Archives: June 2005

Q: I am a reporter with eight years of on-air T.V. news experience in major markets such as Las Vegas and Memphis. I’m now looking to make a move into public relations…specifically entertainment public relations. I will be visiting San Francisco in a month. Do you have any advice on ways to break into the P.R. field there? Do you know of any companies in the area that I should start researching?”
A: Well, I don’t, but independent communications consultant Jennifer Woodard does.
“My advice for a journalist looking to transition into PR would be to learn as much about the area of PR that they are interested in and network themselves into either a small boutique agency, a company’s communications department, or begin themselves as freelance PR consultants. Huge agencies are probably out of the question.
In the case of larger PR agencies, I believe (though others may disagree) that one without direct Public Relations experience would have to start their career at a level at which they probably won’t be interested in lowering themselves to, especially if they, like this gentleman, already have extensive experience in the field of journalism.
The case can be different in companies. I have, in the case of a colleague, seen a journalist from a top-tier pub network himself into the communications department of a very large international company. This person was well into his forties, and was hired at a manager level. Again, perhaps not the level this reporter is aspiring to. But, if you are willing to go this route, I recommend either the communications department of a small to mid-size company, a boutique agency, or the freelance route. Oh, and freelance is way more lucrative, if less consistent.
If this person is not already a member of PRSA, I would strongly recommend he join. Here in San Francisco, the local chapter has weekly networking events. They are mostly just mixers, but sometimes you’ll find agency people looking for talent and he could get lucky. Plus, he’ll meet other PR people. San Francisco, however, is not the capital of Entertainment PR. That would be LA, for obvious reasons.
I think the best advice is to be active in the local business community. Go to lots of events, meet a lot of people, and let them know that you are looking to make this transition and if they know anyone who’s hiring, to send them your way. Some mainstays for me in terms of events: MediaBistro, MediaPost, PRSA, Craiglist, and local SBA (Small Business Administration). This last one holds lots of networking lunches and other events, and they have a calendar on their web site listing all the events.
Networking is the best tool, I believe, to find work. You never know where you’ll meet your next client or your next boss. And even though it’s hokey, if you expect someone to trust you to promote them or their business, you first have to show them you can promote yourself. So get out and promote!”

Got a question? Write me.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion's Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook's Morin Oluwole, and bitly's Tim Devane. Register now.

New information for the How to Pitch guides for the Columbia Journalism Review, Premiere and Playboy. Hubba-hubba.

Last week we featured Los Angeles, and today we move up the coast to San Francisco. Jill Singer speaks with editor-in-chief Bruce Kelley about the magazine, featuring a new look in November. This is a great place to pitch for new writers, as the editors are interested in finding new voices. “The magazine is always looking for urban trend stories. The current issue, for example, has a 500-word piece called ‘The Ghosts of San Francisco Present,’ which looks at the eerily quiet neighborhoods that result when non-natives buy up property in the city as second homes…Other pitchables: Writers can pitch profiles, but only if you have access to someone the editors haven’t been able to snag or if it’s somebody who hasn’t gotten a lot of previous coverage.”
Travel and criticism are off-limits. Email pitches to assistant editor Scott Hocker, who will file pitches with the correct editor.

MBToolBox cannot lie: It knows nothing about the art of poetry. Fortunately, however, it knows people who do. Eve Wood is the author of two books of poems, Love’s Funeral and Six (both published by Cherry Grove Collections), a chapbook entitled Paper Frankenstein (Beyond Baroque Press), and Correspondence (Gegensatze Press, Austria). Her work has appeared in numerous books and journals including The Best American Poetry 1997, The New Republic, The Denver Quarterly, Triquarterly, Poetry, Witness, The Wisconsin Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Greensboro Review, Exquisite Corpse, The Florida Review, The Antioch Review, and many others. She was most recently a guest on KPFK’s Poet’s Cafe. Eve is the recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship and a Brody Grant. She has written art criticism for Tema Celeste, ArtUS, Artext, Artweek, and Artnet.com., Bridge Magazine, Latinarts.com, Flash Art, and Art Papers. And she has some advice for you.
“Once you’ve decided to pursue your poetry as a career, it is important to investigate the publishing possibilities best suited for your type of work. If you write haikus, you need to subscribe to the magazines that publish this form.
1.) Invest in the literature (books like The Writer’s Market (Writer’s Digest Books, Edited by Nancy Breen) and The Poet’s Market can be very useful)
2.) Target Your Market: Go through the books and decide which magazines you feel are best suited to your work. The Poet’s Market is very detailed and will give examples of the kinds of works they publish. It is a good idea to then subscribe to these magazines, or at least go out and get a copy. You can call the magazines directly to have them send you a few sample copies.
3.) Understand that you will not make a living at poetry, but that you will derive a great sense of satisfaction when you see your first poem in print.
4.) Keep a journal of submissions, where and when you submitted poems, and to whom to avoid multiple submission errors. (Editors hate it when a writer sends the same work to more than one magazine at a time)
5.) Circulate your best work, BUT keep writing all the time to avoid running out of submission material.
6.) Read poets whose works you admire and drop them a line
7.) Try to develop relationships with editors so when you submit, they know who you are. The best way to do this is to subscribe to the magazine and write personal notes to the editor about how much you enjoy reading their magazine and what exactly about it compels you. Editors are people too and they love it when a writer takes the time to really respond.
8.) Don’t send out your newest, greenest work, though you may feel it is your best. Send only poems that have been work-shopped.
9.) Join a writer’s group where you can get feedback on your writing.
10.) Read, Read and Read some more.”

You want to know more, don’t you? Take Eve’s Mediabistro course!

Many writers don’t really identify with letting their stories ‘tell themselves’ or letting their ‘character so what comes naturally.’ On the other hand, many others do and they usually write novels annoyingly quickly that receive obnoxiously good reviews. So anyway. If you want to give that a try, an article on Absolute Write preaches “knowing your characters like you know your friends:”
“There’s really only one way to develop your intuition about your characters: spend a lot of time with each one– that’s how you get to know your friends. Picture them in your mind. What are they wearing? How do they talk? Are they confident? Do they talk more than listen? What would it take to get a rise out of them? There’s no set way to spend time with them, you just have to focus on them until they are familiar. When they start to feel like a friend, when you look forward to thinking about them and seeing what new details have arisen, you’re where you need to be.”

Age:37
Location:Oak Park, Illinois and online.
What’s the latest thing you’ve worked on?
Almost all of my freelance writing is for the Chicago Tribune, and lately, in addition to my coverage of three communities and assorted breaking news, I have been reporting on the mysterious murder of an associate professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Peter D’Agostino. I covered his memorial service, among other assignments related to the aftermath of his murder.
What has been your most difficult project and how did you deal with its challenges?
Overall, getting and telling stories filled with crisis has been the biggest recurring challenge. Here is a link to my approach.
The most difficult project in recent memory:
Since February 2003, I have covered the town of Cicero for the Chicago Tribune. For the next 26 months, gathering information from the administration was arduous and, sometimes, impossible. In response to stories that revealed various problems with and questionable decisions by his administration, the town president (voted recently out of office) stopped speaking to me. I had to file FOIA requests for basic public information, such as a listing of bills paid.
I dealt with this ongoing challenge by cultivating a variety of sources from inside and outside town hall, and by being persistent with my requests for information. I made it clear that I would not back away, and that if anyone chose not to comment for a given story, then it would not halt the story’s publication. It helped a great deal to have good editors that stood behind me.
What’s the best or most helpful thing that you’ve learned about writing, editing or publishing?

Objectivity is an illusion-we bring our life experiences and biases, subtle or strong, into everything we do. However, it is vital that throughout the process we treat everyone with respect and strive to be “FAT”-fair, accurate and thorough. And it all starts with talking to as many people as possible, with an openness to all perspectives.
What’s the worst writing or editing advice you’ve ever gotten?
One editor once advised me to never offer to go off-the-record with a source. While I don’t go out of my way to look for opportunities to go off-the-record, there are times when it is the only way to gather insight that can help provide context and tone for a story. It also builds trust, which is a long-term must if you want to develop in a given beat. Off-the-record information often leads to on-the-record information that elevates a story’s quality and impact.
How do you plan a training session and figure out what students want to learn and the best way to impart it?
I interview participants by telephone and through e-mail. This process enables me to tailor a session while at the same time helping me and participants identify their needs (which may vary from what they initially think they need). By investing time up front, I develop a solid rapport with participants, who at the same time develop a more vested interest in the session’s success. The wiser clients understand the value of this planning phase, and make some of their employees or members available by phone or e-mail.
My stated goal is always to share information and inspiration that will reap results for participants on their very next deadline. That puts the focus where it ought to be–on their needs.
Since my first training session in February 2001, I have found the best way to impart the information is by emphasizing interaction between the participants and me as well as amongst the participants. (Note: I do not refer to them as students, as I stress to them that we are all students and teachers.)
I develop a clear outline up front, share the road map with participants, and then strive to have as much fun as possible through features such as “Golympics,” a game-show format in which participants assemble into teams, select a team name, and then compete against one another by answering questions based on topics previously covered. This puts their new learning into immediate application and maintains a high level of interest and enthusiasm.
I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that I occasionally nudge folks’
interaction with sugar-packed inducements (candy).

An ongoing question for freelancers is, what do you charge when you’re working with a small client that’s not used to hiring out work? Writer’s Weekly has some tips, including:
Get the entire preliminary scope of the project in writing. Be sure to list as many details as possible. If the project description seems too broad, ask lots of questions and include the additional information they provide in your proposal and the contract itself. This will be your best weapon later when they don’t want to pay you for additional work.
Estimate the total number of hours you believe will be required. Stress in bold that this is a rough estimate, based on the scope of work initially provided to you for this project.
Quote an hourly rate. If the client wants to see a round number, multiply the hourly rate by the projected number of hours. But, remember to stress that the figure is a rough estimate based on the information initially provided by the client and again state you’ll be billing them by the hour.

Novelist Quinn Dalton discusses the dangers of unbylined reviews:

There are some good arguments to be made for trade publications reviewing books anonymously. Nobody wants to read a review that is a thinly-veiled tool for self-advancement or a little back-slapping between friends. But anonymity causes as many problems as it solves, and I think reviewers-at least the professionals-—should cut it out…

…Why does Amazon want customers to attach their names to their reviews? As Jerome Weeks, books editor of the Dallas Morning News, put it in a 2004 article “Book Blurbs But No Names? For Shame,” which discussed the Amazon glitch, “The real question is the implied moral challenge: Who are you to pass judgment on books?”
Weeks then makes a distinction between the consumer and professional reviewer. “Any reader will have his own opinions and can express them freely on Amazon. The more, the merrier (although it certainly helps if you can spell). But, contrary to popular belief, a review is not simply an opinion. A review is an act of persuasion, an argument.”
And, he wonders, “Who knows what ax an anonymous critic may be grinding?”

More here.

When I graduated from college, I had no idea what my resume was supposed to look like. Should it be in a standard Microsoft Template? Should it have a fancy font to reflect my ‘creative’ side? Should I have somebody write it for me? Many writers wonder whether their resumes should pop out in terms of style to catch an editor’s eye, but do editors mostly find this obnoxious? I posed this question to Alex Twersky, resume revamper here at Mediabistro:
“Remember the old adage: beware of style over substance? Well, it’s completely applicable to the question of how a resume should look. In no way should the formatting of a resume overshadow the clarity/specificity of its content; its clearly targeted focus; and its logical organizational structure which should present information in the proper sequence, guiding the reader through the “story” that you, the prospective employee, is trying to convincingly tell. Some folks think a dazzling resume format will knock the socks off a hiring manager. In my humble opinion, the format is never more important than the content. Moreover, it should work hand in hand with the content to make sure all the right information is being properly delivered, such as your professional objective, previous job accomplishments/highlights, and targeted work history really stand out. I’ve seen resumes that employ all sorts of graphic bells and whistles: snazzy typefaces, dancing geometric patterns, and even photos! None of these will impress a manager more than a competently structure and articulately composed resume. But in order to aid that information flow, feel free to use clear typefaces (going beyond the Times New Roman monopoly is fine), borders as section dividers, bullet points, and bolded section titling. Keeping the layout conservative is always advisable (no fancy colors or icons), but folks in more creative fields should feel free to use a little professional discretion here in how much they want to showcase their design skills on the resume itself. Remember, let the information speak for itself, and make sure it has a strong, achievement-oriented story to tell.”

You may recognize the name of my contributor today if you’ve been reading your Revolving Door Newsletters lately. “Delaina Dixon has been named a staff writer for OK! magazine. She was previously a freelance writer for Celebrity Living.” What might interest you thought is that Ms. Dixon found her positions not through connections but by the job postings on this very site. Read on for how to make the listings work for you.
They say it’s who you know that gets you a job in the publishing industry, and I certainly wouldn’t dispute that. But don’t overlook the obvious. The want ads, like the ones conveniently posted on mediabistro, are a great place to find work. While there are several good reasons why the old-fashioned job-hunting method is the way to go, the most important is that those who advertise are looking to fill an actual position. I actually found my last three jobs from the site’s postings. Here are six ways I’ve used the mediabistro listings to my full advantage – and how they can help you score the job you really want.
Keep your cover letter brief and simple. Brevity is a blessing to the person fielding the onslaught of resumes for the job posted, so ditch the rambling overview. When crafting a cover letter, state the position you’re applying for and briefly describe how your skills will benefit the company. Don’t forget to ask for the interview. Highlight the benefits you’ll bring to a company as the main focal point of your cover letter. So many people say what they did in a job, but not how they benefited the company (editorial people don’t think in terms of quantifying their jobs since we really don’t deal with numbers.) Example: “As a senior editor for an entertainment website, I conceptualized the editorial direction of my section and wrote a twice-weekly column, increasing the section’s traffic by 50 percent.”
Ignore the job description. Well, not entirely, but even if you don’t match all the job requirements, send your resume anyway. The company may have other positions they have yet to announce that suit your expertise. Don’t pretend to have skills that you lack, but highlight your other talents and let them judge if they want to bring you in for an interview. One celebrity lifestyle magazine I applied for was looking for beauty writers; I had never written about eye cream in my life. But I still sent in my resume and clips, and they called me in for a month of freelance work. Of course, if you do fit the listed qualifications to a tee, make sure to highlight that in your
concise cover letter.
E-mail may not be enough. It’s easy to send your cover letter and resume online; you hit “Send” and off it goes. But there is always the chance that a computer glitch just sent the hiring personnel 100 pieces of spam and that your submission is buried among them. If the job posting suggests another way to contact the company — e.g., fax or mail — go ahead and send it as a backup. I hadn’t heard from a company to which I had e-mailed my resume. A few days later I faxed my submission, and they called me the next day.
Use your contacts. You’ve found an amazing job posting on mediabistro.com, so you e-mail/fax/mail in your resume. Then you remember that you’d met someone who works at that company at the last Mediabistro.com mixer. By all means, ring them up and ask them if they can walk in your application as well. I happened to see a job posting at one of my favorite magazines, and I was actually meeting with one of the writers the next day on another project. I slipped her my resume and got a call that afternoon. When I went in for the interview, they had the hard copy I had given the writer.
Dig deep. Okay, there’s no need to apply for a job that was listed over a year ago, but don’t shy from a job that’s a couple of weeks old. It takes awhile for a company to find just the right person to fit a position, and if they haven’t found him or her, they are going to keep looking, as I was once told in a meeting with HR. Even if the job is filled, the company may be trying to fill other positions, and then your resume will be first in line.
Be patient. We all want a job yesterday, but like everything in life, good things come to those who wait. It may take up to two weeks (or longer!) for someone to call you in for an interview, especially if it’s a position with a big media company (it’s happened to me on several occasions), so resist the urge to follow up on your submission right away. Once you do get in the door, I know you’ll wow them with your amazing skills, expertise and charm, and they’ll offer you a job.