HCJ-L Archives

March 2007

HCJ-L@HUNTER.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
"Bernard L. Stein" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Date:
Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:04:05 -0400
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (1 lines)
Based on 30 years of hiring novice reporters seeking their first or second job as journalists, I would say there are two keys to winning an interview: your cover letter and your clips. 



Particularly when sent to news outlets that aren’t household names outside the communities they cover, the letter that accompanies your resume and portfolio will stand out if it shows some familiarity with the publication/website/radio station.



The letter ought to attract attention; the clips to hold it. Forget about those clever movie or music reviews. No hiring editor is interested. He or she wants to know whether you can report the news.



Choose your best three stories, and be sure their leads sparkle. Remember that the editor who is reviewing your application has 99 or 149 more sitting on his or her desk, and has a paper to get out, too. The editor is going to read the first two sentences—no more. If you make the cut into the possible interview pile, he’ll return to your stories and read on.



Many neighborhood newspapers will put you through a mini-version of this process before they’ll even let you freelance a story without pay. So will many internship programs. It’s a classic chicken-and-egg situation, so where are those first clips to come from?



The natural answer is the Envoy, the Word and other school-based publications, and I’ve been puzzled about why relatively few media students report and write for them. When Clyde Haberman, the New York Times columnist, visited my class a couple of semesters ago, the first thing he asked the students was how many of them wrote for the school paper. He was disappointed when no hands went up. Being the editor of the City College paper is what got him to The Times he told them.



I think the Envoy has grown into a much better paper this year than it was in my first year of teaching here. (Disclosure: its editor was in a class I taught, and I’ve been informally offering her suggestions.) Apart from a redesign, what it needs most to continue to improve is more staff.



That the Word has long been very good is due in part to its relationship with Prof. Morris’s classes, whose students provide a steady supply of stories. Judging by how few issues have been published, I would guess that the Word in print has had the same sort of problems as the Envoy in attracting enough writers, however.



For advanced student reporters, my Neighborhood News class offers the opportunity to publish in a neighborhood newspaper, The Hunts Point Express, and to be accountable to an off-campus community. (Yesterday, I got a call from the Daily News, which wants to pick up a story from the Express about the visit of Naomi Campbell to a community center in Hunts Point as part of her community service sentence. The city’s metro reporters followed Campbell's every move in Manhattan, but it never occurred to them to go to the Bronx. Express reporter Christina Davis, though, got a call from a reader, and was on the scene when the supermodel arrived.)



Advanced students can also publish through the class offered each semester by the Jack Newfield Visiting Professor. The work of this year’s class will appear in the Village Voice, as last year’s did, and the department hopes that publication will continue to be the distinctive feature of the program.



Let me finish where Prof. Parisi started, with questions for students. 



Would you like to see more production classes make publication a requirement, as, for example, Prof. Morris’s classes and Neighborhood News do? 



Should we be starting as early as basic reporting to require students to publish their work? 



And what do you think the relation of faculty members to student publications should be? The Envoy declares its independence on its masthead: is there room for a faculty advisor? If so, what should the relationship be like? 



Bernard L. Stein



---- Original message ----

>Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:58:57 -0500

>From: Peter Parisi <[log in to unmask]>  

>Subject: It's 11 p.m. Do you know where your portfolio is?  

>To: [log in to unmask]

>

>The sentiment has been expressed on another departmental listserv that

>students are not sufficiently aware of the importance of compiling

>portfolios of clips as part of their preparation to enter the field of

>journalism.

>

>So, HCJ-Lers, some questions:

>

>Are you aware that it really _is_ important to amass a portfolio of

>clips as you work your way through courses and internships?(It_is_;

>it's true.)

>

>More to the point, what are you doing about it? What obstacles are you

>finding? Where are you finding places to publish?

>

>What experience have you had with some of the obvious venues -- The

>Hunter Envoy? the WORD? The WORD in print?

>

>Professor Buddy Stein may have some words to say about taking

>advantage of New York City community weeklies, an area in which he is

>deeply experienced, as editor of the Riverdale Press.

>

>What's happening for you on this front?

>

>Peter Parisi

>

>-- 

>Peter Parisi, Ph.D.

>Dept. of Film & Media Studies

>Hunter College

>695 Park Avenue

>New York, NY 10021

>212-772-4949

>"The suffering itself is not so bad, it's the resentment against

>suffering that is the real pain." --Allen Ginsberg


ATOM RSS1 RSS2