19 Tips To Jump-Start Your Journalism Career
Image courtesy of #WOCinTechChat.
I’ll never forget my first job. I attended the UNITY: Journalists of Color convention in Seattle and interviewed with Rick Hirsch, then-managing editor of The Miami Herald, while I was there. I confessed my reporterly hopes and dreams and said a whole bunch of stuff I’m sure made him chuckle but ultimately won him over. By the end of the conference, I’d secured a one-year internship at the paper I would come to affectionately call “Ma Herald.”
Getting that job was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I couldn’t wait to get away from my parents (sorry, Mom and Dad) and prove my expensive Medill School of Journalism degree was worth the student loan debt. I imagined myself as a Black Lois Lane, flying over South Florida on my way to pick up my Pulitzer.
Enter reality: When my mom, who’d helped me move and settle in, left after two weeks, I sat down on my newly purchased Rooms-to-Go bed across from my purple Rooms-to-Go couch and bawled my eyes out. I was in a strange place, living in a ground-level apartment, without a clue how to do my own hair in that kind of humidity. I was a wreck! At least I knew how to string a sentence together, I thought. Except, looking back, I so did not.
So I leaned in. The Miami Herald is where I learned how to report and write. It’s where I had my first column, "The Life of the Party,” covering rich folk doing rich things on South Beach (and where I met everyone from the Bee Gees Barry Gibb to the boxer Lennox Lewis to the producer Harvey Keitel). It’s where I wrote about my first beach lightning strike in a piece that instantly went "viral" way back in 1999. As I gained experience, I joined the South Florida chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and participated in regional and national conventions. I mentored kids, helped out with my sorority – Delta Sigma Theta – and developed a national program called “How to Survive Your First Five Years In Journalism.” I learned firsthand how those first few years can set the tone for your entire career, and I want to help others in my profession gain a competitive edge.
More than a decade after that first gig, here’s what I tell college students and recent grads diving into a journalism career:
Accept that you will likely earn very little, live far from home, and cry yourself to sleep a few nights a week in the beginning. Consider them growing pains.
After a few weeks, the “Oh shit what have I done?” feeling will fade ... unless you rented a first-floor apartment like I did and are afraid of creepy people breaking in through your windows. In that case, I recommend getting a second-floor apartment. In fact, I recommend living in second-floor-and-up apartments exclusively.
You will soon know what it’s like to work the “lobster shift” – the late-night/early morning graveyard hours. Those shifts suck, but they also beget amazing stories. For example, you may very well be the only one at work when a 2,000-pound sunfish floats close to shore to wink at the people on Clearwater beach. (What? I said “amazing,” not “glamorous.”).
Want to land a big cover piece or frontpage story? Make it a habit to read great writers. My favorite story of all time is an Esquire classic: Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” It’s lovely. Read it. Like, five times. Then let its prose inform your own writing.
When you’re stuck at a city hall meeting covering zoning changes and paint colors for a town with only 10,000 residents, remember that the skills you’re learning will eventually make you an award-winning journalist. The Boston Globe hired me in part for the silly little series of stories I wrote on a South Florida town that did bizarre things like banning spinning barber poles and outlawing purple paint.
Pay attention to the news as much as you can stomach. Reading other outlets will inform your own story ideas.
Become friends with non-journalists. I know it’s hard. Try anyway.
Don’t sleep with anyone in your newsroom. I know the sports editor has awesome hair and lots of fun shit on his desk and free tickets to everything, but journalists run their damn mouths. Especially when it comes to work indiscretions. Also, reporters are observant. They see you. So don’t go there. Or at least be damn sure he’s worth it before going that route.
Use your AP Stylebook and dictionary. Please.
Spell folks’ names right. Just triple check, ‘K?
Keep business cards on you. Even at the club. Pass them out. Order more. Tell everyone you meet to contact you with tips. Offer to help them out in return if you can. I always gave my card to the bartenders. Those folk know everyone and everything. And once you start passing out your card and proving yourself trustworthy, people will start sending in tips.
Bring doughnuts or flowers when you go to interview the family of a murder victim. Offer condolences. Mean it. If some grieving mom asks you to pray with her, just bow your head. You’re an atheist? Fine. Bow your head anyway. Respect the dead even when on deadline.
Stay hungry and stay humble. No one cares where you went to school. And yes, you really can learn a lot from the obit writer.
Win over the top editor or your favorite writer by offering to help them with their reporting.
Study the art of the interview. There are books on this. Or, study Matt Lauer in the mornings. Broadcasters ask really good questions.
Know when to move up or leave. Map out your five-year plan so you already have the wheels turning when the right time or opportunity comes. Apply for an opening at your current gig or apply elsewhere.
Develop a speciality. Most of us dabble in several beats before we find the one that becomes our passion. Try out cops, courts, aggregating content, politics, education, fashion, business, weather. Take the job for a year to see if you like it. If you do? That beat will help you get the contacts that eventually land us the coveted Spotlight-esque stories that most of us want to produce.
Master the basics. Learn everything you can. For me, this meant diving into courts, cops, and FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act a.k.a. That handy law that gives you the right to access local and federal government information). Those basic reporting skills will carry you – no matter whether you cover celebrities, business, or school districts.
I like to end on an odd number because journalism is a career full of oddities: Always follow your instincts. I once ate at a restaurant and decided to write a profile on the owner because he seemed interesting and was running a new business in a small town. Turned out he was a retired Mafia dude with a rap sheet an inch thick. He talked to me because I liked his spaghetti. Go figure. This industry isn’t easy to navigate, but every successful journalist I know, working in print, radio, broadcast, or digital, shares a common trait: We research as much as we can, go for it, and figure the rest out along the way.
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