Interesting that this came up about electronic clips and portfolios. Because I still have never settled on a way to organize my clips.

 

Editors considering my pieces often do want to see clips. And I have always wondered how to organize them in an attractive, somewhat uniform manner that is easy for the recipient to access and review. Something about simply giving links makes me wonder if they will be seen.

 

Most are 700 - 800  word opinion pieces and all of them are on the web sites of the publications that published them. But on my computer I have them in all sorts of formats, everything from .PDF to WORD files to faxes of hard copy.

 

What I'd love is some good advice about how to put them all together in an electronic portfolio that could be sent to an editor on-line.

 

There actually is one quirky complication that I have thought about. As you know, the electronic text from a newspaper's on-line archives are often only text without the layout or the art or photography that accompanied the initial publication. And sometimes I  want the editor to know as much about the original placement of the piece as I do the actual text.  If a previous piece was on the front page of the Sunday opinion section, I want a publication considering using me to see that. I don't want to wonder if they see the small "page 1" that is on a text-only transcript. But the problem with showing the initial clip is  that articles cut out of print editions and then scanned can look pretty cheesy.

 

The best situation is when a publication produces a full facsimile .PDF version. Then I simply use the Adobe Acrobat photo function and take a picture of the article. In fact, to show you how this looks, I have taken an "acrobat photo" of an article from the .pdf version of our local community newspaper and pasted it below.

 

I will really  value any helpful advice.

 

Thanks,

 

Steve