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It?s that time of year when thousands upon thousands of twentysomethings don caps and gowns of every sort of color and graduate from colleges and universities around the world. They have a spring in their step and stars in their eyes. Or at least they will until they have to find a job.
I had the luck of graduating twice, earning my bachelor?s degree and master?s degree during two recessions. The first was the dotcom bubble, the second was the start of the current recession in 2006. I have impeccable timing!
But I ended up landing on my feet?it just took a little longer than I had expected. I always worked, whether it was waiting tables at a restaurant outside of Fenway Park in Boston (where, admittedly, I made boatloads of money in tips) or working my way up from a receptionist to becoming the sole marketing person at a mid-sized staffing agency. I bided my time, worked hard, and kept my eyes open for other great opportunities.
When I felt uninspired, I started freelance writing, which led me to enrolling in NYU?s journalism school for my graduate degree. Graduating in another economic slump, I didn?t wait so long to start freelancing, and eventually landed an editing job at a great magazine.
In the early 2000′s blogs didn?t exist in my world. There was no social media to speak of. Finding a job was completely different. So what?s a new journalism grad to do?
I found this great post on Poynter that listed a round-up of sorts of commencement speeches from journalists. Here are some quotes the article mentions from recent commencement speeches:
This excerpt from University of Montana graduate Nick Gast?s speech on his commencement day pretty much summed up my feelings as I got ready to graduate with my master?s in journalism:
I think it?s easy to get stressed out about our futures, especially when every guest speaker we?ve had for the past four years talks about a new and exciting way our industry is dying. I?ve spent my fair share of sleepless night lying awake in bed wondering why I chose this degree and the answer I come to is as simple as it is true: because I love what I do. ?jimromenesko.com
So here are some of my tips for journalism graduates heading out into the real world. If you have some you?d like to share, feel free to leave a comment.
If it was about the money, you would not have spent four years (or more) studying to become a journalist. I?m sure you have heard over and over again how much money you won?t make. It?s true. You will not make the same amount of money as your friends who are in business or who became doctors. That?s life. But the notion that you will be poor and starving are not true. Everyone has to learn to live within their means?you just get to learn how to do it while doing what you love.
If you can?t find a journalism job right out of college, you?ll probably have to settle for doing something else?waiting tables, working as a receptionist?so you can pay your bills. Unless you come from a wealthy family who will support you financially?and what are the chances of that happening?
Don?t not write while you are looking for a journalism job. This is a perfect time to start freelancing! Start pitching story ideas to all appropriate outlets. I would suggest starting small and local?perhaps an alternative weekly or your local newspaper. Keep building up your clip file?plus, it?ll put some extra money in your pocket. Who knows? Maybe your part-time writing will turn into a full-time freelancing job.
Just because you are out of school doesn?t mean you should stop learning. I actually started learning how to use Photoshop on my own while I was working at a less-than-desirable job where I had a lot of down time. Teach yourself photography or start a blog. The more skills you can bring to the table of a potential employer the better off you are.
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If you do any work in the realm of journalism, you have probably heard, over and over again, that print is dying. Well, recently, part of it actually did.
This fall, New Orleans will be the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper. The Times-Picayune, with a weekday circulation of 134,000 and Sunday circulation of 155,000, will be published only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
The Times-Picayune, which has published since 1837, was bought by the Newhouse family in 1962 and later merged with the afternoon daily. Up to now, the paper has avoided some of the deeper cuts in the industry, in part because the newspaper played such a critical role in the coverage of Katrina and its aftermath. ?NYTimes
Poynter.org points out that before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and its population, the paper had a weekday circulation of 257,000 and 285,000 on Sundays.
?I think this is a big blow,? said Poynter business analyst Rick Edmonds. ?Yes, it?s happened in a few places, but Saginaw and New Orleans are not the same thing. You?re talking about a major-league city.? ?Poynter.org
A new company has been formed that will take over The Times-Picayune and its website, NOLA.com called the NOLA Media Group. According to a story on NOLA.com, the NOLA Media Group will ?reshape how the New Orleans?s area?s dominant news organization delivers its award-winning local news, sports and entertainment coverage in an increasingly digital age.?
Why did the company choose to publish the print edition on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday? Because those days have proven to bring in the most value for advertisers.
The head honchos at the paper are saying that the papers that are printed three times a week will be more robust, and include more information than what has previously been offered. What sort of information? A richer and deeper news, sports and entertainment report, as well as a full week’s worth of features such as society coverage, puzzles and comics, says Jim Amoss, the paper?s current editor.
The paper will also significantly increase its online news gathering 24/7, so daily news will be shared with the public, it just wont show up on their doorsteps every morning.
Will there be cuts in staffing? You betcha?but no one has revealed how severe they will be. I would assume they?d be pretty heavy. Going from daily publication to a thrice-weekly publication will take a lot less manpower.
You won?t need as many people in the production department, even with the ?more robust? editions being printed. And that proposed additional information?entertainment, society coverage, puzzles, and comics?do not need to be created by the staff. These things are usually blurbs, photos, and content that can be purchased from larger conglomerates. So really, the added information isn?t all local features and news. My prediction is that there will be a lot of uninteresting fluff. More comics? Really?
While it sounds like full-time positions will be hard to come by, the opportunity for freelancers could be great.
While this is certainly dire news for The Times-Picayune staffers, it could be great news for area freelancers.
I?m sure many employees who are facing cuts will be looking for other full-time jobs; many may have to move away from the area to find them. While it sounds like full-time positions will be hard to come by, the opportunity for freelancers could be great.
Hiring a freelancer to cover a story here and there is certainly cheaper than having a full-time staff writer on board. These types of contributors for newspapers are called stringers?someone who works for a publication in an ongoing basis, but is only paid for the work they produce that is published. It’s sort of like having an on-call freelancer.
Plus, if the paper is going to seriously ramp up their online news gathering, they may need savvy individuals to call on for advances made to their website.
I do not believe that newspapers will go away completely in my lifetime. I do, however, believe they will change?in the very same way that is happening here at The Times-Picayune. Clearly, the dwindling population of New Orleans has demanded this change.
What never ceases to amaze me are the people who complain about their local newspaper getting smaller and smaller in size?but who are not subscribers. If you love your local daily newspaper, weekly newspaper, or regional monthly magazine, support them by subscribing.
If The Times-Picayune had more subscribers and advertising dollars in their pockets, they wouldn?t have had to make this dramatic shift. The news is a business?and without money, a business can?t afford to pay their employees to create a product that they can?t afford to have printed.
I think the change in the newspaper landscape is coming?and it will have a profound impact on what people do for a living. There will always be news to share and an audience to absorb it, but there may not be large full-time staff to collect, report, and produce it.
The newspaper world will not cease to exist, but it may be made up largely of freelancers in the near future. We’ll have to wait and see.
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I recently wrote a blog post sharing the news that The Times-Picayune out of New Orleans, Louisiana, will cease to produce a daily newspaper. Instead, the company will be printing three days a week and ramping up their online news gathering for their website. New Orleans will be the largest city in the U.S. without a daily newspaper.
There?s been a big shake-up at a couple of other national newspapers as well.
The Denver Post has decided to do away with its copy desk, spreading the copy-editing duties throughout the newsroom. The pros to this model? Stories can be published to the web faster because they don?t need to be read and edited by so many people. The cons? Stories have a greater chance of being printed with errors.
The Contra Costa Times, which handles production for 10 regional newspapers in California?s Bay Area, isn?t eliminating their copy desk, but they are reducing the amount of copy editing for routine stories.
Poynter.org has tabulated the final numbers in cuts at both Contra Costa and the Denver Post:
Under the old system at the Denver Post, a story would be read six or seven times. Now it will be closer to two or three.
For this to work, staff will have to be trained on a variety of skills, such as writing headlines for print and the Web and, of course, copy editing. ?Poynter.org
This is just another case of expecting people to take on more responsibility without necessarily compensating them for it.
The brutal facts are these: Terrified by declines in revenue, newspapers are shedding employees to save money. They are attempting to keep as many reporters as possible to generate content, and they are gambling that you will tolerate shoddier work. ?The Baltimore Sun
Many of you reading this might think, no big deal! Why do newspapers need copy editors anyway? And that?s the very same question that Mathew Ingram from GigaOM recently asked on Twitter.
This will be an unpopular question, but why do we need editors? If ?news as a process? is a reality, why not commit errors in public? ?@mathewi
Oh, Mathew. You forget that news is a business! If you don’t create a good product, no one will buy it. Readers expect that the news they read in their daily newspaper is accurate. If your local newspaper can?t get the facts straight, what kind of credibility does it have?
News reporters are a funny bunch. They are constantly working on deadline and frequently rush around to gather news and interviews for their assigned story that needs to be turned in at a certain time to make the next day?s edition. While you might expect that the reporter will spell everyone?s name right, include the correct dates, and actually report without bias?it doesn?t always happen. We are all human and we all make mistakes. It?s the copy editor?s job to help catch them.
And not all reporters are quick to catch their own mistakes and correct them. Many have moved on to other stories! And once something is in print, you can?t take a magic eraser and get rid of it?you need to actually publish a correction, which many people don?t even see.
Sure, you can Tweet and Facebook your correction, but what if the readers don?t follow you or your paper in these outlets? You can also edit a story that appears online but who is going to go back and re-read a story they have already finished? Getting it right the first time is imperative.
Here are some of my favorite Twitter responses to Mathew Ingram?s tweet:
Depends on the size of the error. Even the most brilliant writers need sounding boards, feedback, fresh eyes, no? ?Aurelia Cotta
We need editors because readers don’t have the time to correct the authors. We pay for a certain service and expect good content. ?Robert
Because the illusion of professionalism is necessary for ppl to trust your product. This applies across many sectors. ?Lisan Jutras
To you, news is a process. For some of us, it’s a product and we’d like it to be as close to correct as possible. ?Kevin Speicher
You can read more Twitter discussion around Ingram?s question at Poynter.org.
Not having a copy editor proof for the stories the publication I work for would scare the crap out of me. Not only does our copy editor find stupid grammatical mistakes made by myself and our freelancers, she?s also a sounding board.
If something doesn?t quite make sense to her, she brings it to my attention. I sometimes get so close to my own stories that I can?t take a step back and read through them with clear eyes. Having an editor helps my writing and ensures that our readers are getting a better product. And guess what? Our copy editor is a freelancer.
What do you think about your favorite newspaper ceasing to have the checks and balances a copy editor brings to the table? Do you think the reporters should ultimately be responsible for editing their own copy?
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Your reputation as a freelancer is pretty much the only thing you have to go on — your bread and butter.
And your reputation is generally based on two things: the quality of your work, and how well you meet deadlines.
Today, we’ll focus on meeting deadlines, as that’s the area that many freelancers have problems with. Sure, you can do great work, but if you don’t turn your projects in on time, you won’t get many repeat customers.
1. Care about deadlines. This is the first step, as many people are very lax about deadlines. You have to be very serious about meeting them, and make them a priority. And make breaking a deadline a cardinal sin in your freelance book. Once you’ve done this step, the rest is just logistics.
2. Keep a list of projects & deadlines. If you care about deadlines, you’ll write them down, and have one place that you check often to make sure you know what’s due and when. I use a simple online list, but you could use paper. Which tool you use doesn’t matter, as long as you use it.
3. Communicate a clear deadline. Be sure that you and the client are in agreement with a specific deadline, including time of day (and factor in time zone differences as well). If the deadline is fuzzy, you will have trouble meeting it. If the client doesn’t give you a deadline, you need to ask for one.
4. Work in a cushion. It’s wise to build in a cushion for your deadline. To get a clear idea of how long a project will take, break it down into smaller pieces (see below for more). If you aren’t sure exactly how long each of those pieces takes, break them down into even smaller pieces. And for each piece, add a small cushion to your time estimate. Then add up the time estimates of all the pieces, and you’ll have a cushion built in. This will allow for delays, and if you finish early, the client will be pleased.
5. Have a clear outcome. You and the client should both agree on a clearly defined outcome. Don’t skip this step, or you could be sorry later. If you turn in a project that’s not what the client wanted, you’ll have to do extra work, meaning that you’ll miss the deadline. If you’re not absolutely clear what the outcome should look like, ask some questions of the client until you are clear.
6. Break down the project. This is standard advice for any project, of course, but that’s because it works. Don’t try to tackle an entire project. Tackle one step at a time. Again, you’ll want to break it down into smaller steps, give a time estimate for each step. Each step should be small enough that it takes an hour or less, so it’s not too intimidating.
7. Focus on the first step. Now that you’ve broken the project down into smaller steps, just focus on the first one. Don’t worry about the rest for now. Give the first step your full attention, and get going. You’ll feel satisfied when you complete it, and can check it off your list. Then focus on the next step.
8. Block off adequate time. When you’re going to work on a step, be sure to have it blocked off on your day’s schedule. If you’re not blocking off time for your most important tasks, you’re probably not getting the important stuff done. However else you work during the rest of the day, for your freelance projects, block off a good amount of time for each step, and treat it like a doctor’s appointment — you can’t miss it.
9. Have a start and complete date for each step. When breaking down a project, give a start and complete date for each step, so you can get a good feel for the timeline of the project, and whether you’re on schedule or behind. It also keeps you on track if you know when each step should be started and completed.
10. Communicate with each step. Once you’ve completed a step, send the completed step to your client if possible. Sure, it won’t look like a completed project, but you can show that you’re making progress, you keep yourself on track, and you can get feedback communicated from the client. Better to know early on that you’re headed in the wrong direction than at the end of the project.
11. Don’t overcommit. One of the biggest causes of missed deadline is that a freelancer commits to more than he can handle. Learn to say no if you cannot commit to finishing a project on time.
12. Learn from mistakes. If you bust a deadline, take a few minutes to analyze what went wrong and how you can avoid that in the future.
13. Stay up late. If you planned badly, or just procrastinated, and you’re up against a tight deadline, do whatever it takes to meet it. That means staying up late and working long hours if possible.
14. Negotiate and meet a second deadline. If you absolutely cannot make deadline (you probably overcommitted), you should contact your client and negotiate a second deadline. It’s much better to do this than to let the deadline go by without any communication. Whatever you do, be sure to meet this second deadline. Two missed deadlines in a row is bad news for a freelancer’s reputation.
A few times a month we revisit some of our reader?s favorite posts from throughout the history of FreelanceSwitch. This article by Leo Babauta was first published August 21st, 2007, yet is just as relevant and full of interesting information today.
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The fact that you can learn anything from John Mayer might surprise you, but I learned a lot about how you can ruin your reputation through social media and interviews in this NPR interview with the musician on All Things Considered this afternoon.
I have to admit, I am not a John Mayer fan. He bothers me. I can?t stand to watch him sing. And after a couple of nitty gritty interviews in 2010?one for Rolling Stone and one for Playboy?I didn?t like what I heard, either.
In Mayer?s interview with Playboy, he made racial comments, talked about his sex life with his famous exes, and made homosexual comments?all of which made the public scream Too Much Information!
In a 2010 Rolling Stone feature, we got six full pages of crazy Mayer?s…
?stream-of-consciousness ranting, in which the reader learned that the “Daughters” singer has a $20 million watch collection, owns a bulletproof vest, can’t resist “poop Twitters,” believes he has “masturbated [himself] out of serious problems” in his life and describes how even in his sex dreams, he has to stop his virtual mate from grinding on him because he’s distracted by a phantom paparazzo. These were all very personal, TMI-style utterances that the average guarded modern pop star would never reveal.?MTV.com
Can?t this guy shut up? Well, after all of this, he did. For about two years.
Mayer didn?t know when to shut up. His choice of words were his demise. But it didn?t have to be that way.
The salient problem was that I saw anything I wanted to do as a road worth taking. As if I was an exception to every rule.?John Mayer on NPR
You can?t be everything to everyone. Have a focus. If it?s writing, be the best writer you can be. Have a knack for creating snappy ad copy? Focus on that! What you don?t want to do is go 100 miles per hour in a direction that doesn?t make sense for your business. You need to take calculated risks and be honest with yourself.
I recently got a brand new camera. And I love it. But just because I have an awesome, high quality camera doesn?t mean I should forget my writing and try to become a photographer.
Having great equipment doesn?t automatically mean you are good at using it. I can learn about my new camera and practice with it, and even supplement my stories with some great images, but it?s not something I can master tomorrow. And I can?t give up my bread and butter.
I didn?t want to be boring. I got in the worst trouble ever over and over again in my life from the time I was four until two years ago because I didn?t want to be boring.?John Mayer on NPR
When you are your brand, living a ?boring? life isn?t terrible. It keeps you out of trouble! Mayer shot his mouth off using offensive language and profanity, spilling intimate details about his relationships so he wouldn?t look ?boring.? But guess what? He lost more than he gained.
You have to be so careful about what you put out there on your social media sites because it cannot be erased. Post drunken naked photos of yourself? Make a sexist comment? Whine about a current client? You never know whose hands these juicy tidbits of information will fall into. They could cost you embarrassment and future work.
I remember thinking to myself ?this is Rolling Stone, you gotta to give a Rolling Stone interview. And that?s the miscalculation. All you have to do is be honest.?John Mayer on NPR
Don?t treat people different, no matter who they are. You should give the same level of service to every client, no matter their status or what they are paying you. That?s called being professional.
Of course you will have to tailor your work for each of your clients, but you don?t have to be a different person for each. For one thing, it?s exhausting! There is nothing wrong with just being yourself?especially when you are the sole person representing your work. People like consistency.
When you think you can correct your way out of anything, you will eventually learn you cannot just correct your way out of everything.?John Mayer on NPR
There is nothing that annoys me more than when someone keeps making the same mistakes over and over again and thinking that apologizing makes up for it. It doesn?t.
Learn from your mistakes so that you don?t make them again. Focus on doing the job right the first time, instead of fixing all of the mistakes you made after you hand in the assignment. Excuses are just that?an excuse. And excuses get really old really fast.
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