Ascending the food chain (re: circulations)

No!!! Work smarter!!! Not harder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Oh excuse me I guess we are all writing for the NY Times in here. Oh wait, it's a MESSAGE BOARD!!! I suppose you're this nitpicky when you text message too.

 

Actually, I am. But that's neither here nor there.

 

kthnxbai

 

Its about the work. I went from a small weekly to an 80K daily after just three years ... and I like to think I got there because of my work.

No matter the paper, if you attack each story as if it deserved to be in a larger publication, you will have success.

 

Exactly!!!

 

P_J's got my back!!!

 

Scoreb....oops, wrong troll.

 

There are so many key details being left out. I've seen 20k papers that were complete community rags. I've seen 20ks that you'd swear were 70ks. If you're coming out of a good 20k, chances are you're going to have a chance to put together good clips. If you are a at a 20k where your job is to go to a game, take pictures with your own SLR, somehow pay attention enough to write a gamer, then go back to the office to put together the section, your clips are probably going to be kind of crappy.

But on the other side of that, if you work for said crappy 20k, you can say you're experienced at writing, pagination and photography, all after one day of work.

 

My second move was to a paper with a circulation size more than 30 times larger than my shop at the time. It's possible, dude. If you've got the chops and are a little lucky, you'll be OK. Sometimes it's more about timing than your paper's size.

However, like others have said -- and something I've been saying for years: Bigger doesn't mean better.

 

I concur with what's been said on this thread so far.

When you're considering a move, you should behave like a good chess or billiards player and be thinking several moves ahead.

Does the move from a 20K to a 50K set you up for your next move (if you're so inclined) . . .

-- Are you moving into a chain with several larger papers that might be future opportunities?
-- Are you moving to a market that's in close proximity to some 100Ks that you might be able to move to without renting another U-Haul for a weekend?

 

A local sportswriter recently went from a 35,000 paper to a 350.000 paper.

She is very, very good, and the big paper was in Philadelphia, where I believe she is from. She may have interned there, I do not know.