SMG does Alison Overholt

http://www.sportsmediaguide.com/interviews/alison-overholt/

She is an editor for ESPN the Magazine who had no sports experience.
She offers some great advice for freelancers and people looking to get their foot in the door elsewhere.

 

Who edits Allison because, well, wow:

"My boss at ESPN The Magazine, where I’m a senior editor, has a pet theory that everyone is very, very good at five things. Sometimes big, more often than not small, they are always the things that illuminate and define us. My five explain my career path as well as anything else..."

 

Am I missing something? What's so bad about that passage?

 

Her Web site is pretty sharp.

And to cross thread, she went to Harvard and got a government degree. Ahem.

 

She couldn't have presented herself in a better way. Her answers exuded class and a positive outlook. Somebody should ask her take on the future of newspapers and magazines for the hell of it.

 

I think she stole it from the Successories portion of the SkyMall catalog.

 

Sounds a little canned, but that's part of the ESPN familiarity approach.

 

I thought about creating a site like what she talks about, but the last paper I worked for sets its links to expire about two weeks after the story first appears. After that, you have to pay to see them. An archive of my work there would be impractical to create on a Web page unless I assumed people would go to the trouble to spend money to see what I've written.

At the place where I worked before that, I was the first reporter to have a story put on the paper's Web site. None of the stories I wrote there are available online anymore either.

I'm not sure what kind of site I could create without being able to post my work. But it's a great idea for people who have access to links of their stories.

 

You can always create your own PDF of the story/page before it expires, J_D. Not sure of the copyright restrictions with posting that on your personal site, though.

 

I'm no lawyer, but I wouldn't imagine I'd be able to legally do that. It's their copyrighted material, not mine, once it's published.

 

True, but you could always try to obtain permission.

And as far as just saving your links, that's certainly an option for your own personal files.

Anybody else have any experience creating a personal site like Alison's, where she's got PDFs of her freelance articles and staff-edited stories up? I haven't looked into it much, but I do plan to create a site like that for my own work someday.

 

That's good advice for most people here. For me, it's probably not an option. The last time I asked for permission from them for something was two days after Hurricane Gustav, and you may recall a related thread on the aftermath.

After that and the trouble I had with them about my insurance since then, I don't think asking them for anything is going to get me anywhere.

Do you mean PDF copies of the stories as they appeared online, not links? Because like I said, the links expire after two weeks. There's nothing there after that.

Yes, that's true. It doesn't help with putting together a personal Web site, but it's good for sending out clips.

But enough about me. Good thread with good info. She has good ideas.