1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Job opportunity advice wanted

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by rdh0924, Jun 10, 2013.

  1. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    I think your advice is solid and perhaps five years ago, I would've felt like you. But with the business downsizing, and a plethora of talent unemployed, you have to weigh your options carefully.
     
  2. I think you need to take a look at the locations and the benefits of each place along with the job itself. When I started out, I was making $11 an hour at an 18,000 daily. Two years later, I had moved to a paper three times the size, with a raise to $15 an hour.

    Sounds simple, right? Not quite. At the first place, benefits were beyond incredible (free health insurance) and the cost of living so low that on $11 an hour, I was essentially printing money. When I made the jump, the raise was quickly made irrelevant by how much more expensive my new paper's insurance and benefits cost me.

    Don't dismiss anything as being beneath you. You might find yourself happier in a situation you never thought you would.
     
  3. Riddick

    Riddick Active Member

    Why not take the first offer you get? And if you get a better offer, take the better offer later.
    It seems to work for at least one guy on here.
     
  4. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    I agree.
     
  5. dirtybird

    dirtybird Well-Known Member

    You only get one chance to get a first start. And that first start can have a lot of impact on the next few steps you take. Maybe you take the 19K preps job, and your next step is a 75K preps job. But if you're good enough to start at the 75K preps job, your next step could a high level BCS job at a mid-sized paper. Maybe you are REALLY awesome and can make a bigger jump or the hefty resume you have before the first job help might help.

    But right now you appear to have the chops for a BSC job at a mid-sized paper out of college, and that's something.

    That bird in the hand thing, garbage in my eyes. That's what talented people say right before they accept a job as a one-man staff at an 8K circulation paper three days after graduation and work themselves to death for more than a year before getting a life preserver or quitting the biz. If you slow-play it, don't get the BCS job and have to wait a bit longer, it jut means more time working at a 180k shop with editing responsibilities. That's key, becuase it means people at a big place trust you with copy, and that looks very good for 1.5 years or two.

    If the right 19,000 shop came along, all good. But with your resume just as you described above, I'd be shocked if you couldn't land at almost any paper that size with little to no fuss. But you seem to be equipped for something better to start with, and the best way to get to a bigger paper (which it sounds like you want to do), is to start off bigger or with a high-level beat.
     
  6. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    I've seen it work several ways. There's no magic formula. I believe God, talent, and timing is the key. If it's meant for you to be at a big paper, you will be there.
     
  7. Mystery Meat II

    Mystery Meat II Well-Known Member

    I'm going to argue for the smaller paper, and here's why:

    1. In this market, you take the sure thing unless it's an immediate or probable liability on your resume. That 40K paper is a semifinalist slot for a job that may or may not be there even if you do advance. Sure, on paper you want to start as high up the food chain as you can, but understand the gamble you'd be taking. If you turn down the 19K, then don't get the 40K for whatever reason, you'll be right back where you started and there's no guarantee anything's coming down the pipe. If you're happy where you are and don't mind taking that chance, then that's the right decision for you and good luck. But that leads me to point two ...

    2. Part-time positions at large papers don't always translate to full-time positions. Sometimes they do. Other times, they use the hell out of their PTers while hiring outside for the FT spots. You can almost see their logic: you go on a national search for a full-time position, but you fill the part-time position with a house classified or a Craigslist posting. You're not likely getting people to fly across country for a no-bennies role. You expect a full-timer to produce, but if a part-timer produces, you hope like hell to keep 'em there because once they leave, the replacement is almost certainly a huge dropoff.

    I knew someone (not me, but someone who did something with their lives) who worked a part-time position at a prominent paper for a few years. She worked hard, got decent stories in the paper, had a couple of beats ... but never did she get the promotion. They had two openings and passed her up twice. They all but promised her the next full-time job, then gave it to an intern they were really high on. Eventually she left for a FT position at another paper, and moved her way up from there. It's not that they didn't think she was good enough, because clearly she was, but when you have exceptional performance in a role where you don't have reasonable expectation of it, you're loathe to want to replace it because the chances are too good that comparatively you'll get some mouth-breathing delusional dropout who can't complete his byline without help of a Speak and Spell.

    Don't let yourself be the guy too good to be treated well.

    Oh, and an aside on smaller papers: When I was young, dumb and full of sunshine, I saw sports newspapering as a strictly linear equation, sort of like baseball's farm system. You start in Podunk, move up to a nicer Podunk, maybe hit a wall and get traded to another team so you can have a clearer path to Middleville, perhaps get good enough to work your way to Upper Middleville and, if all goes according to the masterplan, find at long last the bright lights of The Big City.

    A few years ago circumstances led me to a weekly newspaper that quite honestly, I would have scoffed at earlier in my career. A weekly newspaper? Fat chance. I'm not about to allow myself to be lowered to the paper of record for Little League baseball and chicken dinner journalism. I'm better than that, and if I bring myself down to that level, I'll never be able to climb back to the place I deserve to be. Except, funny thing, I ended up staying there longer than at any other full-time job I've had. And I wasn't clawing at the walls to get out, either. I scanned J-Jobs obediently and consistently, put in for openings here and there took a moon shot at the big daily paper in town -- by then having been humbled enough by age and experience to know I wasn't close to good enough, but that it never hurt to try all the same. Eventually I did leave, but if I didn't, there's a good chance I'd be there today.

    So do what you think is right, both for today and for the potential of the many tomorrows to come. But don't scan it simply in terms of city size or circulation numbers or even the sexiness of the beat. It's the first move of the chess game, and moving pawn to e4 alone won't determine the outcome. If you're good enough, you'll come out OK no matter what you do now.
     
  8. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Yeah, I asked my university journalism advisor (great guy) about that and he told me: "If they're going to act like that, you'll be better off not being there." He was right. But, hey, I was one week after graduation and just learning about the real world.
     
  9. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Well, here's the thing. He's making $9 per hour at the current place. Maybe the 19k paper is offering $13 or something. It DOES make a difference for some people.
     
  10. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    This is very true. In fact, I'd say that, most times, part-time positions at large papers do not lead to full-time jobs at that paper.

    The reasoning/excuse: They tell you that you really should go and get some full-time experience elsewhere. And the longer you wait to do it, the more you might just be showing them that they don't need to hire you full-time, and so, they won't, because you're apparently happy (or at least, happy enough), working part-time.

    I do have a question for clarification for you: Are you a regular staff part-timer at your current paper, or are you a freelancer or contractor whom the paper has hired for part-time (or as you contend, actually almost full-time) hours?

    Because large newspapers are known to do this, often using freelancers as de facto staff members, with little difference between the two -- except officially, where/when it counts, of course.

    And if that is the position you're in, I would definitely take the first real opening that's offered, subject to change if/when something better, or something that you want more, comes along.
     
  11. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I am with WriteThinking.

    It's not that they are evil -- but it's very hard to hire someone who can write stories, rim/slot and do the agate pages. So you are more valuable to the big paper in your spot than as a full-time writer or editor or clerk.

    If they aren't paying you at least $12 an hour, you are getting screwed.
     
  12. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Welcome to the newspaper business.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page