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.

Most people who’ve ever watched television think they can write for it. Most people who’ve never watched television think they can write for it. The guy who just sold me my television thinks he has a screenplay. From their overstuffed couches, viewers assume that being able to predict the next line of dialogue before it’s spoken entitles them to be in the My Name is Earl writers’ room, when what it actually signals is just how hard the task really is — so hard that experienced writers often fail. “A lot of people think TV is a thing you do from your home in your spare time,” says Jane Espenson, a writer on Battlestar Galactica. “It seems like a career you can get into if you’ve already got a job. But it’s not.”

How can you get in? According to my research, there are four ways, no ways, and also an infinite number of ever-changing ways to get work writing for television, and being a good writer is only half the battle. Maybe less. Getting a job writing for television can be harder than dating, and just as serendipitous. So whenever I meet someone who’s been successful in TV-writing, I get them to tell me how. While there is no equivalent to JDate for hungry writers, stories I’ve heard of how people got their start run the gamut from infuriating to inspiring.

It’s who you know
John Schulian’s story is both. At an age when some men divorce their wives and buy Corvettes, Schulian divorced his wife and started watching TV. “I had never been a big television watcher, ever in my life,” he says. “But for some reason, I watched the pilot of Hill Street Blues and it just absolutely killed me how good it was. The characters were brilliant. The writing was smashing. I was floored and I became a faithful watcher of the show. Hill Street showed me that writing for television could be an honorable profession.” In 1984, Rupert Murdoch took control of the Chicago Sun Times and Schulian took that as the perfect opportunity to leave. He quit his job there as a sports writer, and moved to Pennsylvania. In February of ’85, he contacted a former coworker who had stayed in touch with another former coworker, a photographer who now worked for the LA Times and was married to TV writer Jeff Melvoin. “I called Jeff out of the blue, and he didn’t know me from a sack of potatoes. He could not have been nicer or more supportive — and we talked for about 45 minutes. This was the first of many acts of incredible generosity, charity, and big-heartedness that I would encounter over the next few years.”

Schulian showed up in L.A. in April and called Jeff, whose response was, “All right, at 11 a.m. you’ve got a meeting with the vice president of MTM Productions.” Melvoin had also scheduled him with the head of development at Geffen Film, and for dinner together in Santa Monica, even though Melvoin and Schulian had never even met. “The one thing [Melvoin] said that stuck in my mind was that everybody gets into the business a different way,” says Schulian. “There is no one way to Hollywood.” To which Schulian replied, “Well, I really like Hill Street Blues. What if I wrote a letter to Steven Bochco? Dear Mr. Bochco, I’d sure like to do what you do!” He included a copy of his book and an article he had written for GQ. Within two weeks he received Bochco’s reply, which said, “A lot of journalists think they can do this and a lot of journalists can’t.” Less than a year later, Schulian was writing episode 8 of L.A. Law. “I had not read a script in my life. I had certainly never written a script,” says Schulian. “I was just completely flying blind. Nobody ever fell off a truckload of turkeys the way I did.” Other folks Bochco took a chance on? Deadwood writer David Milch and David E. Kelley of Ally McBeal and Boston Legal fame. Schulian turned in his rewrite in August of ’86, and that September he joined the writing staff of Miami Vice. “I guess it’s fair to say that things were moving at warp speed,” he says. He would go on to co-create Xena: Warrior Princess.

But can such lucky breaks happen in today’s TV industry? Schulian wonders the same thing. “I think the business has changed so much,” he says. “You like to think that these sort of impossible stories can happen, but I don’t know. First of all, it’s not even the people who run the shows that do the hiring. You’ve got to be signed off by the studio, and the network, which is just completely wrong. This is a frustrating and unhappy time, in terms of hiring and putting together the kind of staff that you would want.”

It wasn’t just extraordinary acts of kindness and raw talent that gave Schulian his second life, it was also timing, lottery-winning-lucky-timing. “As I would figure out later, I had caught Bochco at absolutely the perfect time in his career. He had left Hill Street Blues — and he had time in a way that he never would have had time when he was in the midst of production — I can’t thank Steven Bochco enough. Ever.”

At Jane Espenson’s first pitch meeting, she sold a story — increasing her income that year by almost 50 percent. She was hooked.

TV advice from the blogosphere

So who can you come to thank in these frustrating and unhappy future times? One possibility is Jane Espenson. While she hasn’t created a Hill Street Blues yet, she did write a spec M.A.S.H. when she was 12. She’s among the few professional TV writers out there with a strong sense of responsibility towards her fellow wordsmiths. She dispenses smart, free, spec writing advice on her blog. Joss Whedon, the mind behind Buffy The Vampire Slayer, reads her blog. John Hodgman, the “PC Guy” and Daily Show correspondent, wrote about her blog on his blog. As Espenson says, the genesis of her blog was, “I’ll talk about the only thing I know, which is how to write a good spec.” She had no idea it was going to fill such a huge gap for would-be TV writers. “I assumed lots of people were doing it, and other people are — Doris Egan [of House] has a great blog, and [Emmy-winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer] Ken Levine has a blog, but I guess nobody does it with as much focus as I do,” says Espenson. “I don’t talk about anything else. Lunch and screenwriting tricks specifically designed for television, and even more specifically designed for writing a spec that will get you hired. I make it sound doable, I make it sound accessible — because I think it is. The numbers are low, but people get in [to the TV industry] every year.”

Be a good fellow

As Espenson tells it, the ABC Disney Fellowship program is her Steven Bochco in shining armor. Living on $12,000 a year as a graduate student at UC Berkeley, Espenson’s way of procrastinating on her linguistics dissertation was cranking out three Star Trek: The Next Generation specs. Based on spec No. 2, Espenson got the call to come in, and at her first pitch meeting sold a story — increasing her income that year by almost 50 percent. She was hooked.

Through routine trips to L.A. to pitch Star Trek with Ron Moore, who remains a colleague of hers, she found out about the fellowship. “To get into Disney, you needed a half-hour script. Disney was out of the drama business entirely because it felt dramas were ‘not profitable’ and ‘never would be again because they can’t syndicate. Dramas are done! Everything’s comedy!’ So I wrote a Seinfeld [episode] and sent it in [to Disney for fellowship consideration]. Espenson’s script was accepted, she spent two years in the program where she landed jobs on Dinosaurs and Monty.

Espenson attributes part of the program’s success to the fact that shows are given incentives to hire fellows. “You aren’t taking that big a chance as a show runner if you employ a Disney fellow because, like I was, they’re paid by the fellowship. You don’t have to tap into your writing budget; you get another body in the room working for you absolutely free. At a time when budgets are so small, it’s not just a luxury. You might really need that to fill out your staff. So it’s probably becoming a better and better way to get in. You need a certain amount of experience in your room. You do want young writers, but you hire from the top down. By the time you’re hiring your staff writer, you’ve got no money.” According to Writer’s Guild of America West president Patric Verrone, “The industry works to hire people who are the cheapest. The triangle of good, bad and cheap — pick any two. The natural course of business is to find writers who they can pay the least to, who can deliver the fastest. At some point in their career, the good point in that triangle takes over and you get people who are actually in demand because of the quality of their work.”

Have a portfolio to pull from

Most writers would do well to have at least a couple brilliant specs and maybe even a scintillating pilot in your script stable to get you hired. “Spec writing is so much different than what you actually wind up doing,” Espenson says. “Spec writing is a solitary activity, but TV writing isn’t. TV writing is a committee. You’re in a room with other writers a lot of the time, you’re social, you’re interacting. Breaking stories, on both comedies and dramas is done in the room. It’s very collaborative. So you have to be able to work with others, you have to compromise with all these other people, and you have to be flexible. That actually hurts a lot of young writers because they come in and they think to make their mark, they have to make an impact and it’s like, no, actually you can be pretty quiet your first year as a writer. Write a good draft and you’re doing fine. This notion that you have to come in and somehow transform the show, fix the show, that’s totally wrong.”

While being a good writer is a huge part of being a working writer, Espenson says, “not being crazy is the hugest part. There’s that meeting that you get when the show runner has read your material, has talked to your agent, they know what your background is, they know that you’ll fit into their staff, and they call you in for a meeting anyway. That meeting is to make sure you’re wearing pants. So make sure that your eyes are focused and you’re not just spittin’ nails crazy. If you are a hermit in a cabin in the woods, work on some social skills.”

“I have not met anyone yet who has also been inspired to start blogging or increasing their outreach. They read their writer’s assistant’s scripts. They give them an assignment. They let them rewrite something. They let a P.A. sit in on the room late at night. That’s how most people do their outreach and a lot of people do that really well. Show runners do that.”

Take what you can get

It’s not all just a matter of standing behind a Bochco in the valet line, the money you sink into school can pay off, too. Verrone rode the other express train to Hollywood, as an editor at the Harvard Lampoon. “I think that when I came up in this business, there were still some variety shows that you could write for that paid less than the sitcom or drama world and that’s how new writers got their start. Then, it turned into new writers had to work as writers’ assistants and that’s how they got their start as the sitcom and drama world expanded across a lot of additional new networks,” he says. “Now, new writers are given the opportunity to work in cable programming, in direct to the Internet webisodes, and other Internet content, and I think that is opening up a lot of opportunities that both new writers can take advantage of, and existing writers — my goal is just to make sure everybody gets paid for it.”

Andrea Wachner is a Los Angeles-based TV writer.

I got married and started graduate school within one incredibly hectic week in September.

Six weeks later, now that I’m settled into both the role of wife and graduate student, I’ve learned that the latter has had far more implications on my daily life (and my relationship with my husband) than the former.

I naively imagined my schedule in graduate school would resemble my schedule as an undergrad — replete with sleeping in and an abundance of free time. My class schedule seemed to confirm this — I have no classes before 2:30 p.m., and I spend a grand total of about 16 hours per week actually in a classroom.

As my husband puts on his suit, I remain in my pajamas and boot up the computer and the coffeepot before brushing my teeth.

But I find myself far busier as a graduate student than when I worked at a full-time job. Instead of eating dinner together at least four times a week as we did before graduate school began, my husband and I look forward to Tuesdays as the one weeknight we during which we can share a meal.

My alarm usually goes off somewhere between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., (In my previous job, I woke up at about 7:15.) As my husband puts on his suit, I enjoy my impermanent reprieve from corporate dress codes. I remain in my pajamas and boot up the computer and the coffeepot before brushing my teeth.

I start the day reading The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times business pages online. In addition to preparing me for class, these daily readings provide proof that my Business and Economics Reporting curriculum is working, as I understand more of these stories every week.

I work on class readings or other assignments for the next few hours, before taking a mid-morning break to visit the gym. A graduate student’s schedule is incredibly conducive to working out. I hit the gym almost every day, but instead of sweating next to 20-something professionals like me, I find myself surrounded by buff housewives (making me feel completely unfit) and aging retirees (making me feel very svelte).

I return to home and consume my lunch back at the computer, just like I did when I worked. Depending on when classes start, I usually spend the first half of the afternoon working on the various freelance projects that allow me to continue paying the bills while I am in graduate school.

By mid-afternoon, I am on a bus headed to campus, working on more class readings. Most afternoons involve meetings with classmates on various group projects and then two to four hours in lectures such as Evidence & Inference or History of Journalism for Journalists.

My hardest class is actually not a journalism class at all. It is an accounting class taken by all the business and economics concentration students this semester. I already see the benefits to me as a reporter in taking this class, but I haven’t taken a math class (or used a calculator for more than figuring out a tip) in at least eight years. We take the class at the School of International and Public Affairs alongside aspiring accountants and international business professionals with far more experience understanding balance sheets than we have.

It also doesn’t help that the class takes place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Monday nights, and I frequently find myself thinking more about what I’m missing on primetime television than what I’m learning in class. Luckily most of my j-school classmates seem to be having equal difficulty with the accounting. We have begun looking into hiring a tutor to help us get a better handle on the class.

Classes go late on Mondays and Wednesdays, and I usually don’t return to the apartment until close to 10 p.m. While I relished night classes as an undergraduate, I’m afraid I’ve outgrown my nocturnal instincts, and I tend to spend the latter portion of these classes staring at the clock and thinking about all the things I need to get done at home.

When I do get back to the apartment, I say a brief hello to my husband and lock myself in our office to spend another hour or two on homework before going to sleep.

Thursdays, my classmates in the Business and Economics Reporting seminar usually grab dinner and happy hour drinks after class. The drinking and venting bring me back to my days as a daily newspaper reporter, and comfort me that everyone else seems as busy and overwhelmed as I am. One classmate quit her part-time job since starting the program and another reports that he regularly stays up till 4 a.m. finishing assignments.

Fridays I have only an accounting recitation, and I usually spend the rest of the day (as well as Saturday and Sunday) working on a Business and Economics reporting assignment due every Monday at 8 a.m. and an accounting assignment due Monday evening.

I do my best to make it out to a social event on Saturday nights, where I usually spend half the evening explaining to my friends who are not in graduate school why I never come out anymore.

I reassure both them and myself with a reminder that the M.A. program is nine months long, and since midterms start next week, I’m a quarter of the way through.

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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.

In this week’s edition of J-School Confidential, a young magazine entrepreneur and former j-school lecturer offers his perspective from the other side of the lecture podium. The conclusions he draws about the readiness of j-school students to take on the media world will surprise even the most hardened industry vet.

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My friend and mentor Michael A. Walsh — a Visiting Professor at Boston University when I attended there, winner of the National Book Award, a 16-year music critic for Time, and screenwriter of the Disney Channel’s highest-rated program — has a saying: “I never applied for a job I got, and I never got a job I applied for.”

It’s an interesting paradigm shift, and the recipe for stress-free living: reach the heights of journalistic stardom by going about your business, striving to the beat of your own ambition, and making due as the chips fall where they will. It brings to mind another saying, attributed to the Roman philosopher Seneca: “Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I never graduated from journalism school. I never even applied to one. When Boston University’s College of Communication appointed me as its youngest faculty member — a post I held for a year until the eight-hour roundtrip train ride from New York City to Boston became too cumbersome — it was truly a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I was in town to see my best friend and business partner graduate college, but had some spare time to stop by the Journalism Department and show Professor Caryl Rivers, whose advice was instrumental to our first magazine’s launch, copies of Citizen Culture‘s debut issue.

Pleased, she suggested I show the department head; I went further, offering internships to B.U. students seeking an “in” to the industry. Imagine my surprise when he replied, “Actually, one of own professors just took a sabbatical year. Do you want his class?”

Um … sure. Thus I became a university lecturer at age 24.

The first day teaching “Magazine Business Development (for the 21st Century)”, I recalled how blas_? most professors seem about the new semester: another syllabus, another set of sheltered know-it-alls, maybe a bright-eyed wannabe somewhere in the mix. I was surely going to be different; after all, I was younger than half my graduate students.

From my eclectic trove of hundreds of magazines, I hauled around seventy-five into the room, spread them across four tables, and instructed the students to go buck-wild, comparing, contrasting, and charting every distinguishing characteristic. Time, Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, Playboy, Plenty, Details, Out, Redbook, Fast Company, Consumer Reports, URB, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Rolling Stone, Road & Track, Highlights, Harvard Business Review. The assignment — “Determine what works, what doesn’t, and why” — seemed simple at first.

The boldface truth of the semester was that if you__?ve got the chops to get into j-school, you__?re likely better-skilled that most full-time pros.

But the students quickly learned that crafting a perfect magazine, like a perfect pitch — like a perfect lover — is a doomed enterprise; it’s a trick question, because it doesn’t exist. Clich_? though it may sound, the eye of the beholder is the only gauge of interest that matters — and that lesson applies equally well to writers, editors, artists, even salespeople. A quick glance at MagazineDeathPool.com proves beyond the pale of doubt that that which soareth like a rocket, falleth with a thud. On the flip side of the same coin, sometimes unexpected adventures in creativity — Reader’s Digest, Consumer Reports, Mental Floss, anyone? — yield game-changing innovation.

By semester’s end, several of the most innovation concepts and designs I’ve ever seen in the publishing world emerged: A local magazine for the ski summit crowd, perfectly designed to fit on the bar. A magazine for single dads. Even the world’s first all-inclusive weddings magazine; a particularly ambitious student team joined my company to prototype With This Ring. The boldface truth of the semester, which most journalism teachers are disinclined to tell you, emerged loud and clear and utterly unspoken before my students’ curious eyes: if you’ve got the chops to get into j-school, you’re likely better-skilled than most full-time media professionals.

Consider why:

Journalism is about simultaneously selling yourself as an expert and your stories as worth reading. Thus in media, like in entrepreneurship, failure can be more profoundly instructive than success by forcing the aspirant to be hungry and resourceful, to stand up and pay attention. Sources defect, ledes fall apart, deadlines ebb and flow; everyone gets it wrong sometimes. Even University of Mississippi professor Samir Husni, a man so revered that he’s been dubbed “Mr. Magazine.” Remember Sync? Suede? Success? All recently made his “Most Notable” list … and don’t exist just a few years later.

But know this: uniqueness, evocation, and persistence earn a seat at the media table — a lesson equally applicable to writers, artists, ad salesmen, editors, and would-be publishers.

Consider 944, the best-overall magazine I’ve seen launch and grow over the past five years, was born in Phoenix and is curiously named (allegedly after a telephone exchange). After identifying a niche market that was growing economically yet light on competition, they put together a beautiful, well-edited product; then diversified and exploded into major markets with a solid financial footing. This all goes to prove the point that grassroots hustles can pay the bills. Time, after all, bestows credibility.

I’ll never forget the day my students discussed editorial authority, piping up about whimsical tendencies like objectivity and bias that other professors sought to exorcize. “Excuse me,” I asked, “but did Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Bill O’Reilly, Erin Burnett, Keith Olbermann, William Safire, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, and of course, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (whose professional affiliation may as well be “America”) become trusted reporters of our national condition by lacking opinions?”

Of course not.

The media knows better than anyone that our country does not suffer ambivalence. Wannabes must take note — and take sides — to gain authority, the endgame and grail of journalism; they must bear their teeth and integrity to the world. Live the imperative to thrust beyond the obvious, dig a little deeper, ask the uncomfortable questions, and at base, try, try again.

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Jonathon Scott Feit is president & CEO/chief editor & publisher of the Feit Family Ventures Corporation/Feit Publishing Ventures, a diversified, mission-driven, entrepreneurial company that publishes Citizen Culture and With This Ring magazines, as well as the “Equality Media Newsletter.”

In this week’s edition of J-School Confidential, a third semester NYU student sounds off on the difficulties of getting published while immersed in schoolwork. He details his successes (including an upcoming article in The New York Times) and examines his failures (two NYT rejections), while showing how NYU both helped and hurt his freelancing career.

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Here’s the tricky thing about j-school: it’s a professional education dressed in liberal arts finery. This tension between the vocational and the intellectual is what makes the best programs so exhilarating, and what makes them, at times, so frustrating. Journalists must think critically and read voraciously, but they’re not journalists if they don’t publish, if they don’t engage with the world outside the classroom. Figuring out how to do both is j-school’s challenge.

It’s probably fair to say that I enrolled in the most bookish of NYU’s graduate journalism programs — Cultural Reporting and Criticism. Our program’s founder, the late Ellen Willis, was The New Yorker‘s first pop music critic. We read Pauline Kael and Jane Kramer, Lester Bangs and David Remnick. We meant to be cultural critics, to write long-form nonfiction. (We still might.) At best, we felt ambiguous about hard reporting, at worst, terrified.

CRC has been great — intellectually rigorous and combative — and entirely unique. Few journalism programs begin with serious discussions about students’ listening and reading habits (Wilco, Broken Social Scene; Zadie Smith, John Banville). But while I haven’t always pushed hard to get published, CRC has done little to help me do so. I suspect this would be true for many programs, but it’s certainly been true for mine. With graduation just months away, the need to balance bylines and academics — commitments that often seem mutually exclusive — has become even more of an issue.

This is not to say that publishing is impossible — it’s not. Or that I haven’t — I have. It’s just that one can’t expect your program to do it for you. The trick is to engage with journalism’s rich literature without hiding behind it.

My first major success came last summer, a full two-thirds through my degree. All spring semester I had been working on a profile of a nonprofit arts group and avant-garde radio station — Williamsburg’s free103point9. Doubting that mainstream publications would be receptive to such an obscure subject, I pitched it cold to the Brooklyn Rail. The Rail‘s music editor, it turned out, loved free103 and always thought they deserved more attention. I got 1,500 words and a full page. The lack of a paycheck seemed a small price to pay.

The Rail was painless — and it was all mine. Besides casual recommendations from friends and faculty, I had made the connection on my own. And since I filed the piece during summer break, there was no need to accommodate two deadlines or two, often opposing, sets of expectations. Most importantly, I developed a relationship with a respected arts publication. Next month the Rail is publishing my 1,200-word review of Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia.

Getting into The New York Times would be a different story. Last winter, I pitched the City Section a short piece about the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. (My professor had given me an editor’s email address.) “The topic is interesting, but a little too programmy for our tastes_????_ But thanks for thinking of us,” the Times wrote back. At least I got a response.

This time the Times gave me the thumbs-up. My piece is slated to hit stands later this month.

Earlier this semester I tried again, this time pitching a story about a trio of performance artists in Brooklyn. Yes, the Times said, we’ll take it on spec. The reporting went well, they even sent out a photographer. I sweated over my 500 words, had a professor look over my draft, and sent it in. A couple days later, I got a phone call. They liked it, but not enough to print.

NYU made sure I got another shot. The City Section editor I spoke with earlier visited my class. All eight of my classmates had pitches. We sold four of them, mine included. And this time — after trekking up to Inwood to interview tenants about a particularly noisy neighbor — the Times gave me the thumbs-up. My piece is slated to hit stands later this month.

I owe most of my success to my professor’s City Section connection. Although his class is a perfect example of how tricky it is to publish while pursuing a full-time degree, there’s little question I would have gotten such a sympathetic response to my query without talking with the Times in-person.

Now, more than ever, I want to be out in the real world freelancing. The idea that I might have what it takes to make a living (or part of a living) doing so is intoxicating. NYU hasn’t given me any clear answers. But situated as it is on the line between a professional and a liberal arts degree, I don’t know if it’s a question J-school can answer. I’ve got to find that out for myself.

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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.

As the semester draws to a close, a Columbia j-schooler reflects on the skills she’s learned and the work remaining to be done. From a favorite assignment on observation to the difficulty of interviewing the elderly, she discusses the eye-opening first five months.

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Every autumn I try to leave New York to see the evidence of the seasons changing. But as the semester’s insanity closed around me, I could only watch as the ginkgo tree around the corner from my apartment shed its leaves and littered the sidewalk with its noxious berries. Act I of j-school is about to come to a close and it’s time to take stock of how far I’ve come and where I’m going.

I’ve always considered myself a slow eater and a slow writer. And it was a delightful revelation when I realized I was no longer the latter. At my old job, a month-long deadline for a 1,200-word story felt too rushed. So when my professor started pulling events from the AP Day Book and sending us out to cover them, I was sure I couldn’t possibly report on a morning event and meet a deadline in the afternoon. But to my surprise and delight, I could.

This discovery has been completely liberating. Now I know I can and should dedicate most of my time to reporting, because the writing comes so quickly. Still, not everything has changed. Sitting through dinner with me continues to be torturous. It takes me half an hour to finish a slice of pizza even when I’m ravenous.

The second discovery of the semester is that I have two perfectly functioning eyeballs. This sounds silly but as a magazine editor, I did all my reporting over the phone. Plus, most of the service pieces I wrote didn’t call for a ton of visual details, so I never really had an opportunity to look around.

This semester, starting with an observation exercise (600 words, no adjectives) about Penn Station, my professors have encouraged me to report with my senses, and I’ve fallen in love with the process.

If my next employer needs me to shoot some video or make an audio slideshow, I am confident I can stand up and deliver.

Of course, this love affair with details can result in an agonizing editing process. Professor Sig Gissler calls it “killing your kittens,” which entails removing beloved tidbits from the story. I fill my notebooks with colors, scents, and sounds, and even if those details don’t make into the final piece, I feel better when I sit down to write because I can turn to these specifics.

I’ve also become techno-savvy. Although I’ve lived with a bona fide technology expert for the past five years, I never learned the tools of his trade. But the past semester has provided a trial by fire in audio and video recording and editing. Am I ready to be the next Ken Burns? Not quite. But if my next employer needs me to shoot some video or make an audio slideshow, I am confident I can stand up and deliver.

But enough patting myself on the back, I still have a lot to do in the coming semester. Looking over all the stories I’ve written, I can see a gap between what I set out to do in the beginning, and what ends up on the page. Overall, I need to work on getting more sources and talking to more people so that I can be flexible with which quotes I use.

Part of this is an interviewing problem. During street reporting, I need to get better at asking follow-up questions and go beyond the first surface answer. Unfortunately, in those situations, I’m half-nervous and half-grateful to have someone talk and sometimes my brain disengages.

I also need to think more about the way I ask questions. This month I was reporting on how some older residents in my beat dislike the young new bikers, and all the new bike lanes and bike parking that the city is proposing. It was easy to get the 20-somethings to talk about problems they’ve had in the area, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the old-timers to open up to me.

Luckily, I have one more semester to shape up, and no doubt pinpoint other areas that need work. Stay tuned.

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Katia Bachko is a writer and editor in New York City. You can reach her at www.katiabachko.com

I opened my e-mail today to find a letter from Columbia University requesting that I submit all my paperwork for graduation.

“Graduation!” I shouted at my computer screen. “But I just got here.”

Classes in the M.A. program began just over three months ago, and my first semester back in J-School winds to a close next week, I can hardly believe that I am halfway through my time here.

In many ways — adjusting to the graduate school schedule, getting to know my classmates, making a lasting impression on my professors — I feel I have just arrived at school and could easily extend my time on campus.

But in more ways, the past semester has felt a great deal longer than three months. Since starting J-School, I have probably read more than I had in the entire preceding year. My home office overflows with assigned magazines, newspapers, textbooks, journal articles, nonfiction books and novels that probably constitute a slight fire hazard.

While I did not enjoy every text I read this semester, the assignments have absolutely benefited me as a journalist. I garnered insight into framing stories, finding “truth” and conducting interviews by seeing how various social scientists — from anthropologists to historians — do so.

Over the past three months, I also learned to conduct archival research and oral history interviews. I have gone from possessing virtually no Web experience to creating a personal Web site to serve as a portfolio of my work.

Persistently reading the business pages of national newspapers and perusing every business magazine for which I can find the time has served to reinforce the lessons gleaned from my business and economics seminar, the core of my curriculum and by far my most valuable class.

I have written close to a dozen business stories on topics ranging from Wal-Mart to oil prices, and have gained a practical understanding of macro-economic policies that my undergraduate J-School degree never afforded me. Comparing my stories from the beginning of the semester to my more recent pieces reassures me that I will emerge from this program a much improved, and much more skilled reporter.

In August, I wrote a column for this Web site wondering if my decision to return to J-School would prove the right one. At the time, I was engaged, employed and living in Manhattan. Now, I’m married, attending graduate school full-time and living in Queens.

Living on loans is only enjoyable until they come due.

My husband has been fantastically supportive of my decision to return to school, but our status as a one-income family has forced us in some ways into the traditional gender roles to which we never before ascribed. It makes sense for me to do laundry and start dinner while I am home all day reading, and for him to pay the bills since he is the one contributing to our “joint” bank account. But we both look forward to returning to the more modern, task-splitting approach that served us much better in the years we lived together before marriage.

Prior to returning to school, I worried that seeking a master’s degree when I already had a J-School degree and several years reporting experience might turn out to be a very costly career misstep.

Columbia has challenged me academically and allowed me to become re-engaged in the profession I have loved in since childhood. My classmates and my professors are experienced and interesting, and interacting with them represents an intellectual opportunity I could never replicate. Like me, my classmates have generally logged a few years in the field, somewhat assuaging my concerns that working journalists have no use for a graduate degree.

In terms of my education, I am certain I made the right decision. Still, I have learned that the student lifestyle to which I so looked forward no longer suits me. I cannot wait to return to the workforce, regaining a regular schedule (or as regular as a journalist’s schedule can be) and — more importantly — a regular paycheck. Living on loans is only enjoyable until they come due. Conventional wisdom on campus seems to hold that the business journalism concentration students in the M.A. program get the best paying jobs. This belief has led to a few envious remarks from classmates, but I am happy to bear the brunt of the resentment if it turns out to be true.

The real test of the decision to return to school will come this spring, when my job hunt truly begins. But I can’t think about that just yet. Rumor has it that the second semester of the M.A. program is far more rigorous than the first. There’s also that pesky little 10,000-word thesis required for graduation.

I am trying my best to actually slow down, experience and enjoy my time here. I fear that next time I’m caught off guard by an email, it will be from the alumni office, and I may still feel as if I have only just arrived.

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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.

Three years ago, Columbia unveiled its new MA in journalism. Unlike the famous MS program, which taught fledgling newsmongers the ins and outs of reporting, the MA targeted experienced journalists, and sought to give them a broader understanding of arts, science, business, or political theory. As one of the deans once put it, the MS program is for brain surgeons who want to get in to journalism; the MA is for journalists who want to write about brain surgery.

Having already spent four years working in magazines, the idea of the MA appealed to me. I wanted to switch gears in my career: less abs and more art; less olive oil and more cultural criticism from a feminist perspective. Enrolling in the MS — which many of my friends had done a good four years ago, right after college — seemed like a step back. Plus, the deadline to apply for the MA was a full month later than the deadline for the MS, which appealed to me even more.

Now I’m almost halfway through my program and wondering if I made the right choice. It’s too soon to come to any conclusion, and since I’m fully invested in the MA, I’m determined to take advantage of every available opportunity it presents and create some of my own along the way. But the application deadlines are coming soon for any aspiring j-school students, so for those trying to make a similar decision, keep the following in mind:

How much do you want to write?

All my pre-j school clips are service-heavy, bullet-pointed service articles. I looked forward to graduating with a file folder full of articles that demonstrated my cultural savvy and straight reporting skills (or a flash drive — the last time I went to college, they let cows graze on Old Main Lawn and all the freshman had to wear beanies). But the program is so reading-intensive (see below) that I’ve only done two real examples of arts reporting all fall. Our thesis is supposed to be our showcase piece; something to show potential employers at the end of the program, but I wish I’d written more during the semester (which is why I started a blog, a phrase that makes my hair stand on end). On the other hand, they’re two good pieces — one a long profile, one a news piece. Will they be enough?

My working life will be full of corners that need to be cut, and I’ll benefit from knowing what can be jettisoned.

How much do you want to read?

The MA program is intense. At times, it feels like they’re trying to give us a PhD — or at least a two-year masters — in ten months. With good reason — most people in the program have wives, families, and some healthy freelancing responsibilities. Few of my classmates, me included, would have signed on for the program if it took longer than a year. But mother! The reading! Cramming a PhD’s worth of knowledge into a ten-month (nine, considering our long winter break) program is deadly. No one I know does all the reading; even brown-nosers like me have to pick and choose what’s important. This is not a bad thing: My working life will be full of corners that need to be cut, and I’ll benefit from knowing what can be jettisoned.

How deeply do you care about your subject matter?

Do you love business? Are you obsessed with politics? Fascinated by science? Good. Because you’re going to spend a lot of time working on your respective concentration. Six hours of seminar during the week, often with at least six more hours of reading outside of class. Add to that a 10,000-word thesis. If you’re only marginally interested in art theory, you will be totally overwhelmed. It’s important that you have something to gain by studying this topic: For me, it’s a great way to make contacts and do some writing in a field I’m trying to crack. But I’ve talked to students who have worked in their concentration for years and feel like the generalized reporting training in the MS might have been helpful. On the other hand, there are some people who have worked in journalism for a little so wanted to skip the MS, but aren’t super into their concentration. Now, they’re wondering if they shouldn’t have just jumped back into the MS to get a more intense reporting experience, or kept writing on their own just at a more intense pace.

How much fun do you want to have?

“You will have a blast!” promised all my MS-alum friends. And from what I can tell, the MS class is having a blast. They’re working hard, but they’re simulating newsroom conditions, which means big bursts of work, followed by lots of drinking. The MA is more of a long, slow grind, with fewer of the mini-deadlines to break things up (and around which to get drunk). And since the demo is a little older and a little more settled, they’re less likely to hit happy hour at the end of the week. Most of us are taking time off from our jobs — escaping from the real world for a year, instead of postponing our entry into it — so there’s more of a sense of urgency and seriousness than those devil-may-care MS kids. It’s possible that I’m just a loser — there’s an MA happy hour ever week, and when I ventured out to the last one I had a blast. But it does seem that we’re not drinking nearly as much as my friends who graduated in ’02 — though maybe they just an especially soused bunch.

Of course, all this is just my opinion — for some people, this MA is exactly what they wanted. For others, it’s a disaster. As for me, I’m learning a lot from some of my classes, and less from others, and I won’t know for sure if I made the right decision about which program I chose until this summer — you know, when I do or don’t land one of those illusive, high-paying, high-status journalism jobs. It is good to be back in academia, talking with smart people about interesting things, rather than being stuck in Pennsylvania writing about sex yoga. No matter what happens in June, I still have six more months of that.

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Kate Dailey is a Gordon Grey Fellow at Columbia University