Looking For Opinionated Journalists

Probably not. But showing you have experience in audio and video, as well as the drive to promote yourself on a site is always good. I trust you aren't recently out of college?

 

Didn't work for free. Made some decent scratch for a college kid freelancing for a few outlets.

 

Try that nowadays. You won't get anywhere demanding money with no background.

 

I don't want to crap all over your idea here because ambition is good. It's much better to be out there trying to do something different than just expecting a job will be there after college.

But there are a lot of issues with this idea. First off, making money as a freelancer isn't some impossible, Herculean task. Plenty of college kids make money writing, so this idea that it's almost a necessity to write for free is foolish. You'd be better off developing a relationship with your local sports editor than you will writing for this website.

My biggest issue is the fact it'll all be opinion-driven. It might be one of the biggest issues with young journalists today. Everyone wants to fire off a opinion, and worse, thinks they are worthy of weighing in on everything. I'm sorry but more often than not I'm not going to give a shit about what some 20-year old thinks. I don't want to come off as some old-timer here but there used to be value in the columnist because you knew they had experienced some things and it was reflected in their perspective. A 20-year old college junior hasn't experienced enough to be fairly able to weigh in on that many subjects, especially if the website has a national scope.

Personally, I'd be much more inclined to hire a kid who busted his butt stringing HS preps and showing he could actually report than someone who just fired off hot take opinions for this website. Take that for whatever it's worth.

 

Yeah, this is just flat-out false. Plenty of papers are looking for college-aged writers to cover local prep events. You can never have too many freelancers when you are a sports editor and your staff is already stretched wafer thin. Now, the pay isn't great, but there is pay, plus the added benefit of being published in a paper. That is going to look more impressive on a resume than writing for free on a sports opinion site.

 

Putting the free in freelance since 2015.

 

Then post it on a college website. This is a job board for professionals. That means cash for content.

 

Yup. Show you can break news. That's worth paying for.

 

You have your professional journalism license? Sorry. I didn't know. Simply looking for help. If it doesn't apply to you, don't sniff there. Simple as that.

 

I cash my professional license at the bank.

 

I take it you went to a school with plenty of local schools around. Where I'm located we have two papers that you could feasibly work for. They cover terrible high school sports teams. Not a ton of jobs around. I'm sure that's the case with a ton of colleges. It also would offer the ability to write on top of anything you do and we air podcasts and videocasts. That's one of the biggest demand in the era of modern journalism.