience in an interview, if I could get one. I guess I need to rethink my cover letters. I was always told that editors don't care about your non journalism experience, so I never thought to emphasize it. It is discouraging to see priority placed on Paris Hilton when there is plenty to be told about politics. Also discouraging is the fact that most of my other magazine journalism classmates who only read US Weekly and other rags have found employment immediately after graduation and I am stuck filing in the basement of a bank. |
| robynone | Posted – 6/24/2007 4:01:27 PM | show profile are most internships unpaid? I feel like I'm juggling your load-but i'm not working full time-just writing for the school paper/helping with weekly stuff, an internship and taking summer classes not to mention other campus involvments. I've always been the type of person to be extremely busy though. is anyone in SPJ? |
| aoscruggs | Posted – 6/24/2007 11:12:19 PM | show profile Journalism student seeking advice I've read through these postings and I disagree with lots of them. Here are my suggestions. 1) You need some journalism courses to understand reporting techniques, values and ethics of the profession. If you go to a school with a half-way decent journalism department, you will have access to recruiters, organizations and opportunities you won't have if you're outside the major. 2) Yes, you need internships. The clips from the school paper will help, but the internships will show you can fit into the structure of a daily newspaper. Finding internships is extremely difficult because the industry is constricting. Also, remember you are competing against students from excellent journalism schools such e.g University of Missouri, Syracuse, Northwestern. Many of them bring advanced skills in reporting, copy-editing, print and web design to the internships. 3) While you are still a student, join a professional organization such as SPJ, NABJ, NAHJ, etc. These organizations offer scholarships and again, access to the profession. 4) Take a leadership role on your school newspaper. Work on coverage, not just writing. 5) Spend less time on this board. It is geared more to writers than journalists. Head over to www.poynter.org. Poynter is a training institute for beginner and mid-career journalists. The site has a wealth of information on reporting, multi-media, copy editing, ethics, etc. I hope this all helps. |
