You’re out on your own. You’re making a living as a freelance writer. You work hard to get assignments and even harder to deliver them. The last thing you want to worry about is a lawsuit. But the recent libel complaint filed against freelancer Susan Paterno, who wrote about infighting at the Santa Barbara News-Press in the December/January issue of the American Journalism Review, served as a grim reminder: The pen might be mightier than the sword, but it’s no automatic shield against a costly lawsuit.

No one keeps track of the total number of lawsuits brought against the media every year, but it is at least in the hundreds — in a 2005 study, the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) reviewed 242 libel complaints, a sample of the total amount filed that year. The number of cases that actually go to trial is small — only 14 last year, according to another MLRC study. But just fighting to get a suit dismissed can be time-consuming, expensive, and emotionally wrenching. We spoke with media lawyers, journalism professors, and investigative reporters to find out what you need to know about avoiding libel and defamation suits.*

Understand the terms

Libel and defamation are defined as publishing something untrue that could damage the reputation of a specifically identified individual or entity, especially if the statements could hurt them financially. The specific requirements vary from state to state, but generally, if you’re writing about a public figure, the plaintiff has to prove willful malice on the part of the writer. If you’re writing about a private person, they generally only have to prove negligence, usually meaning you didn’t follow good journalistic practices. Take the time to get familiar with the libel laws in your state. “It’s so important for anyone who’s publishing to understand libel law,” says MLRC executive director Sandra Baron, adding that remaining ignorant is “like getting behind the wheel of a car without knowing the rules of the road.”

Resources that define what constitutes libel and defamation include the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’ First Amendment Handbook, the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, and the Student Press Association’s PHIF (Publication, Identification, Harm, and Fault) Checklist.

Closely examine contracts before signing

A contract you sign with a publication will typically reference “warranties” (things you promise, such as that the story you deliver will be free of libel) and “indemnities” (promises that you will pay certain costs resulting from a suit). Make sure that when signing any contract, you only warrant and indemnify things under your control. For example, don’t promise that the story will be accurate at publication time if you don’t have control over the editing process (a rare occurrence for freelance writers). If your responsibilities under the contract seem too broad, push back, says Erik Sherman, a freelance journalist and former head of the Contracts Committee of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. “I’ve seen too many writers just sign contracts and hope that everything would work out.”

Ensure the facts back up your theories

“Many writers come into a piece with a theory about what they’re going to find in the course of their research,” says Baron. “It’s perfectly reasonable. Scientists do the same thing.” However, scientists don’t have to worry about defamation suits, so for writers, certain precautions are worth taking. When you’re done reporting, check to ensure that your research produced the necessary evidence to support your theory. If it didn’t, let the theory go. Avoid the temptation to dance around holes in your evidence through writing that suggests a certain conclusion without explicitly stating it. Mere implications can be deemed as libelous as direct assertions. For example, let’s say someone has told you a high school teacher is having a sexual relationship with a student. You can confirm that the teacher attended several student gatherings on weekends and left one at 10pm with the student. But the teacher and the student deny the relationship, and the school says it is not investigating the teacher. Be careful about writing the story in such a way as to insinuate a relationship is taking place, based on the facts you have. The teacher’s reputation is at stake, and they could potentially win a libel suit against you.

You may think of yourself as a writer, but in the eyes of the law, you’re a business, and this means you’ve got to toe the line like one.

Document your findings

Gather the documentation you need to prove a potentially damaging claim made in your story. It’s not enough just to attribute an allegation to a quote made by another person or publication. For example, if you want to write that a particular person has been charged with a certain crime, don’t rely just on quotes from officials. Get the police report or court documents. “One thing reporters don’t do enough of now is digging through the records to prove their case,” says Alyssa Katz, who teaches journalism at New York University and has written for Mother Jones, New York, and The Nation. “They’re always looking for shortcuts.”

Give both sides time to respond, before you finish your piece

It’s not enough to ask your subject for an interview, and then forget about them once they respond with, “No comment.” Once you’ve crafted your piece, you should send them any allegations you plan to publish, and give them ample time to respond. Don’t call them two to three hours before your deadline. If the material is sensitive enough, give them at least a few days, or even better, a week or more. You want your timeframe to communicate that you’re not trying to pull a “gotcha” on your subject but that you’re legitimately trying to get their side of the story. Los Angeles journalist Ross Johnson did just that when he wrote a subsequent story about the Santa Barbara News-Press lawsuit for LA Weekly. Johnson knew he was wading into dangerous territory, as the plaintiff in the case had a litigious history. So he made sure to contact her team early on in his reporting and send them every point he planned to publish. “You run into problems when you come to the other side too late in the game and they feel like they’re being blindsided,” Johnson says. Shortly after doing that piece, Johnson hung up his freelancer’s hat and joined an L.A. firm that does crisis communications for celebrity and corporate clients. What he sees from the other side of table confirms what he learned on the beat: “[Clients] go bonkers when they feel they haven’t had a chance to get their say in,” he says.

Closely review every word

If you think only investigative reporters have to worry about libel, think again. Of the complaints reviewed in the MLRC report (which, it fully concedes, was an unscientific sample), less than a tenth of the cases involved investigative stories. Almost half, however, involved routine newsgathering. You can easily invite a suit through a minor — but preventable — error, like misreporting the exact charge against a criminal defendant. You should carefully review every story you write. If it contains anything you wouldn’t want said about you, double- and triple-check that you got it right. As a starting point, consider using the cheat sheet prepared by Jean Maneke, of the Legal Hotline Counselor for the Missouri Press Association, who regularly reviews stories for Missouri publications.

Don’t get tripped up by wordplay

Because of the complexities and nuances of language, words and sentences can mean different things to different people. To ensure that a double meaning in what you wrote doesn’t open you up to risk, examine whether any unintentional — and damaging — meanings could be inferred from your choice of words, or even from the way you’ve strung them together. “The mispositioning of a word makes all the difference in the world,” says Maneke. For example, if you’re doing a story about an author who based the idea for her book on another book published 10 years ago, think twice before asserting that the author “stole” the concept. You might simply have been trying to make the point that there’s no such thing as a new idea, but your readers could infer that the author committed copyright infringement.

Review the final version prior to publication

An editor’s wordsmithing, a creative headline, or a colorful caption are all prime areas within your work where unintentional libel can crop up. “A lot of times, through no malicious intent, people will tweak something here and there, and edit in a mistake,” says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. To make sure you’re not the unwitting victim of someone else’s slippery phrasing, request to see a final version of your story before it gets published in print or online. If you find any wording in your piece that conveys a meaning you didn’t intend, request changes and offer alternate ways of articulating the problematic phrase.

Put accuracy above speed

Online, some writers play fast and loose, while others toss in attitude like so much seasoning. Whether online or in print, however, color is fine, but inaccuracy is not. “Particularly these days, [for some online writers,] speed often is more important than factual accuracy,” says Dalglish. “You need to take a deep breath and be careful.” Don’t put aside basic journalistic practices just to get your story up first. Writing online is increasingly being held legally accountable. Eleven of the complaints reviewed by the 2005 MLRC survey involved Internet defendants, a small number, but a 50 percent increase over the number of Internet defendants in MLRC’s 2001 survey. The one exception seems to be regarding comments made by visitors to your site. So far, site publishers are not being held responsible for comments they themselves did not make. Stay on top of developments though, as this area of the law is still evolving. Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Bloggers’ FAQ on online defamation law for pointers.

Create and observe your own standard practices

You may think of yourself as a writer, but in the eyes of the law, you’re a business, and this means you’ve got to toe the line like one. It’s vital for freelancers to follow standard practices for things like storing notes and organizing the information used within stories. If you wind up in court, the more you present yourself as a professional who applies the same policies to all clients and projects, the more credible you will appear. “It’s always good, if you’re concerned about it, to keep a good paper trail,” says Jan Constantine, general counsel of The Authors Guild. “But you should be consistent. It’ll be tough to explain away inconsistent policies.” As to how long you should hang on to notes or tape recordings, the statute of limitations on filing libel suits varies from state to state, but is usually a few years or less.

Don’t depend on others’ libel insurance

Think you’re covered just because the publication you’re writing for has libel insurance? If they get sued and lose, they could turn around and sue you to recover their losses (remember the indemnities clause in the contract you signed?). Also, it’s not safe to assume that your homeowners’ insurance will cover you. Although some policies have general provisions covering libel, they can specifically exclude suits incurred in the course of business activities, which includes freelance writing, if you’re getting paid for it.

Independent writers often don’t carry their own libel insurance, as it can be prohibitively expensive, running into the thousands of dollars per year. The National Federation of Press Women (which is open to men as well as women) has a more affordable policy for its members: $51.50 to join the organization, $395 a year for the policy. The $300,000 limit per claim ($500,000 total) would probably be enough to fend off a nuisance suit, says Peter Mantius, an independent financial reporter. While on staff at The Atlanta Constitution, Mantius and his newspaper were sued twice — once by someone trying to block publication of a confidential document, and once by a government official alleging defamation (both cases were dismissed). The per-claim limit in the NFPW policy would probably be enough to pay for lawyers to get a frivolous case dismissed, while the reporter’s work to get the story right would be “self-insurance” against the larger damages that are sometimes awarded when libel does occur, Mantius says. (In 2006, the median damage awarded in cases that went to trial was $1.1 million, according to the MLRC report.)

The key to avoiding libel suits is to be prudent but not paranoid, according to Sallie Randolph, a writer, attorney, and one of the authors of Author Law A to Z. “The risks are quite small, if you do your job right,” says Sherman. “Don’t go around saying things you can’t prove. Understand what it takes to prove your point versus just to claim your point.” Or, as Constantine puts it: “Do the best you can do to make sure you have an accurate story. That’s the best insurance you can get.”

*Since we’re talking law, we must make clear: This article does not constitute legal advice, but provides tips to get you started. Libel and defamation are big topics, so take the time to educate yourself in depth. If you have concerns stemming from anything you’re working on, consult a lawyer.

E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

“Really?”

This is usually the reaction I get when people find out that I write fiction. By their surprise, you would have thought I told them I play the lute or am studying taxidermy.

We like to think that those who work in book publishing wind up there due to their great love for literature. That is partially true. My good friend Marcy Flamholtz who worked in operations and sales for Penguin and Disney said it best when asked how she came to work in the world of books: “If you’re an editor, you aspire to be in publishing. But if you’re in finance, operations or contracts you just… wind up there. It’s like Hoboken.”

For the past 11 years I’ve worked in the contracts department negotiating and drafting author agreements, first for a decade at Penguin, and most recently at Hyperion. My contracts career began in 1996 after I completed film school at Penn State. It didn’t take long to find out that there weren’t many skills that transferred from shooting on a Bolex to drafting a warranty and indemnity clause (other than the fact that a tiny adjustment to either once you’ve finished wrecks the entire thing). I loved writing screenplays, but I needed a job. Since I didn’t know anyone in the film or television industry at that point, I decided to try my luck with books.

Contracts is a department most see (rightly so) as void of creativity. People seem to think contracts workers spend their spare time writing out flow-through clauses and signing Christmas cards with, “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the foregoing.” While we do share a laugh when we try to report our days off as force majeure, there are plenty of creative types who work in this area of publishing. According to my experience, this is because:

1) You don’t take your work home with you. Contracts are confidential so when you leave work, you can mentally leave it, too.

2) You can read for pleasure. There are only a few departments in which you don’t have to read your own company‘s books for some aspect of your job, and contracts happens to be one of them.

3) You don’t have to put your creative energy into others’ creative endeavors. You get the creativity stimulation of being around writers and books without having to actively take part in the creative process. This means the creative energy within you is truly your own.

Happily for me, contracts is a department that allows to you the freedom of mind to write. Working there has revealed plenty of other useful things about book publishing:

There’s a market for the unlikeliest books

It wasn’t until I drafted a contract for a mystical quilting chocolate cat mystery that I thought, “I should write a book.” It occurred to me then that if there’s a market for books on cats that quilt while solving crime, there must be room out in the world for my story. When writers set their sights on completing a book, they often focus narrowly on what will sell. An advantage of handling so many agreements has been seeing an overview of what the editors across various imprints are buying by way of book projects. Working at Penguin, showed me there was room in the book market for absolutely everything. While sometimes it seems the industry only wants memoirs and other times you can’t give one away, following trends can be a gamble.

If you’re going to spend a year with characters, write what you know and love most, and don’t fixate on the market. Put your manuscript-in-progress on the coffee table to hold a plant, use it to balance out a leg of your couch or use it to stand on when you need an extra two inches to reach the light bulb, but don’t stick it in a drawer and forget about it. Styles come and go, editors leave, and market tastes change. There’s a hustle factor in getting your book published, but there’s also a patience factor. Give your book project time, rather than giving it up. With time and attention, your book’ll get better and better, which means a market — and an agent/publisher team that’ll take you to the contracts stage — will find you.

Get a book agent to eyeball your contract before signing

Even if you’re entering into a book deal sans representation, you want someone versed in publishing-related contracts examining documents that dictate when and how you get paid for your book, as well as which rights you’ll hold upon its publication. Don’t resort to the guy who handled your Nana’s estate planning. Would you ask a veterinarian handle your open-heart surgery? Same principle

Mo’ advance money, mo’ problems

Working in contracts means you see advances in all shapes and sizes, and bigger isn’t necessarily better. Here’s an example to illustrate: Say you throw a party: You invite someone who shows up and brings $40 worth of beer. They are fun to hang out with and everyone who talks to that person has a good time. You will invite them back. Another guest comes empty-handed, is bossy and eats at least $200 worth of guacamole. Unless they’ve going to have George Clooney in tow, chances are you won’t seek them out for the next one.

In much the same way, if you wind up with a large advance for a book and your book doesn’t earn it back, when you’re angling to write a second title, your publisher’s interest may have left the building. However, if you start off more modestly and do your part as an author who cooperates and helps stimulate sales, a publisher is likelier to give you a shot at writing that next book. While few of us would turn down a big advance if we were lucky enough to get one, if you’re aiming to be a writer with a lengthy publishing career, starting small isn’t such a bad thing.

Don’t expect publishers to treat the book like your baby

Every book on human behavior states pretty much the same thing: People avoid rejection at all costs. This applies even more to a human being who’s spent a year of their life writing a 350-page story about a three-legged dog winning a regional spelling bee. So even if your story is a thinly veiled allegory on how you could never really make your Dad proud, when you come down to it, no one in the book business cares. Ultimately, they’re looking at your story as a bankable widget, and the sooner you embrace that fact the better you will feel when the “no’s” start coming. And they will come.

Whether it’s finding the right agent, getting a book deal, liking your edits, liking your publication date or having someone like me tell your agent that you can’t have cover approval, inevitably someone involved in the publishing process will shoot something down that’s important to you. Often, it’ll even be for your own good. But either way, you must realize publishing is a collective endeavor. As solitary as the writing process can be, an author doesn’t get a book deal solely because they are a swell person or they finally wrote their way into forgiving their father. Publishers look for a good return on the cost they are willing to make with their time and money. Their “no’s” will undoubtedly feel personal. They’re not. If you take them as such, you’ll compromise your will to write, which is part of what got you the point of penning your own book.

The thing is, publishers need writers. They need them to write about dogs that win spelling bees and chocolate cats who hunt down killers. They need them to work out crap with their parents, so they wind up writing about it. But if you let the “no’s” beat you down then none of your readers will get to share in your stories, solve any mysteries alongside your feline protagonist or enjoy any of those hard-won family victories with you. That’s why you wrote your book in the first place.

I wrote screenplays at 22 because I thought you had to be at least 40 to write a book. After closing over 1,000 contracts, I now know writing a book isn’t some Herculean feat that only scholars and tortured introverts can reach. It’s for all of us who believed in ourselves long enough to see a good story through and found a few key people in publishing to believe in them along the way. No real mystery. Sorry, cat.

Jean Marie Pierson will publish her debut novel with Dorchester in March 2008.

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the first installment, soon-to-be Columbia University student Katia Bachko explains why she traded her senior editor position at a dance magazine for a chance to hit the books and the pavement at Columbia. She questions whether the education she gains will offset Columbia’s cost, if she’ll land a coveted job at Newsday or the Star Ledger in 10 months, and whether her live-in boyfriend who’s footing the rent bill will tire of Ramen noodles.

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If you told me a year ago that you were going to journalism school, you would’ve heard my standard refrain, drilled into my head by my successful journo friends: Don’t get a degree. Get a crap job at The Nowhere Gazette and build clips. But after five years of not getting very far, I’ve changed my tune and this August, I’m starting fulltime at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia. I’m asking the $50,000 question: Can I use this program to catapult myself to the next step in my career?

Right now, I’m a senior editor at a dance trade magazine (a trade pub) and, under the guise of dance, I’ve covered meaty subjects — health, arts administration, education, small businesses, and personal finance. Sounds good on paper, but I’m hampered by the seniority of my title (inflated for 26) and pigeonholed in dance.

I’m in an office with five dance titles and three cheerleading magazines, so some days it feels like I work at a sorority. It’s not an environment that inspires serious journalism in me. To write the kinds of stories I’m proud of, I need to get out. And fast.

It’s hard to silence my inner know-it-all, but the truth is I’m going back to school because I don’t trust myself as a writer and reporter. Sure, my editors are encouraging and generous with feedback, but few of us have experience writing for a different audience or working outside this niche.

I almost choked on humble pie when ventured outside the dance world. After a vacation, I pitched a story to a travel mag, got the assignment, but couldn’t deliver what the editor wanted. It was a rude awakening about how my skills measured up. If I’m gonna hack it in the real world, I need bona fide professional training.

As a wannabe, I admire journalists who contribute to NPR and The New Yorker. J-school will strip away my romantic notions about this profession and let me try it on for size. I’m excited to audition a few types of writing I haven’t tried before. I’ve never covered a beat; I’ve never written hard news. While shrinking newsrooms don’t exactly foster mentoring, I can get what I need in the safety of an academic environment and work with Pulitzer Prize winners. I’d be lying if I said Columbia’s cache had no bearing on my decision. As an NYU grad, I’ve always wondered if the grass was greener uptown, and I just couldn’t let go of my teenage lust for Columbia.

[At Columbia’s open house,] it was the polished-looking grads with jobs at the Star Ledger and Newsday who got me to sit up and listen.

Next year, my goals are twofold. First, I want to come away with pieces that will get noticed, which means I have to diversify my clips. Most people have been to concerts, museums, and plays, but aren’t familiar with dance. Even though my portfolio contains profiles, health and business stories, how-tos, and more, employers can’t always overcome the dance factor. Second, and more importantly, I want to build my confidence and competence so if my stellar clips snag me an interview, an assignment, or a job, I can arrive with the tools to excel.

Before I sent in my $950 deposit, I went to Columbia’s open house in late March. J-school deans and professors spoke earnestly about the need for excellence in journalism, commitment to their students, and Columbia’s track record of graduating successful professionals. A panel of current students___bleary-eyed from working on their theses___discussed their close working relationships with faculty, but it was the polished-looking grads with jobs at the Star Ledger and Newsday who got me to sit up and listen.

Still, although my check’s in the mail, a question lingers: Is it better to spend a year honing my craft in school, or should I immerse myself in the thick of it? I got my current job based on my experience (gigs at a literary agency and a defunct luxury mag) and a background in dance. If I want to cover elections, should I work on a campaign? I’d love write about education and national affairs. I’m also interested in NYC development (especially in Williamsburg, my hood), design, technology, environmental issues, sex, and health. I’m curious about finance, which is probably my best chance to make a living. In the end, I’m going to Columbia because I believe an excellent journalist can cover any subject, but I don’t know if employers will agree.

The next year will be hard. I’ll be testing the patience of my boyfriend, who will generously cover rent and groceries while I study. Garrett and I have cohabited and shared a bank account for five years. Sounds pretty radical, but since I couldn’t afford even half our rent on my starting salary, it made sense to us. Grad school was always part of my plan, and I’m lucky to have a supportive guy, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty about reducing our modestly comfortable lifestyle to a year of Ramen noodles.

I’m also trading my cushy cubicle for all-nighters and homework. For my first class, I’ll pound the pavement as a beat reporter to find stories on the streets of a vibrant and diverse NYC neighborhood most likely a long subway ride away from my usual haunts. Crown Heights, here I come!

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Katia Bachko will begin the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia this fall. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

The day arrived. After dreaming about it for years, I was officially starting my new job as a freelance writer. I sat down at my desk with a large cup of coffee and evaluated the situation. I had a small stack of essays that I had written during the previous months while I was winding down my former career. I also had a list of potential markets. What I didn’t have was an understanding about submission etiquette. Should I pitch an idea to one publication and await a response? Or should I send it to two publications at the same time? “Four,” said one of my writing instructors who taught a class I was enrolled in at UCLA. My other instructor, who was teaching a course through mediaBistro.com, suggested submitting pieces to one market at a time.

Hmmm. If nothing else, the conflicting advice made one thing clear: the rules surrounding simultaneous submissions are confusing. The two schools of thought each have compelling arguments supporting their approach. Those who favor simultaneous submissions note that if writing is your livelihood, your work, your source of income, then the practice is vital. “Unless a market specifically requests sole submissions, don’t wait around for the first place to respond or you’ll spend most of your life waiting to collect rejections,” Amy Friedman, a writer and editor, says. In many cases, especially with personal essays, writers have already put in hard work in advance. If you wait for responses, you’ll only have the chance to submit to three or four places a year. “Multiply that over time and you see the problem,” she says. “Your work sits idle.”

“[Submitting simultaneously is] sort of like asking two people out on a date for the same night. It’s not real classy.”

Bill O’Sullivan, senior managing editor of Washingtonian agrees. He teaches classes at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and tells his students it is fine to submit one paragraph pitches or full blown essays simultaneously, as long as the publications don’t have a specific policy against it. “But if you’re sending a pitch, you don’t want it to appear you’re submitting it to a million places, so be sure to personalize the letter and peg each query to suit the publications,” he says. As an editor, O’Sullivan suspects he receives simultaneous submissions on a regular basis. “And I don’t mind.” Recently, he accepted a pitch by a writer who had, in fact, already placed it elsewhere. “My response was, ‘Congratulations.'” If a double acceptance does occur, writers can always reply by saying, “I just sold that piece, but I have more ideas for you to consider.” O’Sullivan and Friedman both believe that the chances of two editors both saying yes are small enough that it’s a risk worth taking.

The opposing school of thought rationalizes that the most respectful approach is to submit a pitch, follow up, and move on if it’s not accepted. “It’s sort of like asking two people out on a date for the same night,” Lori Gottlieb, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer, says. “It’s not real classy.” Paula Derrow, articles director at Self magazine, thinks the problem with simultaneous submissions is that it results in pitches that are too generic. “The most successful pitches are tailored to a specific department at a specific magazine,” she says. If it’s an idea that a writer thinks fits a lot of publications, it’s probably not much of an idea.

Under the single submission approach, wait two weeks to follow up. If a writer is desperate and in a hurry to place work, then he or she can inquire after one, Derrow says, noting that she may not open a cold pitch immediately, but she tends to open follow up emails right away. If there’s no response, the writer should pitch elsewhere. “The editor has been given fair warning,” Derrow says.

When deciding whether a writer should pitch one idea to a single market or many, the best guidelines may simply come down to whichever approach the writer feels most comfortable pursuing. “I usually send submissions to between two and five publications at once because it can take months for publications to respond,” says Jane Ciabattari, a fiction writer and blogger for National Book Critics Circle. She did have a double acceptance on one occasion and was able to work out a situation where the second magazine agreed to run a reprint at a different rate.

Submitting to only one magazine at a time can help writers leverage editors into making a decision. “I’ve always followed the one-at-a-time philosophy, but I certainly use it to my advantage if I haven’t heard back, saying that I’m calling to follow up because if you’re not interested, I’d like to pitch it elsewhere,” Melanie Kaplan, a Washington D.C.-based freelance writer, says. She will query a couple places, however, “if the idea is versatile and the publications are not competing.” For example, she wrote an article about dog day care centers for one publication with a business angle and for another with a lifestyle angle.

I have tried both approaches, evaluating each situation on a case-by-case basis. If I am cold pitching editors, especially in a new area I haven’t covered before, I lean toward submitting simultaneously. Once I’ve established the lines of communication with an editor, I don’t send a simultaneous submission to them. So far my plan has worked out fine. Thinking back to my first day and remembering how confused I was about navigating the tricky rules of simultaneous submissions, I can only conclude one thing: both of my instructors were right.

Jenny Rough is a freelance writer. She blogs about yoga and mindful eating.

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the second installment, soon-to-be Columbia grad student Beth Braverman tackles the last minute panic that comes from wondering if she made the right decision. She’s leaving a “glamorous” job at a jewelry and fashion trade that allows her to cover fashion week and attend parties at the city’s coolest joints, to attend school and rack up debt. But will this ultimately make her happier?

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The second thoughts started two nights ago.

I sat staring at my bank statement, realizing that after Friday, my steady income will disappear. I have worked as a full-time journalist for the past five years, and suddenly the decision to return to J-School for a second degree in a field in which I am already employed seemed foolhardy.

A year ago, I convinced myself Columbia Journalism School was among the best in the country, worth the $20,000 in loans I would incur by attending. The school’s new M.A. program only required me to leave the “working world” for nine months. When I graduated, I reasoned, I could skip a few rungs on the career ladder and the pay scale. Of course, I didn’t get into journalism to get rich, and I’m acutely aware that the rungs on said pay scale remain pretty close together.

When I received the acceptance letter, accolades from friends and family poured in. Relatives boasted I’d be the “first Braverman to hit the Ivies.” I returned the required paperwork immediately and basked for months at the thought of returning to school.

Then — exactly two nights ago — reality hit. My fianc_? and I have spent the past year preparing ourselves financially for my return to school and our transition into a one-income family. In two weeks, we’ll move from Manhattan to Queens, reducing our rent by 25 percent. We’re hoping the wedding gifts we receive in September will also help alleviate the loss of my salary.

This means in the next 30 days, I’ll quit my job, move, enter graduate school, and marry — all good things. But that’s a lot of life changes. I wondered: Is it too much too quickly?

My nerves and doubts remained through a fitful night. I flashed back to my days as an undergraduate newspaper student at Syracuse University where professors told me my education would prepare me so thoroughly I would not need a master’s.

At the daily newspaper where I worked as an education reporter for two years before moving from Pennsylvania hardly anyone held graduate degrees. My colleagues there resolutely believed that on-the-job training represented the best way to get ahead in journalism. How could I have forgotten this?

I regularly attend launch parties for jewelry at the hottest spots in the city and leave at precisely 5 p.m. almost every day. My friends and family marvel constantly at my glamorous job.

I awoke the next morning thoroughly convinced I’d made a mistake. I spent my entire commute wondering what National Jeweler, my current employer, would say if I told them I had changed my mind and wanted to stay.

Then I arrived at the office and distracted myself with my work. For the past three years I have served as a fashion and news editor at National Jeweler. The fashion portion requires me to assemble fashion pages for the monthly trade publication, chronicling the latest fashion trends, profiling designers, and creating market forecasts. The news portion involves coverage of financial and legal stories involving major players, international business trends, and the effects of gem and metal prices. I also compose several Web briefs for our site daily, contribute regularly to our blog and — since there are only two fulltime writers at the magazine — do a little bit of everything else.

The job has offered me many perks: I attended and covered New York Fashion Week each season for the past three years, and I covered jewelry tradeshows throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. I regularly attend launch parties for jewelry at the hottest spots in the city and leave at precisely 5 p.m. almost every day. My friends and family marvel constantly at my glamorous job.

But, while I have always followed fashion, I would never qualify as a fashionista. Sometimes I have trouble objectively reviewing a necklace carrying a price tag that would pay off my loans, cover my rent for a year, and buy me a car. I find writing legal stories far more intriguing than writing about the return of hoop earrings, and I would sooner peruse Businessweek than Vogue.

My doubts about graduate school began dissipating throughout the day, as I worked on stories about floral-inspired jewelry and the merits of yellow gold versus white. In my three years here, I have gained an appreciation for fashion and luxury, but I have become far more intrigued with the business aspect of the industry. I fear I may have also pigeonholed myself as a fashion writer.

I selected the M.A. Business Reporting program at Columbia because it will give me the background in accounting and corporate finance I need to transition into business reporting at a consumer magazine or newspaper.

Yes, returning to school represents an adjustment both mentally and financially, and it offers no guarantees about my future career. But I am determined to get the most I can out of the experience — I am the geek that already bought all the books on Amazon.com by my professors and switched my daily reading from the Times to the Journal. By the start of school August 30, I’ll be ready.

I just hope the workload on the first weekend is not too great. My fianc_? has been amazingly supportive of my plans for j-school, but I don’t think his vision of our wedding night includes homework.

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Beth Braverman is a freelance writer and graduate student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Astoria, N.Y. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the fourth installment, NYU grad student John MacDonald leaves his post-college job writing grants for the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program to start fresh in NYU’s graduate program. He struggles with the decision as to whether he should pursue a career as a rockstar or rock journo, ultimately deciding neither is the right option.

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I suppose there are two ways to tell this story. In the first, our protagonist jumps skillfully from bedroom rock critic to NYU graduate student, from fanzine intern to New Yorker intern, from penning 300-word CD reviews to 1,500-word Brooklyn Rail features, from diffidence to confidence. The second is a little more interesting. Here, the 24-year-old faces a grueling grant-writing gig and what we’ll call the “post-graduate plateau.” Not a quarter-life crisis, but the unshakable sense that if he doesn’t leave Philadelphia, he’ll be joking with the same buddies, drinking at the same bars, and collecting the same paycheck until he’s bald and truculent. This story isn’t about writing at all. It’s about moving on and moving out, going to the Big Apple.

Of course, the genuine article is a mix of the two. Ever since I wrote my very first CD review (yes, Coldplay’s Parachutes) as an Oberlin College freshman, I’ve known with near certainty that I wanted to do this for a living. I just didn’t know precisely what “this” was. Was it rock ‘n’ roll or writing about rock ‘n’ roll, distortion pedals or word processors? At Oberlin, it was decidedly the former. While I hopped from band to band, rock-writing for the Oberlin Review was a way to step on stage without leaving my dorm. And my tenure as the Review‘s arts editor covering film and theater was just an extension of that. I had no intention of putting my guitar down.

At 24, my life had begun to feel settled and sluggish. I needed to move on for reasons that had nothing to do with my job or my writing. I wanted to know more, read more.

As the summer of 2003 approached, bringing with it graduation and one of the worst job markets in years, I went dutifully to alumni networking events. I nibbled brie at roundtable discussions and chatted up travel writers. I smiled and took notes. But I expected little in the way of employment. And I certainly had no intention of going back to school — for journalism or anything else. Most alums told me I didn’t need to anyway. I was just leaving school for Christ’s sake.

So I flung myself out of Oberlin and Ohio, drove around the country for two weeks, and landed in Philly. I flung myself through jobs at a record store, a bookstore, and a self-publishing house — all while managing an internship at the Philadelphia Weekly and writing weekly music reviews for www.prefixmag.com — before landing at the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

Mural Arts has more than 2,700 murals to its credit — making Philadelphia the mural capital of the world — and I wrote many of the grants to get them painted, often two or three a week. After only a year and a half, the job had taken its toll. If non-profits are notorious for exhausting their employees, then Mural Arts managed appalling new heights. At the same time, I had a creeping sense that my relationship with the city was running its course. At 24, my life had begun to feel settled and sluggish. I needed to move on for reasons that had nothing to do with my job or my writing. I wanted to know more, read more.

So I started thinking seriously about grad school. But my initial focus wasn’t journalism; it was on the subjects I wanted to write about — pop culture, mass media, music — things I thought j-schools didn’t cover. I looked at media studies programs at Georgetown and the New School, but then I realized something. In my NYU application essay, I beamed about how Mural Arts “extended my range as a writer” and gave me an “appreciation for the hectic atmosphere” of a fulltime journalist — great stuff. But the reality was much simpler. I learned to value writing as a skill — as something I could do quickly and competently. Even if I wasn’t writing about music or theatre, I could rake in a paycheck every couple weeks. I still wanted to know more and read more, but now I wanted to write more… and better.

Once my writing became an end unto itself, j-school was a no-brainer. I applied to the handful of programs that focused on cultural journalism, NYU and Syracuse University among them. Then I left my girlfriend, my friends, and my band, and moved north. I convinced myself that I was a better writer than a musician (something I said to myself endlessly in the shower), that if I didn’t leave now, I never would, and most importantly, that I could do more than write about music; I could be a professional. A year later, and without many freelance opportunities or a staff job on the horizon, only this last assertion remains doubtful. But like I said, this isn’t a story about dramatic ascents or sudden stardom. I had no grand design and I still don’t. I graduate in December with a master’s degree in journalism from New York University. That’s all I’m sure of.

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John MacDonald is a graduate student in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn. He can be reached at jmacdonald324 AT gmail DOT com. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the fifth installment, former up-and-coming women’s magazine editor Kate Dailey talks about leaving her job for j-school. Will her decision to further her education broaden her career opportunities?

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This time last year, I was living the dream — the food and nutrition editor at Women’s Health. I was an up-and-coming editor at an up-and-coming women’s magazine: traveling to conferences, lunching with writers, distributing my ever-expanding cache of exotic oils and organic snacks amongst my coworkers like a well-shod Robin Hood.

Too bad I was miserable. I had little interest in nutrition and, due to some bureaucratic machinations, was 50 percent of our magazine’s Emmaus, PA office — a lonely gig in a lonely town. Where my coworker went home at night to a gorgeous home, a gorgeous daughter, and a gorgeous husband, I spent my nights with a sullen roommate, frozen Indian dinners, and Veronica Mars. I was expected to be in New York often, and the constant bus ride between the two locales, the endless search for cheap hotel rooms, and the chaos of keeping two separate offices was taking a toll on the quality of my work and whatever waning enthusiasm I had for it.

[My boyfriend] had hot tips, I had hot muffins. This was not the type of journalism I had dreamed of while reading the biography of Nelly Bly in fifth grade and Virginia Heffernan’s Slate columns in college.

At the time, I was dating a dogged, talented, relentless reporter/writer for a news magazine. One day, he called me as I took a cab back to our New York office. I had just left a particularly lovely lunch — the publicist for a new brand of fiber-rich baked goods had taken me to Ono, where we sat outside and gossiped about the natural food industry, and she sent me home with a huge gift basket full of treats.

The boyfriend was out of breath, talking quickly, loud traffic on the other end of the phone. After doing extensive digging on an insider-trading story, he told me, an assistant US attorney was finally ready to talk. “It’s off the record, but he’s giving me everything,” he said. “Names, documents — I have to get to City Hall before 4, but he’s giving me everything.” It was at that point I realized — he had hot tips, I had hot muffins. This was not the type of journalism I had dreamed of while reading the biography of Nelly Bly in fifth grade and Virginia Heffernan’s Slate columns in college.

I left my job in the fall, totally demoralized and heartbroken. Still, it was a new beginning, and I was ready to finally write the pop culture stories and cultural analysis I wanted to write (the psychology of hold music, and the increase of male nudity on prime-time cable), but never had the time. Now, I had all the time in the world, plus the motivation of impending poverty, but I didn’t have the confidence — or maybe the contacts or the discipline — to make it happen.

Grad school seemed like a good way to break through all of these barriers — and because I didn’t have any real plan, telling people I was waiting to hear from Columbia sounded like more of a life plan then telling people I was underemployed, hanging out in my underwear, and sleeping too late in my Philadelphia apartment. Both answers were have been true, but the first had a bit more panache.

Besides, graduate school had always been in my plans — shuffled off into that vague, nebulous “later” that usually never comes around. I was the least educated of all my friends — doctors, lawyers, PhDs — and since I’m a snob, this bothered me. I loved school, but I couldn’t picture going back for three or four or seven years only to emerge with a PhD, a load of debt, and no guaranteed job prospects.

Columbia’s MA program was only ten months, the coursework was fascinating, and it seemed almost tailor-made to help me land my dream job. I’m taking a two-semester seminar on arts and culture reporting (one of the four MA concentrations, along with business, politics, and science), as well as journalism theory and classes in the greater graduate school — film criticism, feminist theory, history, etc. I’ll learning from the best in the business and, at the very least, will walk a way with an expensive but impressive Rolodex.

Since I’ve left my old job, I’ve been contacted about a few interesting, well-paid service gigs that would put me right back on the rock star track. They weren’t exactly what I wanted to do, but I would do them well, and thought I could advance up the masthead quickly. I was nervous about taking almost two years off — the ten months for school and the ten months I spent getting my act together in Philly — especially because in my mind, everyone wants to be a cultural critic, and who am I to waste time and money pursuing some ambiguous, perfect career?

But I ended up lonely and miserable at my last job because I took the safe, less satisfying gigs when I should have been living poor and hungry in New York. And after a weekend at Columbia’s new student orientation, I left more invigorated and excited about my career and my potential than I’d been in years. So why shouldn’t I get to do exactly what I want?

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Kate Dailey is moving into her first New York apartment this weekend. Classes start Tuesday. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

Have you ever walked down the aisle of your local bookstore and said to yourself, “Wow, I could have written that book?” The truth of the matter is you can. It seems like everyone has a nonfiction book idea but only a few know how to take that idea and transform it into a published book that sells. In order to sell your nonfiction book you’ll need to start with a book proposal that will get an agent or publisher to bite. Over the years, I’ve written numerous book proposals and helped countless agents and authors craft book proposals that have led to lucrative sales. After speaking with hundreds of agents, publishers, and authors about what makes a great proposal, I’ve culled their insider secrets and techniques for writing a “bulletproof” book proposal into a new book Bulletproof Book Proposals. Whether you’re in the process of writing a proposal or just starting out, here are some useful tips to help you shoot your idea into an editor’s heart.

Define your idea

We think we know a bad idea when we hear one. It’s been done. It’s boring. It’s far-fetched. No one cares. How do you know whether your idea is a good one? The bottom line is that it needs to hook your audience. You should distill your idea into a simple hook and convey it in a few short sentences. If your idea takes too long to explain, simplify it. If you’re pitching a diet book and your diet plan is complicated with a myriad of different strategies, your hook is too long. The hook for The Reverse Diet is very simple: You eat breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. That’s easy to explain and to understand, whether you’re an agent, an editor, or a reader.

Create a tell-and-sell title

Ask any agent or publisher, and they’ll say that the most critical element of selling your idea is a powerful title. It’s the first thing your audience considers when they encounter your book in a bookstore or online, and the first impression an agent or editor will have. “A title is of tremendous importance throughout the life of a book,” says agent Michael Psaltis with Culinary Cooperative/Regal Literary. “When I first call editors to pitch a book, if there’s a great title, I know that the editor will remember it and look out for the proposal when I follow up and send it along.” Clever, powerful titles go a long way in a crowded marketplace and can sell your book in just a few seconds. Some powerful titles on the shelves now include: He’s Just Not That Into You, Bad Cat, Why Do Men Have Nipples, and The 4-Hour Workweek. Brainstorm as many titles as you can and test your ideas on your friends, family, and anyone you know.

Craft a powerful opening

It’s essential that the first few paragraphs of your proposal seize the attention of your reader and make them want more. The trick is to do this without over-hyping your book. Avoid words like “super” or “fabulous.” You will have ample chance in the rest of your proposal to demonstrate the brilliance of your idea. In the overview, the idea must stand by itself. Extravagant language is a turn-off, since editors are experts at analyzing proposals, and overstatement suggests a lack of confidence. “I was always look for a pitch that accurately portrays the idea rather than overstating or hyping the concept,” says Amy Hughes, former editor at Dutton Penguin and now an agent with McCormick & Williams. “The overview should be a clear, concise way to summarize the content and main backbone of the book.”

Justify your book

If you’re self-publishing a memoir or your family history, chances are your audience will be your friends and family. But when you’re writing a book proposal, you need to spell out who is going to buy your book. When possible, give specific numbers, as editors like hard statistics. One of the easiest ways to start is Google. If your book is targeting “dog owners,” your Google search will probably lead you to the American Dog Owners Association Web site. There, you can find statistics about the number of dog owners — in other words, the number of potential buyers of your book. I consulted with Steve Greenberg, author of the upcoming book Gadget Nation: A Journey Through The Eccentric World of Invention, on his proposal. We including concrete facts about the number of inventors and people seeking patent applications, since those people would be part of the core audience buying the book.

I write an actual press release for the book, assuming it’s about to be published. Editors and agents love this.

Compete to win

The more competition the better. If you’re writing a joke book, it’s good news that there are a lot of joke books on the market. If you’re writing a true crime book, the fact that people are interested in reading about true crime can help sell your idea. The presence on bookstore shelves of many competitive titles means there’s a market for the general subject of your book. The hard part: ensuring your book will offer readers something different than the titles it’d be competing with.

Create a buzz

Most authors dream of being featured on Oprah or The Today Show. But let’s get real: the odds of that are slim. In your proposal, convince the publisher (specifically its publicity department) that your book can stimulate press coverage. Even if you don’t wind up on Oprah, media outlets are essential to spread the word about your book. In all of my proposals, I include a sample press release for the proposed book. I write an actual release for the book, assuming it’s about to be published. Editors and agents love this. Why? It gives them a clear idea of how the book can be sold to the media and garner publicity.

Sell yourself

The biography in your proposal is more than just a rough draft for the bio that’ll appear your book’s jacket flap. Editors and agents rely on it to establish your credibility as a source of the ideas or facts that you will present in your book. First and foremost, the bio should answer the question, “Why should the reader trust you — the author?” Your proposal’s bio should confirm that you are indeed an expert on your topic. Types of information you should include are: educational background; relevant networks or organizations you belong to; lectures, performances, or appearances you make; any previously published work (books and periodicals). Get your foot in the door as an expert by being quoted in your local newspaper. Reporters often seek local experts whom they can call on to gather information for a story. Become the expert they call, and you’ll solidify your expert status, come proposal time.

Deliver punchy chapter titles

One of the first things you’ll see in most nonfiction books is a table of contents. This is essentially a chapter outline. Editors and agents want a proposal’s chapter outline to be clear and easy to follow. What they really like to see is clever chapter titles and subtitles. In my first fitness book, The World’s Fittest You, the overall concept revolved around the word “fittest.” So, to punch up some of the chapter titles, I re-used this word: “Becoming The World’s Fittest You” and “Fit Fitter, Fittest.” Don’t be afraid to go over the top with chapter titles — it’ll help differentiate your book.

Provide a sample

Good sample chapters are critical to any proposal. Editors and agents seek a smart idea that can be sold to a targeted audience but, ultimately, it has to be executed through strong writing. In your proposals, you should submit between 35 and 75 pages of sample text. It doesn’t matter whether this comprises one, two, or three chapters. The important thing is to display what the book will read like and how good it will be. The sample must demonstrate how you write, the tone of your book, how it reads, the kinds of connections you make, how you reason, and whether (if it’s supposed to be humorous), it’s actually funny.

Hook an agent

Once you’ve written your proposal, you need to get it into the hands of a publisher who can ultimately buy it. To do that, you’ll need a literary agent to champion your proposal to a publisher. When you query agents, send them a letter that boils down your proposal into a one- or two-page letter. All the material for your letter should be pulled from your proposal. “A query letter should succinctly state the overview of the proposal and your assets as an author,” says Hughes. It’s an abbreviated version of your overview — not the entire proposal. For instance, your lead paragraph should be pulled from the opening paragraph of your proposal. If your proposal opening is strong then you’ll have no trouble hooking an agent and eventually getting your book published.

Eric Neuhaus is the author of Bulletproof Book Proposals and co-author of The World’s Fittest You and Iron Yoga. He currently consults with agents, editor authors to help craft book proposals and concepts as well as write and doctor manuscripts.

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the sixth installment, Ohio University senior Meghan Louttit discusses the importance of journalism experience. She realizes that potential employers are more interested in what she’s done than the grades she has received, and alters her schedule accordingly.

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I am one of those freaks who has known practically her entire life that she wanted to write. At the age of four I was writing my own books — three pages stapled backwards about my bike and my imaginary pet bunny. I spent 13 years in school with that goal in the back of my mind. However, my schooling was mostly an endless pursuit of academic perfection: the A. This was my immediate concern, and honestly, it wasn’t too difficult.

But the desire to write eventually pushed its way into the forefront of my brain, and by my sophomore year of high school, I decided that journalism was the best way to combine my love of writing with my increasing desire to make an impact.

In 2004 I graduated from Springfield Local High School in Ohio with a 4.2 GPA. I didn’t expect college to be much different.

The type of journalist I become isn’t going to be decided by text books or lectures, but largely by the amount and quality of my experiences in the field.

I chose Ohio University mainly because its journalism program had been consistently ranked in the top 10 in the country. That fall I left my family and friends, and moved to school practically alone, excited to explore my newfound independence and my chosen career. Everything was going fine until the middle of my sophomore year. Two things happened: I started fulfilling my dreaded economics requirements, which proved to be even worse than I had expected, and I was appointed a managing editor of the online magazine I had helped start a year prior.

All things considered, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise to me when that summer, while I was interning with FoodNetwork.com in New York City, I received a phone call telling me that I had lost my scholarship. This meant that my GPA had fallen below a 3.3 — miserable by my standards.

It was clear that the time had long passed when I paid strict attention to my grades. This amounted to a cataclysmic shift in my way of thinking. Somewhere along the line, Speakeasy, my internships, networking and my weekend travels had become more important than the “A”. It wasn’t a conscious shift, or even that I had lost interest in my classes. Without considering it, I was devoting more and more “free time” to Speakeasy, and where there was no time, I made it.

I suppose after losing my scholarship I could have panicked, dropped my outside activities, and spent every waking moment on schoolwork. Maybe I’m too stubborn. Instead, I began devoting even more time to Speakeasy. I was too passionate and too excited to concern myself with the consequences of my choices.

I have not regretted that decision for even the shortest of moments and I frequently encounter situations that affirm it. During interviews with FoodNetwork.com, The Columbus Dispatch, mediabistro.com, American Express Publishing, and the Scoop08.com, my Speakeasy experience impressed potential employers more than anything else I included on my r_?sum_?.

To be fair, I did end up paying more attention to my grades, and through that — and not having anymore economics classes — I’ve been able to regain my scholarship for my senior year. I will also be advising Speakeasy and I have been diving headfirst, as usual, into the Scoop08.

But perhaps the best reassurance is that I am not alone. During an online journalism seminar last year the class was discussing issues on campus that hadn’t been covered by student media. Some argued that student media is a difficult creature because students have so many things on their plates already, and that asking them to spend every waking moment on research for one story isn’t a fair expectation. A friend of mine immediately spoke up and said that that’s true, but in order to be a good journalism student, you have to be willing to let your GPA slip a little. Most of the class agreed, as did I, smiling at what the high school version of me would have thought.

Ironically, the best thing that the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism has taught me is that my education isn’t based solely on the time I spend in the classroom, and the type of journalist I become isn’t going to be decided by text books or lectures, but by the amount and quality of my experiences in the field.

So begins my senior year — starting off with two scholarships, 16 credit hours, a part-time job, Speakeasy, and my Scoop08 duties.

I guess I should learn to shower every now and again, too.

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Meghan Louttit is a journalism student at Ohio University and is a former intern at American Express Publishing and mediabistro.com. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

Study a magazine contract closely, and you’ll notice they usually ask freelance writers to guarantee the article they submit won’t violate anyone’s privacy. “Between MySpace, YouTube, and the blogosphere,” you might think to yourself, “who has privacy anymore?” Notwithstanding the explosion in self-revelation on the Internet — employees blogging about bosses they hate, patients writing about their bouts with life-threatening illnesses, and all those sultry narratives on nerve.com, just to name a few examples — the law still recognizes that each individual has some rights to preserve their own privacy, and that the media can’t publish information willy-nilly about the average person — or even public officials and celebrities, in certain situations — without their consent. Violate those rules, and you could find yourself in court.

Here are tips on what you can and can’t do when writing about other people.*

Know the law
There are three main areas of privacy law: private facts, intrusion, and false light. “Private facts” means you can’t reveal otherwise unnewsworthy private information that a “reasonable person” would consider offensive — without the consent of the individual in question. “Intrusion” concerns how you get the goods. Anything an average person would not be able to see or hear in a public place without using an amplifying device is considered private. A voluminous argument between two lawmakers on a Senate floor would generally be considered public; a whispered conversation in a corner of that same Senate floor generally would not, even if you can pick it up using a high-powered microphone. “False light” is a cousin to libel in that someone feels your story has made them look bad. It’s different from libel, however, because the facts of the story are usually true. Media attorney James Chadwick recalls a case where a California newspaper published a story about bongo drummers causing a nuisance by playing on public streets. Alongside it, they ran a file photo of a man walking down the street carrying a drum. It turns out the man was an accomplished musician who had never played on the street. He complained that the newspaper had put him in a “false light” because it made him look like he was one of the drummers annoying local residents.

The technicalities of what is and isn’t permitted under privacy laws vary from state to state. Many states don’t consider it intrusion if you tape an interview without telling your subject, for example, but California and several others do. To make sure you stay on the right side of the law, get familiar with the laws of the states in which you work. Resources for this include the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’ Practical Guide to Taping Phone Calls and In-Person Conversations in the 50 States and D.C. and its Open Government Guide.

Tagging along has its limits
If you watch police reality shows, you could get the impression that journalists are allowed to follow cops any place they go. But actually, government officials’ rights to enter private property generally don’t extend to the journalists along for the ride. If you’re doing a story on how police in your town handle domestic abuse and you accompany officers on a 911 call, don’t follow them into a private home unless the occupants invite you in. Stay on public property, or “you could be sued for intrusion,” says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Don’t substitute observation for documentation
Let’s say you want to write about how the president of your local hospital frequents strip clubs. You’ve seen him go into the local Crazy Horse several weekends in a row, but the newsworthiness of this otherwise private hobby is debatable, especially if you don’t have any evidence that it affects his management of the hospital. Think twice about going public based on your observations alone. Now assume the official has just been through an acrimonious divorce. His ex-wife testified extensively during the divorce hearings about his penchant for pole-dancers, and her testimony is part of the case’s public record. This would put you on safe ground. “As long as you fairly and accurately report the contents of an official proceeding, then you cannot be liable for that, even if it’s private,” says Chadwick, the current vice-chair of the Media, Privacy, and Defamation Law Committee of the American Bar Association.

“I almost read [non-media savvy subjects] a Miranda warning.”

Information self-published online is fair game
Remember the days when you had no idea what your neighbors and co-workers ate for breakfast, much less whether their preferences ran to leather or lace? With the explosion of blogs and YouTube, not to mention the breathless confessions on MySpace and other social networking sites, legions of otherwise private individuals are divulging what previously might have been their deepest and darkest secrets. The good thing for journalists is that, once a revelation is in the public sphere, it’s fair game. If you’re doing a story about eating disorders among stay-at-home dads, for example, you’re free to use any material published online by your subjects — assuming, of course, that you didn’t need to a password or other key to access the information and that you’ve validated that the entries on John Doe of 123 Main Street’s “Ex-Anorexic” blog were in fact written by John Doe of 123 Main Street. “If other people know about it, and certainly if you put it up on the Internet, you’re not going to be able to sue for right of privacy,” says Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Center.

Get consent — preferably on tape
The key to reporting private information that hasn’t previously been disclosed and isn’t otherwise newsworthy is getting the subject’s consent. Any time you speak to a subject, clearly explain that you’re working on a story for publication and that you’re interviewing them for inclusion in that story. Anything shared after that is technically on the record. The less media-savvy the subject, however, the greater the pains you should take to ensure they understand that what they share with you could end up in print. “I almost read them a Miranda warning,” says Dale Mahardige, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who teaches journalism at Columbia University. A best practice to protect yourself, should your subject recant later, is to make a habit of tape-recording your intro and the subsequent interview. Use a standard spiel such as: “This is Jane Doe, interviewing Bob Smith, on January 1, 2007, about his bout with cancer for a story for Cancer News Weekly.” By implication, anything Bob shares with you afterwards is something he’s consented to make public. One caveat to this rule: Children and other people not considered legally competent cannot give consent. When interviewing minors and legally incompetent individuals, get consent from a parent or guardian instead.

Don’t follow invasive media trends
Statutes protecting privacy generally rest on the standard of what a “reasonable person” would consider private. Historically, that’s meant things like a person’s health history, particularly regarding cancer and AIDS, sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and use of drugs and alcohol. The increasing exhibitionism on the Internet (S&M Blog anyone?), not to mention the outrageous revelations of private citizens on tabloid talk shows (tune in to The Jerry Springer Show any day of the week), could eventually change that. The things the average person wants to keep secret today might be considered banal tomorrow. But that hasn’t happened yet. Judges are still using traditional definitions to determine if a detail of a person’s life should be considered private, so you should too.

Truth: not a defense
Journalism professors and editors repeatedly entreat writers to fact-check and get it right. However, getting it right isn’t enough when it comes to private matters that are not of public concern. Instead, you have to ensure that you have consent to divulge the information or be able to prove that the information was already divulged publicly. A private fact that someone has kept private is off-limits, even if it’s true. Similarly, a photograph that records a true event is not fair game if you did not take it in what the courts consider a “public” place. For example, in some states, a married celebrity who’s carrying on an unacknowledged affair could legitimately sue you for using a powerful telephoto lens to see into the window of his house and snap pictures of him and his paramour in a compromising position. If a person standing in a public space couldn’t have observed the tryst with (ahem) a naked eye, it’s private.

Ask about your subjects’ concerns
If you’re doing a story on a sensitive topic that features private individuals, especially ones who are not media-savvy, go the distance and “try to understand what matters in that person’s life, what might be very personal to them, and what information, if revealed, might be harmful,” says Bob Steele, the Nelson Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute. That way you’ll be clear about what they feel comfortable discussing and having published and what they won’t. At the same time, with these frank conversations, you might luck out and discover that something you thought they’d want to keep secret — like sexual abuse, for example — is a subject they’re actually willing to discuss for the record.

Be judicious with sensitive information
This has more to do with judgment and ethics than it does with the law, but remember that when you’re reporting on a person who’s not used to being covered in the media, your subject might not recognize the ramifications of what they’re telling you. Lisa Collier Cool, an award-winning freelance writer and former president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, has written extensively about health issues for national publications. She remembers doing a story about a woman who had gone through a serious illness. The woman mentioned that her husband had had an affair while she was sick, and she wanted that detail included in the story. Cool realized that revelation could be harmful to the couple’s children sometime down the line. Since the detail wasn’t critical to the core of the story, Cool pointed out to her subject that she thought including it was unwise. “Sometimes people don’t always fully think about how things they say might seem to others in print,” she says.

Replace a reluctant subject
Cool recalls pitching another story to a national publication about a woman who had been struck by lightning — inside her home. Cool had read about the incident in a newspaper, but when she tried to interview the woman, the subject kept rescheduling their appointments. Cool realized the subject was backing out of the story, which left her on the hook since the magazine was expecting her piece. But instead of pressing forward with a reluctant source, Cool scrambled and managed to find two other women who also had been struck by lightning indoors and wrote about them instead. “If [your subject] gives you trouble at first, which is the honeymoon period, how good are they going to be during the not-so-fun period, like the fact-checking?” said Cool. Your best bet will always be to find someone who’s on board with participating in your story.

For further information, review the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’ First Amendment Handbook for a summary of the issues in privacy law. Also check out the Privacy section of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Legal Guide for Bloggers and the bullet points in a column by Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute.

E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: *Since we’re talking law, we must make clear: This article does not constitute legal advice, but aims to offer informative tips. Take the time to educate yourself in depth, and if you have concerns stemming from anything you’re working on, consult a lawyer.]