So you want to be a journalist

advice for aspirants

An admirable goal, if perhaps ill advised. You don’t need me to tell you about the bells tolling for traditional media. Why do you think I’m here!

On the red carpet at Jingle Ball in 2010. Remind me to tell you about the time I interviewed the enterprising young woman in the background.

And yet, communications and journalism continue to rank among the most popular college majors in the country. I regularly get LinkedIn messages from students hoping to break into the field. I began writing this in New York where last week, I met with magazine editors and tried to convince them to green light my ideas. The bells may be tolling, but I’m still in the trenches with you.

So, what advice do I have to offer? I’m glad you asked:

1. Do not major in communications or journalism. I majored in history. When I entered college, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated, though a letter to my future self written at the age of 13 suggests otherwise. If you want to be a journalist — or any kind of writer — you have to read and write, and just about any field of study will force you to do that. Follow your curiosity and you can learn the mechanics later, on the job.

   

   “I wonder how much it pays, though.”

   Whether you have to go to college at all is a debate that I’ll let others take up, but I will say that one of the greatest documentarians of what we eat and the way we live did not attend a traditional college and may have been better for it.

2. Get a job. Any job that pays you to write, broadcast, or otherwise act as a journalist. Social media counts, especially if you have sponsors and/or a sizable following. Getting paid is crucial. It’s not about how much you’re making — this is not the field to pursue if you want to get rich — it’s about learning how to satisfy the demands of an employer. If that sounds unromantic, well, yeah. Journalism is a job. Jobs are not romantic!

   I didn’t write for my college newspaper because of my reticence to work for free and give up valuable hours that might have been spent playing flip cup. I did write for Cornell University’s research journal, which paid decently (especially given my lack of experience) and allowed me to hone my interviewing skills. I also wrote copy for an Expedia type website called HotelHotline.com. There was something fishy about it, not least the fact that it was based in Long Island and run by a guy who hired an 18-year-old who had never been to Jamaica to write about Jamaica.

   My first official job in journalism was as an intern at the Washington, D.C. bureau of ABC News; as part of a study “abroad” program, I received college credit. That internship led to a paid internship at ABC’s headquarters, in New York, and a job as a desk assistant, which I started five days after graduating from college, working the ultra-glamorous hours of 9 p.m to 5 a.m. Do you need to be as much of a workhorse as I was? No. Will you face competition from someone willing to work harder for longer? Probably. Will you face competition, regardless? Yes. Better get used to it sooner than later.

3. Never miss a deadline. If your editor tells you they want a draft by 3/15, get them a draft by 3/15. “But what if life gets in the way?” Life always gets in the way. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule and yes, I have broken it. Sometimes you need more time, and you can explain why. But editors see through “the dog ate my homework” b.s. pretty quickly and, especially when you’re starting out, you don’t want to be known as an unreliable, flakey writer. Talent does not matter if you can’t submit legible copy on time. Set a calendar reminder, set an alarm, do what you need to do.

   Finally, and most importantly: