Teresa Stayton has wanted to be a journalist since she was in the second grade. She has always had an interest in the news, she says, recalling nights when she would watch programs such as “60 Minutes” with her parents and reading the newspaper every day.
In college, she decided to pursue a bachelors of arts in journalism from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Now 25, she also holds a master of science in news editorial journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But she still can’t find a job in journalism.
Frustrated after many fruitless attempts to land a full-time reporting position and confused about why she couldn’t get a foot in the industry’s door, Stayton posted a comment to a discussion on Poynter’s online journalists listserv. What Stayton did not expect was the flurry of responses that followed.
Stayton’s posting sparked a lively discussion from listserv members, who offered advice and encouragement in addition to sharing their experiences from starting out in the business.
Many told her not to give up.
Although frustrated, Stayton — who is currently freelancing, substitute teaching and working retail in Champaign, Ill. — says she won’t give up the fight to land her first full-time journalism job and that it was encouraging to receive so much advice and support from people within the industry.
Stayton started the discussion by chiming in on a discussion of the value of journalism degrees versus news experience:
I just want to add my two cents about j-schools and newpaper experience for what they’re worth. Right now, I believe that experience is worth a lot more than a degree.
I have a B.A. and M.S. in print journalism and I am STILL looking for a job. I only have experience as a stringer for a daily and a freelancer for magazines and weeklies. I have never “really” worked full time at a daily.
After undergrad and two unsuccessful years of trying to find work at dailies or anyplace that would hire an inexperienced journalist full-time, I went back to school to get another degree. I thought that would put me ahead as well as improve my skills. I thought that would open the doors to the newspapers and I could just walk in. Boy, was I wrong.
The M.S. helped out a lot and I am definitely glad I got it. I think I have improved my reporting skills; it was a great program and I made a couple of connections. (No one who could give me a job, but people who could assist in improving my writing and reporting skills.)
I have found out through experience and my current situation that more newspapers want experience. I was told by an investigative reporter that my credentials were great, but I don’t really have what newspapers are looking for. She was talking about “real” experience. I am not knocking a degree. A degree tells a lot about a person’s capability of learning and discipline. It doesn’t say much about what you are capable of in the newsroom. In the journalism field, you have to show and tell. I think a lot of newspapers want to see what an employee can do and not hear about their credentials. Another point to ponder: The head of the journalism department holds a B.S., the director, a Ph.D.
Some of the responses to Stayton’s situation were advice that any starting journalist could use:
Some of the best advice I ever got way back in 1977 when I got to college was from a professor who told my Journalism 101 class that newspaper editors would never ask to see our transcripts, but we had better have good clips when we hit the job market. He told us that if it ever came down to making the choice between working to have those clips or getting a better grade, to go for the clips. As a consequence, my grades were lame, but I’ve always been able to find good jobs, even when the market has been tight.
— Nancy Weil
Assistant News Editor
IDG News Service, Boston
To show your abilities to your prospective employer, you need to prove that you can do what will be required on the job. The best way to do that is with a portfolio or scrapbook of your work that has been printed. You will need this portfolio throughout your career, and now’s the ideal time to start building it.
The fastest way to build a track record in journalism, in my opinion, is to go to nonprofit organizations and offer to help them with their publicity. Get involved with organizations that meet a definite need in the community but are underfunded and understaffed. Sign up for every publicity committee that has room for you. (That will be 99% of them.) Learn the basics of publicity and plan or help plan a major event for them and promote it like crazy. Read the newspaper for tips about local organizations that seem to be going somewhere and get involved with them. Watch your locally produced TV shows and learn their format, hosts, coverage and work to place people from your selected organizations on TV. You should know how to put together a publicity kit. Put them together for your selected organizations and include them in your portfolio along with the results-press clippings, reports of interviews etc.
Excellent prospects for resume building include churches, schools, community groups, and local organizations with special interests in the performing arts, local history, music, business trades, health issues, children, and any of a thousand other areas.
Go to work for yourself and show yourself what you can do. You may not make much money, but after six months of dedicated effort you should have a winning portfolio that will convince your prospective employer that you know what’s what and can do the job.
— Joyce Griffith
Griffith Publishing
Back when I was publishing newspapers, I gave hiring preference to those who had solid non-daily experience. That’s because I knew they had paid their dues…long hours, little money, and a penchant to do “whatever it took” to get the paper out. I knew they had passion for their work.
–Brad Bradberry
Swamp Fox Marketing, LLC
Littleton, CO
Even i n a lousy economy nationwide, you may find pockets of the country where local markets are doing better and news organizations are hiring. I hit the job market at the end of 1984, and tried everything I could to land a job within 300 miles of my hometown in the Midwest. Sent 100 resumes. Nothing. Then I looked farther east. Nothing. West? Nothing. Then I looked south, and had four interviews set up within three weeks. That’s where the economy happened to be hot at that time. You have to be willing to relocate to get that first job.
–Jay Small
Regional Director, News and Operations, East
Belo Interactive
When I was trying to decide 25 years ago whether to go to journalism school or get a liberal-arts degree first, I sent out letters to a number of newspaper editors asking which they would prefer. The answers were divided, but one thing was uniform: The clips were more important than either the journalism degree or the liberal-arts background.
It’s still true today. The journalism degree tells us the candidate knew what he or she wanted early and stuck with it. The liberal-arts degree tells us the candidate either didn’t know early on or thought there would be a benefit to a broader undergraduate education, possibly with a master’s in journalism to follow someday. We’ll consider either, but we try very hard not to hire people with bad clips.
We’ve hired a lot of people with journalism degrees. But one of our best hires in recent years was a history major who worked weekends in his parents’ hardware store. He had no internships or “professional” experience. But the clips from the school newspaper were spectacular. So was the time he spent with us.
–Tom Pellegrene Jr.
Manager of News Technologies
The Journal Gazette
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Journalism is less about the ability to write and the ability to copyedit (sorry folks, I’m biased) than it is about the ability to think, the ability to see through the s**t, to affect, to gain confidence, build relationships, develop sources, etc.
Demonstrate this to a hiring manager, and you’ll get hired.
–Randy Scasny
Chicago, IL
For many students, it’s not arrogance, it’s economics that keeps them from small-town jobs. Or out of journalism altogether. We couldn’t design a more effective system than the one we’ve got to ensure our newsrooms are stocked with a steady supply of young, single, upper-middle class or rich kids who’ve had everything in life supplied to them.
Finally, for Teresa… since this is a new media list, I’m surprised no one’s yet offered this suggestion: Publish your own Web site.
You need to give an editor as many reasons as you can to hire you. A degree is one reason. Great clips are another. The initiative to find your own stories, then report and publish them yourself is another still. And, perhaps, the most important.
–Robert Niles
In hiring, I have never once looked in detail at a transcript. Not once.
Obviously, I don’t want an “F” or a “D” student starting their career for me. Such low grades could mean laziness or a simple lack of knowledge.
I look for clips. I look for experience. I look for savvy.
This point was driven home when I was a high school intern at the Palm Beach Post. By my senior year of high school, I already had a few hundred clips under my belt. One day, a University of Florida student came in for an interview with my editor. She was graduating and looking for a job. She had a 4.0 GPA and had all the honors that come with such a grade.
But she had ZERO clips. None. Not a one.
Within a half-hour, she was shown the door.
The editor came up to me afterwards and said two things: 1) How can I tell how good a writer/reporter she is if she has no clips to show? 2) If she loves journalism so much, how did she make it through four years of college without writing for a single paper, even her college paper?
I never forgot the lesson.
–R. Dupont
TampaBay.com
Best advice I got in starting out came from a Washington Post hiring editor named Elsie (I’ve forgotten the last name) who answered my job query letter with one saying I’d be a lot better off getting experience at a smallish paper, where I would cover a variety of stories, than at a big metro where I would spend the first few years writing agate.
–Steve Doig
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