Do you find yourself obsessively reading the Revolving Door? Do you care nothing about the socialite parties in your town but wish desperately that you had been invited to the latest fancy blog launch? Oh yes, and are you a good writer with a keen eye for what's new? You just might be cut out to be a media reporter. Writer Greg Lindsay discusses what exactly the beat entails, and how you can get on it.

Media reporting is a strange beat. Depending upon your employer, you might be a button-down business reporter, a bitchy gossip, or a blowhard essayist offering your readers mere commentary. I've done all three for publications like Inside.com, Folio: magazine, Women's Wear Daily, and now Business 2.0, and I can say with some certainty that you won't be able to ascend to blowhard status until you've spent some time in the trenches (i.e. schmoozing your future sources at media- sponsored open bar parties). But what skills will you need for that, and who will hire you once you have them?

• Media reporting requires business reporting skills. Media conglomerates like Time Warner, Disney and Viacom are all public companies, and all three have made plenty of noise over the last five years about ill-fated mergers, fights with the board of directors, or plans to voluntarily break themselves in two. To understand the implications of any of that, you'll need a thorough grounding in business reporting fundamentals. Become acquainted with the business models of the media segment you're interested in writing about. When it comes to magazines (my area of slight expertise) that means understanding how advertising pages are measured and how circulation models work. When it comes to cable TV, that means figuring out how carriage deals work, etc. You can't declare winners and losers until you know what the criteria for success and failure are.

• The beat is a tiny and ultimately social one. You can't be a media reporter from just anywhere. The main concentrations are in New York and Los Angeles, with publishers and corporate HQ tending to call the former home while the movie studios and television are located in the latter. Beyond those cities, you'll be hard-pressed to even find a media reporting job, much less develop the sources to do that job. That's because media reporting may be the most social of all beats. As a journalist, you're likely friends with other journalists, who have their own friends (not to mention friends of friends) who all like to hang out together at the aforementioned open bar parties. Succeeding on the media beat (especially at the gossipy end of the spectrum) depends on having a wide circle of acquaintances and on an ability to trace and remember connections between people. The media industries are "relationship businesses," and in order to succeed in covering them, you'll need to socialize on a fairly frequent basis. This can be a good thing -- my fear of failing as a cub reporter ultimately overwhelmed any shyness I once had.

• So, how do you break in as a media reporter? Good question. There are only a limited number of openings in the New York circle, where the players tend to be the New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age (who I write frequently for), Women's Wear Daily (who I used to work for), Mediaweek, Editor & Publisher and Folio: . (The LA heavyweights are, of course, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, while other industries have Billboard, Broadcasting & Cable, etc.) Jobs at these publications are few and far between and tend to be awarded to known quantities. When Ad Age's beat reporter, Jon Fine [Ed.--husband of mb's own CEO, Laurel Touby], recently left for a job at Businessweek, the magazine poached his replacement from the New York Times. Total unknowns don't stand much of a chance. If you're serious about pursuing such a job and happen to be obsessed with the personages you'd be writing about, start yet another media gossip blog. Seriously -- respectable media reportage has been defined downward to include blogs like Gawker, Defamer, Jossip and even Mediabistro's own Fishbowls NY, LA, and DC. Starting your own media blog and using that to attract attention, wrangle invites to industry events, and otherwise immerse yourself in the media scene so you'll be ready -- both socially and skills-wise -- when the opportunity presents itself only makes sense. If you don't believe me, just take a look at the Mediabistro masthead. Have you noticed that the editor-in-chief of this site was the founding editor of Gawker, who before that had no journalism experience of any kind to speak of?

• The ultimate payoff for a successful, respected media reporter is either a long career on the beat (such as the New York Post's Keith Kelly, who has esconced himself at the paper after a media reporting career that included stops at Folio: and Ad Age) or a wealth of friendships and contacts once you finally decide to go straight as a freelancer or staff member. When you're finished, you'll be on a first-name basis with everyone who matters in your neck of the media woods. What you do with that is up to you.