As a current IMA student and a former undergraduate media studies major 
at Hunter with a passion for and focus on journalism, I believe it is 
of utmost importance for a student to publish work in his/her school 
publications.

I have written for my high school newspaper, at Hunter for the Envoy, 
The Word, @Issue (Peter's online magazine in the IMA program) and now 
write for several publications for pay.

Journalism seems to be overshadowed by video in the media department at 
Hunter when it comes to course offerings, funding, and focus. Gregg 
Morris has it right in publishing students work from basic reporting 
on- I remember his emphasis in class on building that portfolio and how 
important that was in getting a job later on. If students can't use 
your clips from school publications to land paid writing gigs, then at 
least they will gain the writing-for-publication experience- invaluable 
insight into how things work in the "real world". Practice makes 
perfect.

The Word, perhaps more than the Envoy, publishes stories of social 
significance. The same is true with the Hunts Point Express. What 
better way to get clips for your portfolio than to be guided by the 
knowledge and experience of well-established journalists like the 
professors in our program?

Students must be lazy or not passionate about journalism if they're not 
contributing to the school papers. What else could it be?

Best,
Allison Steinberg
646.413.8918
[log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 9:04 AM
Subject: Re: It's 11 p.m. Do you know where your portfolio is?

    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


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