How much do you spend on clips?

i kinda giggle when i receive the type of clip packages you just described. i don't know about other folks, but plain old paper and clips with jumps stapled together work just fine for me. i really don't want to feel guilty if i accidently leave a coffee cup ring on your high-priced clips if the phone happens to ring and my attention is diverted while talking to an applicant who cold called me.

work gets dragged and dropped on a page at my paper, not put on display for all to marvel.

 

Glad to be good for a laugh for you.

 

geez bears, i was just saying i think people go way overboard when they send clips. i wasn't trying to insult you in any way.

 

Oh, sorry, just joking. Check the PM.

 

I was just about to start a topic like this, specifically related to online clips. I was thinking of just sending along a page with links, so the clips can be read online, but I'm gathering that's not good?

I don't even have the newspapers for most of my stuff (since I actually live out of my paper's circulation). All I see of the paper is online.

What about cutting and pasting the stories from the web and putting them into a plain 'ol Word document?

 

I don't know if this hurts my chances for a job when I send out clips, but I often print them out off the Web... personally, I think they're easier to read that way than photocopies of newsprint, which is often tiny and not the clearest in the world.

 

Seems this thread and others like it are summed up with an oldie but goodie - K.I.S.S.
Clean, crisp, easy to read clips. When I am reading a candidate's stuff; error free, great covers and strong ledes are what get my attention, not necessarily the "package", at least for writers.
The only problem that I see with a Word doc. would be proof that it was published and not "fixed".

 

se - to be honest, i really don't care if something has been 'fixed' or not because if a writer has grown enough to catch shit that made it by an editor, i say more power to them. ... i actually see it as a plus.

besides, who's to say the editor didn't create an error on a rather nicely scrawled piece. i know that happened to a young tom petty more than once when he still was having his last dance with mary jane.

 

caught the pm too late bears.

 

Yeah, I'm no editor, but the point of reading clips is to see how well someone can write. In that sense, does it matter if the person fixed a typo in the 8th graf?

Anyway, all of my clips have the date of publication and the paper, so it would be easy enough for the editor to go online and check it.

 

One thing I cannot stress enough is to get as many eyeballs on your cover letter as you can before you send it out. Typos in the cover letter will not be tolerated or glossed over. That's the surest way to send your package to the trash can.

 

Personally I think it's much easier and appears neater to use a clip printed off a webpage rather than cutting something out of a newspaper and pasting it on a piece of paper.

Like the other poster, I'm curious, too: Is this looked down upon? Generally speaking I don't see how it's a credibility issue - I mean, it'd be easy enough to verify that applicant X did indeed have this piece published newspaper Y.

I just seems a much neater and very efficient way to deal with clips. But do editors want pasted-on cut-outs?