Getting a sports reporter job out of college without Journalism degree

Seconded (or 15thed) on loving Alma's suggestions. And, I think Clerk brings up a good point: Not having a journalism degree doesn't matter. Not having any experience does. If you're serious, you need to grind out as many stories as you possibly can.

Any weekly papers around? You can probably get a part-time gig that pays poorly covering high school sports once you get a few clips under your belt.

 

There are good suggestions from Alma. Getting writing assignments is more important in your case than getting a job at a newspaper. There are plenty of small daily and weekly papers who want articles on local people who might not be in major sports.

The other thing I would do is to try to find somebody with whom you can talk about writing. Get somebody who is or was in the business and try to learn something new every day. Find someone you can talk to about sports writing.

There are also plenty of places to go on websites. Good luck.

 

Not much to add to what everyone else has said. The most important thing is getting stories published someplace not your blog. If you're looking to make money from freelancing, then take everything that comes along, at least in the beginning. To advance your career, make sure to get one or two really good stories a month, if you can. You'll have to find these yourself in the beginning; newspapers and magazines never just assign features/profiles/etc. to freelancers. Alma's idea was one of the best I've ever heard. I wish I'd thought of that when I was starting out. Would have made life easier.

Once you land a good story assignment, work your ass off. Report the hell out of it, then write the hell out of it, then rewrite the hell out of it. Rinse and repeat until you have three or four really strong stories for your portfolio. Depending on what work you find, finding these stories could take you several months, but GET THEM. Once you have these, you can approach other publications—having already found some story ideas—and say hey, I want to write for you and here are some published stories I have that prove I can write.

In the meantime, work on some projects on your own that aren't for publication. Maybe a novel. Maybe a memoir. Anything, really, just to keep you writing the way you like to write. Editors will change the stories you write for them. This is how it goes: THEY are paying YOU to write for THEM. It took me awhile, but I got over that. I hated some of the edits, but them's the breaks.

So write something for yourself, and write it as great as you can possibly write it, even though (most likely) nobody will ever see it. Why? To make you a better writer. Read books about writing. I recommend Stephen King's "On Writing," and Robert McKee's "Story," which is about screenwriting but has phenomenal advice on storytelling. Others around here can probably offer other suggestions that are equally good.

The whole point: Become the very best writer and reporter you can be. If you're good enough, and if you're perseverant enough, eventually someone will notice you. This is true.

That's not to say it's easy. I've gotten some unbelievable breaks the past couple years, but that's because I killed myself along the way. This is not a nice business and if I didn't have a tremendous wife who believed in me more than I believed in myself, I wouldn't have a prayer.

That's not to be discouraging; that's just the facts. You can make it, but you probably won't get rich, and you damn well better be willing to work your ass off.