Travails of an out-of-work writer. News-hound advice needed.

[Hickory6]

Hello, everyone–long-time lurker, sometime poster under the name panzermanpanzerman back in 2000 (although that password is long since forgotten).

So here’s the deal. After nearly three years as a national mutual funds industry reporter at one of the top three personal finance magazines in the country, I get word from the higher ups–let’s call them Big Media, Inc., that due to the poor advertising climate, they’re shutting us down.

Ok, fine. It happens. Good magazines rise and fall all the time. I’ll improvise, adapt, and overcome. Semper Gumby and all that, right?

So I call all my sources and thank them, and let them know I’m not planning on quitting even though my publisher is, and then set to work looking for a new job.

So I’m fairly confident, right? I’ve got a lot of things going for me. I’m a damn good writer, a solid fund industry reporter, I have a nice fat rolodex of sources throughout the financial services industry. I can hit deadlines. Lots of 'em. I know AP style, I know Strunk and White. Well, their book, anyway. I know how to develop sources, and check what they tell me. (The Great Debates guys help, too).

On top of that, I’ve got three years of outside sales experience–business to business. So I burned up the shoe-leather for several years, interviewing hundreds of entrepeneurs, and developed an understanding of small businesses that very few J-school types ever have.

Plus–not that most journalists care, because they haven’t a clue about it, but I’ve got ten years of leadership and project management experience as an officer in the U.S. Army, including command of an HHC company in an infantry battalion.

So you’d think I can handle multiple competing priorities in a highly stressful, pressure-cooker environment under tight deadlines without getting flustered, right? Riiiiiiiighhhhht.

So, anyway, I notice that my hometown paper, the Midmarket City Times, which is up the road from the Major U.S. Pulitzer-Winning Trumpet Daily, or some such, has openings for a couple of business reporters. Cool. I’ll put in for it. After all, my editor was an assistant business editor there for a couple of years himself, and actually suggested I put in for it.

So after consulting with my former boss, I put together a cover letter and some of my best clips, and send it in.

Well, a few days later, I get a nice call from Ms. Business Editor there, who liked my clips, liked my cover letter, “but I can’t use you because you don’t have daily experience. I don’t see that in your background,” she says.

Well, thinking quickly, and keeping my wits about me, I immediately ask her if they use stringers, and they do, and she gave me a contact there. She also suggested that I "get some experience in a smaller market daily and then reapply. "

Ok, fine. Pleasant phone call. So we hang up.

I was ok during the phone call, but afterwards, I got pissed!

I mean, smaller market? She’s got a circulation of 460,000. Sure, very respectable. But our circulation was roughly double hers.

So I’m trying to put myself in her shoes. What, precisely, are her concerns? What is she worried I won’t be able to do? What skills do I need to demonstrate in order to salve her unspecified concerns?

And how do I overcome those objections in a follow-up letter, thanking her for her consideration?

‘Cause if I can do business writing and reporting on a national level, but I don’t have the skills to cover my own freakin’ community, it’s time to hang up my spurs.

Grrrrrrrr!

[Ellen_Cherry]

Hi Hickory! Welcome out of lurkdom. You have my sympathy; by that editor’s criteria, I’d get the job ahead of you, and the daily paper I worked for has a circulation of about 7,000. :rolleyes: I’d say try again. Maybe send a follow-up letter, explaining how your qualifications outweigh your ability to … what? Write a 10-inch story in a half-hour?

You sound humongously qualified to me! Good luck.

[Kent_Clark]

Well, 460,000 is certainly a more than respectable circulation for a daily paper. Probably what she’s concerned about is not whether you can write a 10-inch story in a half-hour, but whether you can write ten 3-inch stories in a half-hour.

Plus she’s worried that if she hires someone who deviates from the job description, she’ll be sued by 10 others who weren’t hired because of something that didn’t fit the job description.

Did you write for the online edition? That ought to count for deadline journalism experience.

In your thank you note, remind her that you’ve contacted the stringer person, and that you’d like the opportunity to work with her on special assignments, emphasis sections, when they’re short-staffed, etc.

[jackelope]

Good advice, all. Our circulation is probably about a half-million as well, so I ought to have great advice, but I don’t. I work on the Web site, meaning I sit in a room by myself with a computer for eight hours at a stretch, late at night. I used to be a magazine editor though, hiring freelancers and all that, and frankly I don’t know what they’re thinking. I’d have hired you in a heartbeat.

[TV_time]

Another newspaperman here. Having been on both sides of the desk, I would say the editor blew it, but we do that. It comes with the territory. However, in no other profession does the old axiom, “Success is the best revenge” apply more often.

After being turned down for a job at one paper, I was hired to work at its competitor and beat them on hundreds of stories and always by myself won more press association awards annually than that entire paper did. It felt great. Whenever I used to see that publisher, I used to say something to the effect of, “You know, I have always wondered what would have happened if you would have hired me. Too bad we never had the chance to find out.”

If you seriously want the job (which it really doesn’t really sound like), the stringer job is a very good idea at getting your foot in the door. In addition, on stories you know that they really want and you know you did a good job, you can include little notes when you send in your stories, like, “Is this the way you like it done? I’m not used to writing for a paper as small as yours, and well, I want to try to adapt to your style. I hope it’s small town enough.”

Can you tell before I became an editor, I used to drive them crazy?

By the way, welcome aboard.

TV

[Hickory6]

Thanks a bunch guys.

Yeah, I wouldn’t mind working for a smaller paper at all. Many of them do excellent, courageous, balls-to-the-wall, laugh-in-the-face-of-death journalism. They provide a tremendous service to their communities.

Except that’s not my community. I happen to live in a fairly big market. I’d have to relocate to work on a smaller paper.

And I’ve made a home here, this is my community, and this is the community I want to serve as a journalist. Plus, I detest the idea of a bedouin class of professional journalists, wandering from town-to-town. People are suspicious enough of the profession as it is. (To wit: http://www.comics.com/poll/show_results.jsp

I think there’s a lot to be said for journalists serving their own communities.

And I sure as shit don’t wanna move to NYC. Certainly not this low on the masthead.

Anyway, thanks for the perspective. Actually, TVTime, I did want this job. I’d have been proud to work for this paper. It’s a pretty good paper.

Oh, well.

A couple of months ago the Baltimore Sun assigned six reporters to a pension fund corruption story I smelled. I counted their bylines. They even got a head start on me, but after three articles they just couldn’t tie it together.

I beat all six of 'em.

(Ok, yeah, I got lucky. But make more phone calls and work later than your competition does and you tend to get luckier more often.)

Anyway, God help my hometown paper if I get word they’re on the same story I am.

I’ll spare no efforts to make gravy outta their coverage, and let my readers sop it up with their breakfast biscuits!