“How much should I charge?” is a common question we hear on the mediabistro.com forums. Writers who are moving into corporate writing after having worked as journalists reasonably want to know what’s a fair price to charge for their work.

The thing to realize is: There is no going rate. Not for press releases. Not for white papers. Not for any kind of corporate writing. Every project varies in its complexity, and prices ultimately depend on how many hours you put in. Nevertheless, there is a fairly simple way of figuring out how much you should charge. Follow these tips, and you’ll be well on your way to naming a reasonable figure.

Know your hourly

rate

As a freelance journalist, you’re probably used to getting paid by the word. Not so in the corporate world (or the worlds of the nonprofits or government agencies who hire writers). There, you almost always get paid either by the project or by the hour. Either way, you’ll need to know what your hourly rate is. A project fee will simply be your hourly rate multiplied by the amount of time you think the project will take. More about that later.

So what’s your hourly rate? Simply put, it’s how much money you intend to spend (and save) in a year, divided by how many hours you plan to bill that year. When calculating your income needs, though, remember that you’re not an employee. You’re a business. Think beyond what salary you want to make. Consider all your additional business expenses: health insurance, business or self-employed taxes, conferences, travel, office supplies and equipment, phone bills, business cards, marketing Web site, and so forth. Tack those on to the salary you want to draw, and you have the total income you need to make.

Next, divide your desired income by the number of hours you expect to be able to bill. Remember: billable hours are a subset of the total hours you work. Non-billable hours are the time you have to put in to grow and maintain your business: Hours you spend pitching stories, discussing potential projects with clients, attending conferences, billing, looking for story ideas, and so forth. Deduct those from your total hours worked. Also deduct the amount of vacation you want to take. And for good measure, the number of days you usually lose to illness or family emergencies. Take all those hours out, and you’ll see that your billable hours fall way short of 40 hours per week.

Divide the total income you need to make by the total number of hours you plan to bill to get the hourly rate you need to charge in order to make a living. You might be surprised to discover the number is higher than you expected. Putting this in black-and-white, though, will give you the confidence to ask your clients for a reasonable rate. “Clients sometimes look at your hourly rate, and say, ‘If you’re charging me $100 an hour, and you’re working 40 hours a week, then that’s $4,000 a week. That’s an awful lot of money. I feel like I’m getting overcharged,'” says Gwen Moran, a freelance writer and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Business Plans. “But what they’re not considering is all the overhead that goes into any business. If you’re charging $100 an hour, you’re only earning a fraction of that.”

Need help working through these calculations? Try the Hourly Rate Calculator at FreelanceSwitch.com. Tip: In the “Anything Else” field at the bottom of the “Calculate Your Business Costs” section, remember to include any and every other expense that the calculator didn’t explicitly ask for (including taxes). Moran suggests that, if you worked as a freelancer last year, check the deductions you took on your taxes for clues to your expenses.

Beware the na_?ve client

A red light should go off if you get approached by someone who knows you’re a writer and asks if you can whip up a press release in an hour or so. “That shows that they don’t really understand what they’re asking me to do,” says Linda Kallman, a freelance writer specializing in PR and marketing writing. Suss out how savvy the client is about what they think they need. If they seem at sea, consider passing at the project — unless you have the chops to help them develop a plan from scratch.

Experienced writers know that newcomers often lowball their estimates in the beginning. Accept that it’s part of the learning curve.

Determine the project scope

Not all projects of equal length cost the same to produce. The same tri-fold brochure could take five hours or 15, depending on the complexity of the material and how sophisticated and prepared the client is. To price a project, you’ll need to figure out how much more work, in addition to the writing, you’ll put in. Set up a phone call to go over the project scope with the client, and go through each of the following points. (And no, don’t charge the client for the scoping meeting. This part of the process is called “business development,” and it’s part of your unbilled overhead.)

Once you and your client agree on the project scope, write it down and get your client to sign off on it. Formally, this is called a Letter of Agreement, or a Statement of Work. It specifies the tasks you will complete and often sets deadlines for each stage. It saves everyone a lot of heartache down the line when memories get fuzzy. It is also useful in creating a series of line items that you can estimate individually and show the client, if they want to understand how you arrived at your overall estimate.

Decide on whether you’re going to bill hourly or by the project

Some clients like to pay by the hour. Others prefer to pay by the project. In either case, the client will usually want to have a sense of how much the project is going to cost overall. If you agree to bill by the hour, provide an estimate that details how many hours you expect the project to take and what the total price will be for those hours. Later, when you bill them, however, only bill for hours actually worked. If the amount of time required to complete the project isn’t clear, even after your scoping discussion, include some stopgaps in your agreement to reassure the client that an hourly approach won’t land them with a whopper of a bill. “If I’m not sure how long the project will take, I may give somebody a range,” says Kallman. “I may say I think it will take me 5-10 hours, but I will cap it at 10 hours. I will stop there, we’ll discuss where we are, and you can tell me how much more time you want to put into it.”

If the client prefers to pay a project fee, follow the same process but simply provide the final number. And bill the client that amount, irrespective of whether the project took more or less time than you projected.

Experienced writers know that newcomers often lowball their estimates in the beginning. Accept that it’s part of the learning curve. Over time and with experience, you’ll become increasingly comfortable with your estimates. “In the beginning, we all have a tendency to undersell ourselves,” says Moran. “It’s important not to beat ourselves up about that. Finish the project as gracefully as possible. Maintain the best relationship you can. Learn from the experience and move on.”

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

While many freelance writers make consumer magazines their primary target, another set of publications often goes unnoticed. “If there’s a particular business you’re interested in or have knowledge of, writing for trade magazines can be a good way to marry that interest to an existing set of writing skills,” says Jennifer Korolishin, who has freelanced for such trades as Beverage Industry and The College Store Magazine. “[Trades] offer a way to pick up a story that’s relatively easy to work into your schedule. In many cases, trade publications have a small full-time staff and depend heavily on freelancers for their coverage, so trades offer a great deal of opportunity to freelancers, and because many prefer to assign stories rather than to accept pitches, they can offer steady work, which is particularly important if you’re trying to transition from a 9-5 job into full-time freelancing.”

Since many trades are monthlies or are published less frequently, there’s adequate lead time to work on stories. Writer Marie Leach made phone calls to sources for Vitamin Retailer while her one-year-old daughter slept, and then sent follow-up emails when time allowed. “I’m not out to be Bob Woodward or anything,” she says. “I just like writing and this was a perfect set-up, because it could be fit around my schedule and I could make pretty good money from it.”

As with consumer pubs, rates at trades run the gamut. Bill McDowell, editorial director at Plate, says freelancers at his magazine are paid $1 a word. On the flip side, trade magazine veteran and Real Estate New York editor Paul Bubny says payment per story can range from $300-$400 to around $1,200. “The big difference in payment has partly to do with the pub’s budget and partly to do with the experience of the writer,” he says. “Less experienced writers usually start out with shorter assignments, which pay less, may write for less-recognized magazines that pay less, and are not yet established enough to charge by the word.”

Leach, who received $500 per 2,500-word article for Vitamin Retailer, sees many advantages in writing for trades. “The stories certainly didn’t take that long to write once you had all the info, [which only takes a few hours of calling and email to assemble], and worked out to be like $100 an hour,” she says. “My other freelance gigs only pay a fraction of that and it’s more work. You really can’t beat it.”

Best of all, ample work is available. “[Trades are] not as glamorous as a comparable consumer magazine, so trade editors are hungry for good writers, good reporters,” McDowell says.

An insider voice leads to regular assignments

Kirk Landers is the vice president/editorial director of James Informational Media, publisher of Better Roads and Aggregates Manager. For Better Roads, which is geared toward governments and construction contractors involved in road projects, Landers uses the same two freelancers repeatedly. “The exposure of their excellent work in our publication has stimulated a lot of new business for them, and they’ve had to raise their rates for us in recent years to justify the time our work takes,” he says.

Reaching that status takes preparation, regardless of whether a writer wants to make greater use of sources from a previous beat (e.g. food writer, technology writer) or has passion for a particular subject.

“If I get my hands on someone who shows they’re willing to really take some time to study my magazine and study the target audience my magazine is going after, and is willing and capable to modulate their reporting and writing to fit that audience, that person is gold to me,” says McDowell.

Intimate knowledge of an industry is key. “Writers who can address a particular industry with some degree of authority and ‘insider’ familiarity aren’t that easy to mint,” says Bubny. “Frequently this employability survives turnover at the magazine, because the new editor is naturally interested in turning to writers who have proven themselves reliable.”

Know the niche readership

Just because an industry has several magazines covering its ins and outs doesn’t mean they’re all the same. “Every pub, if the editor is doing his job right, has a unique point of view and market they’re serving,” McDowell says. Many trade magazines don’t cover an entire industry, but a specialized niche.

This level of specificity means a blanket approach to querying isn’t likely to score assignments. “No editor wants to feel they’re lumped in with everyone else,” McDowell says. Would-be trade writers should eschew generic cover

letters offering services or pre-written articles. “Pre-written articles would not typically include late-breaking news and cutting-edge information since they may be several months to a year old,” says James J. Gormley, editorial director of VRM, Inc., publisher of Vitamin Retailer, of his journalistic pet peeve. “Also, they are not necessarily written with each of our magazines’ specific audiences and set of information expectations in mind — not to mention they would have to be chopped or expanded in order to meet our specs.”

Bubny recalls receiving a prospective article on how commercial tenants could “exercise their rights over evil landlords.” The editor just had one problem: Most of the magazine’s readers are landlords, and none of them are tenants.

Interested writers need to do their homework to find relevant titles, and then research them to help formulate their queries. “I know it isn’t easy getting copies of issues, but we all have Web sites and most of the sites have a pretty rich sampling of past articles,” Landers says. “Also, most of us post circulation audit statements on our Web sites and those can be extremely rich in audience demographics.”

“Don’t bluff your way in — the editors will spot a phony immediately.”

Writers new to trades hoping to pitch them should learn about the nitty-gritty of the target industry, especially if it’s rarely covered in news outlets. “Generally, it would really help if the industry novitiate would go through a half-dozen or so issues of industry magazines to get an idea of audience, topics, slants, and issues before pitching an idea,” Landers says.

Don’t underestimate your editor’s immersion in the subject

Don’t assume that just because its a trade magazine the editor won’t know his or her field in and out. “The first, and maybe most important, thing to keep in mind is that you should not underestimate the editor’s capacity for being quite familiar already with the ‘new’ subject matter you believe you’re bringing to the editor’s attention,” Bubny says. “The editor’s tolerance for this seeming naivet_? may be low, and he or she may not take you seriously enough to bother responding to the pitch, let alone give you the assignment. If you can actually bring something new to a pitch, great — but assume that the bar is going to have to be set very high.”

Attempts to fake your way through pitches on such specialized topics will probably emerge even more clearly for trade editors. “If you don’t know the subject, learn it and then pitch the magazines,” says Phil Hall, editor of Secondary Marketing Executive and Alternative Energy Retailer. “Don’t bluff your way in — the editors will spot a phony immediately.”

“Since trade pubs are uniquely targeted to a specific industry or specialty niche, the pitch should show a keen awareness of that niche or that controlled circulation readership and give the prospective assigning editor a confidence level that the article will deliver content that falls within a fairly narrow area of focus and interest,” Gormley says.

Use minimal ‘technical information’

Readers of trade magazines are “looking for utility and a certain return on their time investment,” McDowell says. “They’re not reading it for fun.”

However, that doesn’t mean that writing for a trade article should be a chore. “Trade magazine writing can be dry and repetitive if the writer allows it to be,” Bubny says. “The secret to not letting it get dry is to amass enough interesting material that you feel as though you have a worthwhile story to tell.”

Gormley seeks stories “that take what could be dry and technical information” but are written in a way that are “interesting, engaging, and, as much as possible, fun. Use the least amount of technical information that is needed for any given story.”

When writing for a trade audience, convincing them to keep reading is key, says to Landers. “If you want a trade magazine reader to read your second paragraph, you had best give that person a good reason in the first paragraph. So your lede has to make a promise that the reader is going to learn something they will value, and the rest of the article has to deliver.” As for colorful copy, Landers recommends “powerful verbs,” advising that extended analogies or anything else that “pads the distance” between facts could wind up edited out.

No need to be an expert if you ask the right questions

When writing stories for Vitamin Retailer?? Leach “wasn’t really bothered by the fact that I didn’t know anything about vitamins. After all, even when I was a general reporter, I had to write about things I didn’t know much about — and back in the archaic late ’90s, we didn’t have Internet at our desks so a lot of the time it was by the seat of your pants anyway. VR wasn’t any different, except I would be able to do lots of Web research on the topic to get at least a structural knowledge of things before posing questions to interviewees. That definitely helped.”

Receiving a story on a foreign topic was a challenge for Korolishin, even intimidating. For her, getting past that fear takes a “combination of asking the right questions and, really, practice.” While research and preparation help, so does not being afraid to ask for assistance. “I would sometimes say upfront, ‘I’m not an expert on this topic, so I may ask some very basic questions just for my own education, if that’s alright with you?'” Korolishin says. “Most people are pretty gracious about it, and it often worked to my advantage, as you tend to interview people for trade magazines who are very passionate about their work or their company or their industry, and they want to share that with you, so they’d help me understand an unfamiliar topic, which made the story better and added to my own storehouse of knowledge.”

Bubny, who has also edited trade publications on the natural products industry and outdoor apparel and camping goods, says there is no formula to writing a trade magazine article. “The commonality from one trade publication to another is that all involve business writing and reporting, and an ability to quickly grasp the fundamentals of the industry you’re writing about,” he says. “Once you get the hang of that, it’s a transferable skill.”

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A freelance writer and film critic, Pete Croatto lives in central New Jersey. He can be reached at petecroatto AT yahoo DOT com.

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.

In this week’s edition, new Columbia grad student Beth Braverman assesses her place among her fellow students, revels in the camaraderie, and worries she’ll become the “bridge-and-tunnel student who never goes out.” And then there’s the whole getting a job thing, too.

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“Wow, I’m old.”

As I arrived on campus last Tuesday for the first official day of classes, this was the first thought running through my head.

In order to get to the Graduate School of Journalism, I had to navigate a campus swarming with incoming undergrads. As I mentally went over the readings for my first Evidence and Inference class, I caught snippets of conversations revolving around dorm life and meal plans. But even as the undergraduate students outside of the journalism building appeared young and immature, my peers inside seemed confident and experienced.

All of the 40-some students in Columbia’s M.A. program bring some real-world journalism experience, and my paltry five years as a local newspaper reporter and trade magazine editor seem to pale in comparison. My peers have broken major national stories, served as foreign correspondents in Lebanon and Iraq, and written for publications from The New York Times to the St. Petersburg Times.

We’re all on a level playing field going forward until, of course, job-hunting season begins — which is apparently now.

But despite the disparity among the resumes of incoming students, so far I have found my classmates utterly engaging and friendly. I’m sure that as the semester wears on, the inevitable cliques and alliances will form, but for now, everyone seems ready to make friends.

Already a few people stick out as quick to comment in class discussions, but I think others will join in once they get more comfortable with the group and with the classes.

There seems to exist a shared understanding that we’ve all gotten ourselves into this extremely intense training program, and we have to get along in order to help each other through it. Also, despite everyone’s background, no one really knows what to expect in the coming year, so we’re all on a level playing field going forward until, of course, job-hunting season begins — which is apparently now.

The dean told us during the first day of orientation to make an appointment and meet with career services as soon as possible. My own experience as a working journalist has shown me that publications generally do not advertise positions or start interviewing nine months in advance, but I definitely do not desire to be among the latecomers to the office. So I uploaded my resume — which can use some tweaking anyway — and requested an appointment.

One thing I have not done since arriving on campus is second-guess my decision to enroll. The curriculum promises to put strains on my time and skills, but it poses an appealing challenge that I look forward to meeting.

The syllabi for my classes appear in line with their online descriptions. They’re heavy on academic reading, but they bypass rudimentary journalism skills like how to write a lede or a nut graph.

One curriculum-related disappointment is that business concentration students do not get to pick their electives. Instead, our professors “highly recommend” that we take accounting this semester and corporate finance next semester. While I appreciate the reasoning for the mandate (and can certainly use the education in business basics), I would have enjoyed taking an elective more closely aligned with my personal interests.

Almost all of our professors are published authors and many of their works appear on required reading lists for their classes. I look forward to reading these texts in addition to bumping up our professors’ Amazon.com ratings.

Our professors have wasted no time getting started: We’ve already begun work on a group project for Evidence and Inference, and my business seminar professors expect us to have potential theses topics ready by the end of next week.

The commute from my new apartment in Astoria to Columbia has proven to take no less than an hour, regardless of what combination of buses and subways I take. This resulted in my tardiness for two classes in the first week of school, which mortified me but escaped the notice of anyone else.

The benefit of the commute starts and ends with a guaranteed two hours to catch up on classroom reading. To meet up with classmates for quick drinks on Friday took four hours from start to finish, and made me never want to do it again. I fear I may become that “old, married bridge-and-tunnel student who never goes out.”

So my goal for this semester is to better schedule my social outings to coincide with classes and maybe find a way to lure some unsuspecting classmates into the outer boroughs. Oh yeah…and to become a business journalist.

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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.

The heyday of the Internet seemed to turn traditional notions of copyright on their proverbial heads. The Web proved to be a powerful new publishing medium, and anyone who knew a scrap of HTML went wild posting things online. Gradually, copyright owners — whether writers, music publishers, or others — awoke to the fact that there was no meaningful difference between the Internet and other publishing media — and, therefore, that they should be paid for the use of their material online. Copyright owners started to stand up for their rights, and sites like the old Napster started getting shut down. Today, the pendulum continues to swing between both extremes: On one side, you have the freeze, where large, institutional copyright holders use sophisticated bots to hunt down Web sites using their works, then send notices to take the material down, sometimes even though the material is being used legitimately. On the other hand, there’s the continuing free-for-all, where everyone from large institutions to small businesses or individuals keeps using material without properly compensating copyright holders.

One byproduct of these developments is that the average person has become much savvier about copyright than they were five or 10 years ago. “Most people don’t think anymore that if you find something on the Internet that you’re free to copy it and put it on your Web site,” says Jessica Litman, author of Digital Copyright and professor of copyright and Internet law at The University of Michigan Law School. Another result, though, is the increasing need for writers and other content creators to be aware of copyright law, both to protect their own rights and help prevent them from inadvertently infringing on others’ rights.

To help meet that need, we’ve gathered tips to help ensure you’re aware of what’s legit and what isn’t when it comes to copyright. Today’s feature focuses on what you should know about copyright when you’re a content creator (Got a blog? Have a Web site that publishes user comments? Then we’re talking to you!). Check back tomorrow for our copyright feature focused on protecting work of your own. *

Know what is copyrightable
Simply put: A copyright grants commercial rights to the owner of an “original work of authorship” that appears in a “fixed form.” This includes everything from pieces of writing and songs to plays, images, and movies — even to architecture and software. The purpose of the copyright is to grant the owner the sole right to profit financially from all uses of the work. Someone wants to publish your article in their publication? They have to get your permission and, if you want, pay you. Someone wants to make a movie version of your book? Same thing. Someone wants to perform your play, song, or book? If you own the copyright and want them to pay, they’ll need to cough up the cash.

Common exceptions to the copyright rule include government documents and works that are considered “common property,” such as a height and weight chart. Another exception is a work whose copyright has expired and is therefore considered “in the public domain” and free for all to use. (Witness the round of movies based on Jane Austen books which have cropped up over the past decade.)

Plagiarism isn’t a copyright infringement, but it could hurt just the same
Copyright involves using someone else’s work and attributing it to them, but without the necessary permissions (and, possibly, payments). Plagiarism involves using someone else’s work and pretending it’s your own. It’s a subtle distinction, but it makes all the difference in the courts. A copyright infringement is a prosecutable offense, and financial damages can be recouped. Plagiarism is simply an ethical offense, and thus cannot be hashed out in the courts. But, don’t think that a plagiarizer won’t suffer penalties. Post someone’s article to your Web site without realizing you needed to get permission? They’ll either ask you take it down, or, worst case, bill you for a license. A pain, but not a career killer. Plagiarize by using someone else’s words, trying to pass them off as your own, and getting busted? See if you get any gigs after that.

A common misperception about fair use is that size matters. But size actually doesn’t matter. More important is the intent behind the usage.

When it comes to fair use, size doesn’t matter
“Fair use” is an exception to the copyright rule enabling people to use portions of works for the purposes of reporting on them, commenting on them, and parodying them, as well as for research and education, without needing to get permission to do so. The classic example is a televised movie review. If a TV station wants to broadcast an entire movie, they have to get a license. But if they just want to use a few clips in a review in order to cover the movie, they don’t need any special permission. Because of examples like this, though, a common misperception about fair use is that size matters. That is, that you don’t need a license if you simply use a small portion of a work. But size actually doesn’t matter in this case. More important is the intent behind the usage: Are you using the snippet because you want to report on, comment on, or make fun of the larger work? Or are you simply folding someone else’s creativity into your own, and thereby potentially enhancing the commercial value of your own work? Anthony Elia, a New York publishing attorney and co-author of Author Law A to Z, recalls a case in which an author included song lyrics in the chapter headings of his book — just a few lines here and there. The music publisher objected and threatened to bill the author a separate license for each copy of the book published. The author quickly removed the lyrics.

What’s tricky about “fair use” is that the law doesn’t contain hard and fast rules about what is and is not allowed. Instead, it simply lists a series of factors a judge would consider in evaluating whether the contested use of a piece of a work was fair or not. The Copyright Web site (a resource about copyright and an online copyright registration service) offers a nifty Fair Use Visualizer to help you evaluate whether your use of an item is likely to be considered “fair” or not. Use it as a starting point, but consult a lawyer if you want to be certain.

Publish clips on your Web site appropriately
Over the past decade, freelance writers have discovered that the Internet offers a great way to showcase their work: Set up a Web site, where you describe your areas of expertise, post scanned copies of your clips, and maybe even include thumbnail images of the covers of publications where your work appeared to reinforce your qualifications. You now have an easy way to show potential clients your work. Simple, right? Not quite.

By definition, your Web site is a promotional tool, which means everything on it is being used for commercial purposes (rather than journalistic ones). This means you don’t necessarily have the right to use all the elements that were included in the original article. You own the words you wrote (assuming you didn’t give up rights to them in your contract with the publication), so you can include those. But the photographs, charticles, and other “original works” that were part of the final article? Rights to those belong either to the people who created them or the publication. And unless those folks have given you rights to use them to promote yourself, you’re not legally entitled to put them on your Web site.

Kind of throws a wrench in the whole using-the-Internet-to-display-your-work thing. Here are a few workarounds:

Establish ownership of comments made on your blog
Technically, comments made by visitors to your blog belong to them. They are their “original” works in their “fixed” form. But you might reasonably want to use those comments in some derivative work somewhere down the line, like in an anthology. Follow the lead of sites like WashingtonPost.com, Technorati.com, and Craigslist.org, and post terms and conditions on your Web site that establish your right to use any comments posted as you see fit.

Get permission
If you want to use someone else’s work in your own, and you’re not positive you have claim to fair use, get permission. It’s a potentially long process, so start early. Copyright owners are not always easy to locate. Even once you find them, negotiations might take a while, since there are no set rules on how much it should cost to re-use a particular work in a specific circumstance. To find an owner, start with the database at the U.S. Copyright Office. It’s free if you do it yourself, but if you want to save time, you can pay the Library of Congress (where the Copyright Office sits) to do it for you. For other ideas on ways to locate a copyright holder, take a look at the online cheat sheet provided by Lloyd J. Jassin, a New York publishing attorney and co-author of The Copyright Permission and Libel Handbook.

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

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

Part I of this feature covered copyright concerns when it comes to using others’ work. Today, we’ve got copyrights tips to help you protect work of your own. We know we covered this part yesterday, but it’s worth repeating: Know what is copyrightable. Simply put: A copyright grants commercial rights to the owner of an “original work of authorship” that appears in a “fixed form.” This includes everything from pieces of writing and songs to plays, images, and movies — even to architecture and software. The purpose of the copyright is to grant the owner the sole right to profit financially from all uses of the work. Now, on to the essentials of guarding your copyright.*

Ideas aren’t copyrightable
Let’s say you have a great idea for an article that you share with a friend — maybe you even put it into an email to him. Then, he uses the idea to sell the very same story to a national publication, netting himself a fancy byline and a juicy fee for his trouble — not to mention making it impossible for you to sell the same idea to another publication. Copyright violation? Nope. Your original idea doesn’t constitute a “work of authorship” in a “fixed” form. Even writing it down in that email doesn’t prohibit anyone else from using the idea. The three sentences in your email are copyrightable, since they’re “original” and “fixed.” But that doesn’t give you the rights to the work your friend created, based on your idea. That’s his “original” work in his “fixed” form. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to recoup damages from him, other than cross him off your list of friends and warn other writer colleagues about his nasty habits.

Know what rights you are selling
Freelance writing contracts used to be pretty simple. You could grant First North American Serial Rights, which gave a publication first shot at running your story in its print edition. After that, you retained all subsequent rights. Or you did Work Made For Hire, in which case the publication owned your work wholesale, and you could do nothing further with it. The advent of digital media has led to myriad new ways to distribute content, most notably through Web sites and digital collections like those found on CDs. At first, some publications acted as if their purchase of your story for their print edition gave them the right to also make it available online and in other places, such as a digital archive. Eventually, the courts affirmed that that was not the case, most notably in the landmark 2001 Supreme Court decision in Tasini et al v. The New York Times et al, a case initiated by the National Writers Union. The decision established that writers own the rights to electronic versions of their work. Publications responded by rewriting their contracts. Many now request rights to any possible use they can imagine down the line, such as perpetual inclusion on their Web sites, inclusion in an anthology, or inclusion in a movie. “Whenever possible, writers should insist on keeping everything they can,” says Jessica Litman, professor of copyright and Internet law at The University of Michigan Law School. Depending on how much leverage you have, consider pushing back and granting the minimum number of rights.

Register your work
The requirements around registration are another source of confusion for writers. On the one hand, you don’t need to register your work to own the copyright to it: According to the law, you own the copyright at the moment of creation. On the other hand, registering your work is a prerequisite to bringing legal action against an infringer. The timing of your registration is equally important. How soon you register your work will impact how much you can recoup. Register within three months of publication or before an infringement (whichever is later), and you’re entitled to statutory damages and lawyers’ fees, in addition to any money the infringer earned through the use of your work. Register after three months or after the infringement (also whichever is later), and, even if you find an infringer, you can recoup their financial gain, but nothing else.

It might sound like a hassle to register each article you produce, but you can save time and money by bundling a group of articles and submitting them in a single batch, all for the $45 fee the Copyright Office charges per filing. Make a practice of doing this at least once every three months. “For $180 [a year], it’s a lot of protection,” says Anthony Elia, a New York publishing attorney and co-author of Author Law A to Z. “It makes the difference between being able to proceed in court and the case not being economically viable in many cases.”

Instructions on how to register your copyright can be found on the U.S. Copyright Office Web site. Erik Sherman, a freelance writer and former chair of the Contracts Committee of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, also has a handy cheat sheet on copyright registration on his WriterBiz blog.

“You have to be aggressive, and you have to be willing to go the distance [to protect your work].”

Find online infringers and deal with them
If you want to ensure others aren’t using your stories without your permission, perform a periodic Internet search for your byline. You’ll be surprised where your pieces might turn up. Several years ago, freelance writer Mary Beth Klatt discovered that a restaurant Web site was featuring an article she had written for the Chicago Tribune about a chain of local taverns. She sent them an invoice, and after she showed them proof of her copyright registration, the Web site paid. But it wasn’t easy, and the outlet balked at first. “You have to be aggressive, and you have to be willing to go the distance,” Klatt says.

Billing infringers isn’t your only option, though. If you aren’t getting very far with the owners of the Web site itself, you can also contact the Web site’s ISP and make a “DMCA takedown” request. The procedure is named for the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which amended federal copyright law and struck a compromise with ISPs, who were concerned about being held liable for the activities of the entities using their services. The law says ISPs won’t be held liable for copyright infringements made by Web sites they host as long as they remove the material upon being notified of an infringement. So if a Web site is ignoring you, the ISP will likely respond swiftly. You can view an example of a takedown notice, and the Copyright Office maintains (sometimes referred to as DMCA agents) to whom you can send a takedown notice.

You can also choose to be friendly about the infringement. If a blogger has reprinted your article for the purpose of furthering discussion around it, for example, consider simply asking them to link to your article instead of reprinting the whole thing. “It’s worth distinguishing between someone who’s adding commentary around the piece, and people who are taking the content and throwing ads around it, hoping to make money around the work,” says Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at the Harvard-based Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Consider using a Creative Commons License
Traditional copyright licenses were fairly restrictive. Either you gave someone a license to profit commercially from your work, or you gave them nothing. Tech innovators saw the limitations in these rules. There was no easy way to give someone partial rights. Enter the Creative Commons. Founded in 2001, this nonprofit organization created in a new set of licenses that allows the owners of creative works to provide limited permissions that allow others to use their work without making special requests. For example, a “Noncommercial” license automatically gives others the right to re-use your work as much as they like as long as they aren’t making any money off it. A “No Derivative Works” license gives people the right to use your work as long as they don’t modify it. You can mix and match to accord others exactly the rights you’re willing to give up. For more, see the Creative Commons Web site.

To learn more about copyright issues addressed here, check out What Works Are Protected? and What Is Not Protected by Copyright? on the U.S. Government Copyright Office’s Web site. (And don’t worry, it’s written in plain English.)

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

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

My first reporting job was for the Village Voice in the mid- to late-nineties back when it was owned, quietly, by the Hartz Mountain Group (after Rupert Murdoch, before Arizona). By then it had already been a few decades since that paper had seen its heights, but I’d held faith. The idea of the Voice, even at that late date, was that it still stood up for the hidden parts of the city, for all those sidelined subcultures no one else covered, and as one of the new I was blessed with a mad jumble of beats — video game writers, arm-wrestling tourneys, the Internet. The stories had nothing to do with each other except for the fact no one else wanted them. I saw that newsrooms were much like plots of divided land: prime, bountiful tracts staked by the first regime; parched, lime-stoned fields seeded by the callow new. And so I tended my fringe soil.

After a few years I had lucked into a few leads on a story about how Asian gangsters were running gambling and prostitution parlors in Manhattan and Jersey, prize information. The Voice‘s main mob reporter then, Bill Bastone (who later went on to found The Smoking Gun), encouraged me to go after the story. He even graciously offered a few sources. He was part of that Voice tradition where fellow reporters helped one another whenever asked.

Slowly, I gathered. I interviewed. I mined the background. Eventually, I cut a small story into the paper, a concession; I hadn’t nailed down that sweeping, epic feature I had first imagined. (Don’t we always imagine that first?)

How To Accidentally Transition Into Film: Write About It

Around the same time, I had separately been working on a story about independent filmmakers, one of those knowing, think-pieces typical of the Voice then. My lead subject was Michael Kang, writer and director of Sundance film The Motel. During the interview he happened to ask what else I was writing, and I mentioned the Asian gangster story. He then suggested the obvious thing brewing between all the spaces in our conversation.

There was hemming and hawing, the usual deflections — from me. But then I could see in the reams of research that I had gathered — all of which touched but never completely confirmed certain New Gotham truths — the outlines of a movie, that necessary narrative waiting to get out. So I said yes, and I learned to drum in Final Draft. After a while Mike and I had 110 pages of scene and dialogue, and we made the rounds. Money was found. Production happened. The film, called West 32nd, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this year, and I was lit with pride. Through it all I learned to speak in “blue page” and “white page,” in “pre-pro” and “post” — the filmmaker’s cant that marks the mouths of insiders (even if it turns out to be for just the one time).

The Great American Novel, It Ain’t

But there is a frustrating certainty to screenwriting: A screenplay isn’t really a writer’s form. There is suspense in structure, yes. There is realism in dialogue, yes. But not much else. The writer writes for the director, the producers, even the actors before he writes for himself. All of the players need clarity first, and while that is certainly a reporter’s rifle, unlike a news story, a script’s brutal efficiency doesn’t allow for any literary pause. There’s no room to order language into careful or commanding prose, into that unique rhythm and hiccup of words that define what a writer does.

Don’t think so? Think of your three favorite movies not written by the director. Do you know who wrote them? Let’s try another: Which is your favorite Martin Scorsese picture? Who wrote it?

The director chooses which notes to perform, and a good director can turn a meager script into a masterpiece; the reverse is also true.

This has nothing to do with any faulty justice on the part of Hollywood, though that machine definitively deserves final fault for many, many crimes of trade. The reason for that gap in cinema memory is that screenwriters are not responsible for what anyone ultimately likes (or dislikes) about a film. I’m not trying to pass the buck, as, indeed, frightfully inept writers fill the ranks, and poor scripts are plenty, enough to glut the Hollywood air.

But as with any craft, it’s all about execution — and a script is the opposite. It is a proposition, a string of intentions, of word and action, of story and character, even of stunts and special effects. The director chooses which notes to perform, and a good director can turn a meager script into a masterpiece; the reverse is also true.

So what then, the writer’s role?

Details, Details, Details

Journalists hold an edge here. Details. Hollywood, and by that metonym I refer to all filmmakers (studio or independent), is starved for detail — it’s the one thing studios are forced to pay for and what the writer owns. My pile of reporter’s notepads served the script in succinct measures.

First, like any well-devised feature article, a script needs a nut, that sleek widget that explains the need for the story at all, and one of the more interesting facts to this clan of mobsters was that they operated completely differently from the Italian mafia (a well-trod path on screen) — they were either more extreme or exactly reversed in their perceptions and procedures to the Italianate brand. And it was this variance that propelled our script’s sense of urgency. From there we crafted character, my interviews providing some dialogue verbatim.

All that was left was plot, and one of the biggest challenges to screenwriting is plot mechanics. Why does B happen after A, or how can I get B to happen after A? Knowing, for instance, how law enforcement actually works, or being aware of the dynamics of a particular cipher (such as an illicit subculture) can tighten those strings of causality.

And yet, more detail was sought on set. Perhaps my enduring worth during the filming of West 32nd was defined by the fact that I was one of the few who had seen this Asian Mafioso act up close, and I was nervously pecked by actors looking for specific ticks; by the costume designer who wanted to know what these characters wear; by the location scout who wanted the actual addresses of the places I had reported from; by the director who wanted to recreate the look of a seemingly simple room and the action of a minor character (“___standing on the table naked, she bent over and drank a mug of beer stuck to the table…”).

The Conventioneers

But while weaving details into a script can create the ring of truth, kowtowing to convention can also further the feeling of familiarity — anything that strays from the standard will not translate. In other words, don’t do the Quentin Tarantino thing — unless you know you’re going to direct it. Is it any surprise that all those post-modern films that cloyingly maintain the beats of literature are written and directed by the same person? Charlie Kaufman, the inevitable asterisk, has nonetheless preserved his writer hallmark not by over-conceptualizing his stories as many might think, but by putting himself in them.

By contrast, one of the today’s most successful screenwriters, Spielberg workhorse David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, upcoming Indiana Jones 4), is not a known quantity outside the machine. That you may never have heard his name might have to do with the fact that he’s very good at his job — his writing is tight, invisible.

Indeed, journalists hardened by that noble newsroom regulation, Economy of Words, might think that screenwriting is not so different after all. Even David Foster Wallace would have to bare his nape in grudging veneration at the Temple of Word Thrift, but that’s not the case. A screenplay is a more stripped down device, and I don’t think any journalist or writer would hold faith in a church that makes writing so modular, that corners writing into such a consensus trade as the movie business demands.

It requires that you subsume your writing to the story, to the forever formula.

The Method

The books on screen-craft are legion and while they have all promised that hokey sense of fulfillment that comes with a polished product, they have also promised the following: You will have written no more than 110 pages and no fewer than 90; you will have written a plot turn on page 27; you will not have written a single scene that goes beyond four pages, ideally two or three; you will not have written dialogue that could otherwise be explained by SCENE ACTION (instead of saying “Yes,” he nods); and the list of dictums goes on. Taken in sum they form this curious mathematical tedium:

HIT MOVIE FUNCTION = SUM [Scene Pages 1-2 (nemesis + action)] + [Scene Pages 3-4 (main character + problem (as-defined-by-nemesis))] + … + [Scene (main character + love interest + flirting/promise-of-consummation)] + … + [Scene Page 27 (main character (setback/friend killed/etc.))] + … + [Scene Page 60 (main character + love interest + conflict/remorse)] + … + [Scene Pages 90-94 (main character + nemesis + showdown/denouement)] + … + [END Scene Pages 95-99 (main character + love interest + resolution/catharsis)]

Don’t laugh, as it actually works. It is exactly this kind of creaky, workaday craftsmanship that defines today’s brand of filmmaking, and as the above formula illustrates, a screenplay in the end is nothing more than a neurotic hem-haw, a ream waiting for cut-up, and if you want your script taken seriously, it, and you, must accord.

In total: Formula, then detail, no aims at literature.

Perhaps the cynical timbre of my recount betrays a certain perverted sense of gratitude on my part, but, in truth, I would not diminish my time in moviedom for anything. I am, in fact, hoping for more, because after it all, screenwriting does fulfill. It is a shared fulfillment. There is some definite magic to seeing your words resolved in the mouths of actors who can somehow make it sound so much better than you once imagined or even intended. And as the movie pushes along and the director finds clever new ways to edit the reel into ever-tighter structures, and the music and special effects are added, and that impossible alloy of remoteness and intimacy forms around every frame, you begin to see something much larger than whatever was first on the page. You see a movie.

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Edmund Lee is at work on his first novel. He awaits impending distribution of West 32nd so all his friends who missed it at festival can stop pestering him. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

In the latest installment of J-School Confidential, third-semester NYU grad student John MacDonald reflects upon what’s he’s learned and how it will help his future. The results surprise him.

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The impulse is to approach j-school, or any graduate experience, with all our bases covered, all the right forms signed and sealed. We don’t go to grad school because we’re supposed to; we go because we want to. So we throw all we have into clearing the proper path to professionalism. But things are never that easy. Get your shit together, sure. But realize that good stuff happens when you aren’t looking.

Sometimes the good stuff has nothing to do with school or journalism. Distractions can be just as “productive” in the long run as any five hours spent on the beat. When I dumped Philadelphia for NYU last summer, I left behind a two-and-a-half year relationship with a good band. Within in a month, I had a new one in New York. Now I had rehearsals in exotic Astoria and new friends who didn’t know grad school from pre-school — and all because I showed up at a friend’s show at CBGB’s. The next day, the second guitarist quit. My buddy offered me the slot and that was that. I had no intention of playing music last year. I was a graduate student with books to read and student loans to pay. But while writing remains foremost on my mind, my band has given it the weekly rest it deserves. A noisy guitar is the best stress reducer I’ve found. Distractions are a good thing, especially ones that fall into your lap.

I hesitate to call my internship with The New Yorker a fluke. But that’s really what it is — yet another example of the happy accidents that have marked an otherwise unexceptional j-school experience. It was this simple: I grabbed coffee with a recent NYU grad — an editor for Domino working in the Cond_? Nast Building (the same that houses The New Yorker). I happened to mention my interest in music writing. Without any prompting, my friend sent an email to The New Yorker‘s pop music critic and a sometime acquaintance of hers, asking if he needed any help. And bam! I’m in the door at 4 Times Square. No applying to Cond_? Nast’s excessively bureaucratic internship program. No fear I’ll get placed at Golf Digest or Modern Bride. I had snuck in through the back door.

The New Yorker is, of course, a lesson in networking: that tiresome habit of socializing about which I felt utter ambivalence only a year ago.

Interning at The New Yorker has felt like a complete coup on the one hand, and completely commonplace on the other. Since starting this summer, I haven’t done anything life changing — just research, some fact-checking, and the occasional trip to the public library. Then again, I’ve gotten to work extensively with one of my favorite writers — an experience I’d gladly exchange for any four-hour photocopying session.

The New Yorker is, of course, a lesson in networking: that tiresome habit of socializing about which I felt utter ambivalence only a year ago. I haven’t exactly been born again, but I have come to see networking’s uncanny power. I’m not an idiot.

But the real lesson here — and one I would’ve been grateful to know last fall — is that success isn’t always dependent on productivity and preparation. That’s the silver lining in all those brutal hours you’ve put in on your grad school application, your two-hour interviews, and your 2,000-word features. Sometimes, all it takes is a cup of coffee, and suddenly you’ve got a newyorker.com email address.

Of course, a New Yorker email account doesn’t mean a New Yorker staff position. In a few months, I will leave 4 Times Square having worked hard, met fascinating people, and made priceless contacts, but not, I suspect, with a job. And here’s the real issue. No one’s dropping $15,000 a semester just for an internship and a couple bylines. The idea is to land a career, become fiscally sound, make ends meet, bring home the bacon, all while engaging in a profession notorious for its meager job opportunities, its low salaries, its empty cupboards and empty bottles — its lack.

But unlike the importance of healthy distraction and casual networking, the tenuous connection between j-school and post-graduate employment has never been a mystery. I knew it when I applied to NYU and I know it now. Nothing in my first two semesters — a time I wouldn’t trade for any six-figure salary — has dissuaded me. Clearly, there are better and worse choices to make. Some professors work hard to get you published, some less so. Some organizations make staffers out of their interns, some don’t. You should figure out the difference. But you’ll gain nothing by fretting too hard about graduation on your first day of orientation. Immerse yourself in the material, work frighteningly hard, and if no publication is waiting for you at the end of the line, start your own magazine. That’s what I’m doing.

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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.

In the latest installment of J-School Confidential, new Columbia student Katia Bachko reflects upon her first month at school, her new beat, and her newfound respect for the simplest stories.

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I am sitting in a room with more than 200 people and crying. Everyone is crying.

No, these are not uninformed j-school students who’ve just heard the news about the imminent demise of newspapers. My classmates and I are listening to excerpts from StoryCorps in a presentation by David Isay, a former radio journalist and documentary-maker and the founder of the project. Isay is at Columbia to deliver what can only be described as the world’s saddest motivational speech. His advice: Listen. It falls on ready ears. We emerge into the August night with tear-streaked cheeks, and, at this moment, I am aglow with certainty: I belong nowhere else.

Since school started on August 16, the first lesson I learned is that experience and accomplishment aren’t the same thing. Before Columbia, my classmates were soldiers in Iraq, investment bankers, amateur opera singers, published poets, book authors, UN officials, and rock stars. I’m constantly thinking or saying, “Wait, you did what? Wow!”

Two truths have emerged quickly: 1. I love being at school. When I take in the bona fide collegiate scene, I feel a heady rush and my mind floods with clich_?s: the possibilities are endless; the world is my oyster, and so forth. 2. I need to be at school. On the beat and at the keyboard, I feel challenged, pushed beyond what I know and what is comfortable.

For one thing, I’m not used to doing my own reporting. As an assigning editor, my job was to have a good idea and then find someone else to execute it. Now I have to do both, and I’m finding that the execution part is much harder than it seems. It’s often said that people who master a craft can make the difficult seem effortless. I’m learning that what may read as a simple story can represent hours and hours of legwork before the writing begins.

Nervous at the beginning, I was secretly hoping for a little hand-holding.

In the past, when I set out to critically read the newspaper it meant evaluating bias. Now, I marvel at the most straightforward hard-news articles. They are a wonder of time management and resourcefulness: How did the reporter know with whom to talk? How did she find such articulate sources? I am humbled by these details, filled with respect for the writers who accomplish these daily feats with grace.

The concept of news judgment has also hit me like a ton of bricks. In undergrad, when professors talked about it, the discussion always veered to the “Dog Bites Man” versus “Man Bites Dog” example. News was unusual or significant or important. At the magazine where I last worked, it was easy to find the relevant in a sea of information. I had to answer two questions: Does this pertain to our niche readership? Have we covered this recently? If I could answer no to both, I usually had a story.

But when writing for a general audience, the world at times seems vast. The people on my beat — I’m covering Greenpoint, Brooklyn — are warm and willing to share their stories. I’m still not 100 percent certain how to take what they give me and turn it into a compelling article. I pride myself on being observant and fill my notebook with small details, but I haven’t found a use for them yet. I am training myself to think critically about the local conflicts on my beat, but I still have to learn how to turn a sharp insight into something larger.

Above all else, I’ve realized that j-school requires major self-motivation. Nervous at the beginning, I was secretly hoping for a little hand-holding. I wanted some supervised activities during which I’d be coached on how to approach strangers on the street, conduct a proper interview, ask good questions, and then synthesize all of this into a super story. In truth, we had a few lectures and discussions about the basics of reporting before our first assignment, but it all seemed like too much too soon.

On the street, I felt abandoned and unprepared. Wasn’t j-school supposed to teach me how to do this instead of throwing me to the wolves? Sick with anxiety, I walked around looking for a person to interview and everyone looked wrong. “That guy is walking pretty fast, he must be in a hurry… Oh no, this woman’s bag looks sort of heavy, she probably doesn’t want to stop and talk.”

It was sunny and warm out but I was walking around with a cloud over me. Just then, I turned a corner and I heard a friendly voice say, “Nice day out!” And so it began.

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Katia Bachko is a writer and editor in New York City. Contact her at katiabachko.com

In this edition of J-School confidential, our Columbia MA student attempts cope with the ever-growing pile of printouts beside her bed. As she sinks further under a mountain of paper, she wonders whether she should stop reading and start writing.

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I am overwhelmed with paper.

Three weeks into my MA program and I’m already seriously at risk of becoming one of those little old ladies who meets her demise trapped under the mountains of printed material she lets accumulate in her apartment, only to be found weeks later, her eyeballs eaten away by her hungry, neglected cat.

The MA is a decidedly more academic program than Columbia’s MS (note to everyone who wants to know who teaches me RW1, the famed beat reporting class familiar to all MS grads: I do not take RW1). That means while the MS kids are out reporting on the mean streets, filing stories about churches in Astoria and used bookstores in the Bronx, we MA students are reading 100-plus pages on the failure of Germans to properly process the emotional costs of Allied destruction, dense psychological studies on making faulty assumptions, and lengthy critical round-ups of the role of art in society.

All of these readings provided to us as PDFs, which then turn into reams and reams of printed-paper, littering my backpack, my dresser, and my bedroom floor. Then there’s the Times, which I always think I’ll get around to finishing, and thus let collect under my desk, not to mention the various magazines I pick up every time I’m out so I can familiarize myself with their content and the books — the books! Powells.com sent me a used, low-cost tower of literature just this weekend.

And if you think I’m having trouble storing all of this written content? You should see me try to read it. I’ve always been a fast reader, and assumed the same speed with which I could tear through The Poisonwood Bible and David Sedaris essays would translate to Daniel Liebskind’s treatise on memorial architecture and the Holocaust. It doesn’t — and as a result, I have faced several long nights and early mornings trying to cram it all in.

I’m a mouthy broad, and would rather participate in class than stare aimlessly out the window.

Sometime around the beginning of week two, I began to wonder if maybe I didn’t need to read all of my assignments. The program is pass/fail, there were no written follow-ups, and there’s so much assigned that we almost never got around to discussing it all during class.

I put my theory to work for a few days, and discovered I was right — I didn’t have to read it all. In fact, I could probably get away with not reading anything. But I’m a mouthy broad, and would rather participate in class than stare aimlessly out the window ___ especially when class lasts two to three hours. Even when I could fake it, making general points or bring up news discussions without directly referencing the reading, I felt like I was missing out. The literature my classmates were discussing — though difficult and obtuse on first pass — sounded fascinating; something I would benefit from knowing if I want to speak knowledgeably about culture and society.

Besides, if I want to compete with this class of all-stars, I need to keep up. The level of talent in my program is staggering — award winners, world travelers, phenomenal writers. The goal now is to make enough of an impression, in class and out, such that they might remember me one day and offer me a job at whatever high-powered magazine they take over a few weeks post-graduation.

Straddling the line between diligent academic and charming, ever-present networker has been another challenge. Part of the value of J-school is meeting and mingling with future peers, taking advantage of the world-class staff, and doing non-school work for people that can help me publish in reputable magazines. So do I stay in and catch up on reading, or do I sneak out for a drink with my classmates, with whom I can bounce pitches off of and glean contacts?

That’s why I found myself blowing off an assignment last week, when I should have been reading about the primitive media channels in eighteenth century France. The reading was due the next day — but after a talk with one of my professors, I realized a think-piece I had been longing to write might find an audience in one of several well-regarded magazines. Instead of hitting the books, I cracked a bottle of wine and started writing, finally putting to paper some of the ideas that had been circulating in my head for months. It was thrilling to finally get it out, and to realize that I finally had the connections and ability to see this work from idea to print.

But by the end of the night, I still couldn’t get that nagging sense of duty out of my head. I diligently printed out my history reading, read through as much as I could, and added it to the teetering stack by my bed.

Thank goodness I don’t have a cat.

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Kate Dailey is an MA student at Columbia University.

Our “introverted,” “soft-spoken,” small-town j-schooler explains how she conquered the intimidation of meeting new people, attended multiple industry events, and even scored a free trip to Hollywood, all in the name of advancing her fledgling career.

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Two months into my freshman year at Ohio University I found myself on a plane to Hollywood, preparing to mingle with some of New Media’s top pioneers at the annual Online News Association conference. I checked my homemade business cards over and over, wondering if my experience editing my high school yearbook was enough to impress. I hadn’t joined The Post, the school newspaper, or any other publication yet, and the most well-known media figures I had met were Stan Boney, the local weatherman, and Seth Doane, a former ChannelOne anchor. I felt that this, combined with my small stature and soft-spoken nature, made my apprehension well warranted.

The truth: The main reason I approached the Online Journalism Student Society’s booth at the Communication school’s involvement fair was because they were offering a trip to Hollywood, a much more lucrative offer than any of the other organizations present. Without a second thought I called my parents up and said, “I’m going to Hollywood.” I didn’t realize that by taking this first foray into the world of professional journalism so early in my college career, I would learn an essential j-school life lesson: It’s all about who you know.

While this reality had been explained to me before, my internal justice system felt it was wrong. If it’s all about who you know, why bother putting any effort into your work? In Hollywood I learned that while you can know all the big-shots in the business, you need talent and a work ethic, too. If an acquaintance goes out on a limb to recommend you and you fail, you’ll make yourself and your benefactor look like a fool. Chances are they won’t back you again.

So how does one become “good” at meeting and mingling? Well, while I’m no Laurel Touby, I have picked up a few tips in the past three years. And if an introverted girl from a town with a population of approximately 1,500 whose only claim to fame is that it is 30 minutes from the ninth most dangerous city in the U.S. — Youngstown, Ohio — can learn how to use connections around the country to her advantage, then you have a pretty good shot.

Being so unsure of myself, I ended up fumbling through my first day at ONA conference, until the late afternoon when I found myself in a conversation with a professor from a university in Texas. Halfway through the discussion I realized I sounded smart and knowledgeable. True, we were discussing university-related subjects, but it was a step. The thing about conferences and other large gatherings is that for some people it takes practice. You can’t be afraid of sounding like a fool every once in a while.

For the second day I made a goal for myself of approaching and starting conversations with at least five professionals. I jotted down some notes and wrote a few questions that I was comfortable asking. I took ideas from my journalism classes, issues raised during panels, and my knowledge of current media affairs. By the end of the conference I had collected over 50 business cards.

Did that guy in one of your classes have your dream internship? Send him a Facebook message asking if he could let you know how he scored it.

During the conference take notes of who interests you — maybe they worked for a company you want to intern for, maybe they had great connections themselves — and shoot them a quick email. It only takes about a minute to say you enjoyed the conversation and hope they had a good trip home. Considering our generation’s competency with email and social networking, there’s no reason we shouldn’t excel in this area.

The second chunk of sources is the people closest to you. J-school professors are a great because most of them have had a wealth of experience in the field. This also includes current and former bosses and even fellow students and alumni. Did that guy in one of your classes have your dream internship? Send him a Facebook message asking if he could let you know how he scored it, or if he wouldn’t mind getting a cup of coffee. Most people are happy to share their experiences and pass along their contacts.

I’m not ashamed to say that every single job and internship I’ve had since I came OU has been secured because of someone I know — a fellow student, a school trustee, an alumnus, a former supervisor and someone I met at ONA — I’ve relied on all of them to pass along my resume or make a call.

Of course, once they make the call, it’s up to you to impress.

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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.