Breaking In?

Well, whatever you do ... don't let your first contact be an e-mail.

Use the phone to set up a face-to-face meeting with somebody in a position to say "yes."

I probably have some other thoughts on this, but I'm busy right now.

 

I don't know if Mayfly ever answered the question a couple people posed about interning, but if he spent four years getting a degree and busting his ass on the school paper and never interned at a newspaper, he made a mistake.

Just pointing that out for others.

That way instead of scratching his head about why he's getting no nibbles, he could call a friend from one of the papers he worked at for a lead, advice, suggestions, criticism or to put in a good word.

 

Phone would be a good start (and yes, I saw you mentioned that after the fact).
Don't worry about the size of it so much ... make the call, the worst they'll say is no (fun with the quote funtion). But don't let the size of the paper turn you away. You won't be covering college football or basketball, but you might get a prep swimming gamer. And work from there. Be willing to cover anything you're asked to. Cover it like it's the most important story that day, because it likely is to the people there. Read it in the paper afterwards to see what changes your editor made, if he/she doesn't take the time to go through it with you.
My first job in college (started a month before college actually) was at a 70K/100K on Sundays paper answering phones and covering high school swimming. It was part time, but it was a start, and it got me working with guys who had 20 years in the business.

 

Thanks a lot for the advice. I understand that if I am lucky enough to get a writing gig it would most likely involve something like swimming or volleyball. Over the past few years I have tried to write a number of different stories (gamers, features, enterprise stories) on not just baseball, basketball and football but also sports like swimming and cross country. Hopefully if they see I can write on a lot of different subjects they can overlook the fact I don't have any professional experience.

 

That's not necessarily true. Papers are more likley to cover football, basketball and baseball at all levels.

However, the more experience you have covering more sports, the wider the net. If you have experience covering auto racing, swimming, lacrosse, volleyball, etc., that may be enough to top the scales in your favor.

 

Quick questions about the informational interview: What is expected from the interviewee in the process, and what generally comes of these?

 

I'll take a swing at that.

Basically, you're asking for an audience with a top editor (or publisher, depending on the size of paper, etc.)

"I'm not looking for a job ... but I am looking for some advice on how to proceed so early in my career, so that I get on the right path from the start." (Obviously, you'd like a job, but this statement depressurizes the discussion.)

Scrape a few bucks together and invite him or her to lunch. Not to the best place in town, but not Wendy'e, either. (Don't worry, they'll usually wind up paying.)

The editor talks, you listen. Ask good questions. Absorb the answers. Spend the time efficiently.

Talk about the local market, the regional market, the other big cities in the state. They should know people in all of those places.

And, yeah, maybe you make a good impression. Maybe that morning a reporter quit or got fired. Maybe he or she just got off the phone yesterday with an old classmate one state over who's looking for a desk guy. You never quite know how the dots will get connected until you try.

 

mistake? not applying for internships is a mistake. but landing an internship is very hard for a lot of kids.

if you don't have the right connections, or profs that can plug you in, or the right kind of last name, or the papers around you don't hire sports interns... the list goes on and on... then you might not get one.

a friend of mine with a great clippings package and an endorsement from eric prisbell (at the height of his popularity) applied for more than 50 internships his junior year and got turned down for every one. he'd write circles around all three of the sports interns at the paper i'm at now.

i honestly don't know what it takes to get an internship. luck? sometimes it seems papers just choose whoever's convenient, not who's best.

bottom line: not getting one doesn't have to mean you're a lazy bozo.

 

I wish I could have interned during my collegiate years. One thing that I see all of you are saying is that it is a hard job to get into and you won't get paid much getting in. It's like the old adage, would you prefer a job that you hate and get paid well or a job that you love but don't get much at all?

 

I didn't intern. It may be one of my great all-time regrets, certainly in the top 10, and a contributing factor to why I've never worked full-time at a paper with a circulation of more than 23K. Maybe I wouldn't have anyway -- I'm not really that good -- but with an internship I would have made the contacts I sorely lacked over the last few years.

 

Me too.

 

My best advice: Don't be afraid to be rejected. Keep after any nibbles you get, know what you want and know what you're willing to do to get it. The people who tell you about the mistakes you've made are simply talking out of their asses. There's nothing you can do about that now. There's only what you do from today on out. It won't be easy, I know. I didn't figure out I wanted to be in this business until my senior year at a college that didn't have a J-school. After I graduated, all I had was 13 columns written for my college paper, a couple published non-sports freelance pieces, and how I sold myself. It took me six months to find a job and I still have a big manila envelope full of rejection letters.

But the point is, I found a place that was willing to take a chance on me based solely on my potential and my attitude, and for the past three years, have gone about the business of making myself indispensable here. Yes, work hard. However, don't turn it into an 18-hour-a-day obsession that you don't enjoy.

There are a lot of clowns out there that are working their asses off and not getting anywhere because they don't have the talent or the vision to do something different than what every other hack out there is doing. Work on developing your own voice and your own ways to tackle stories. In the end, you're not going to make it in this business based on how well you do the things that everyone else is doing. You're going to make a mark by doing the things other people either can't or won't do. You'll have to grind, but always have a bigger goal in mind.