When I was looking for my first journalism job, I did my best to scrape together a clip here and there. Every time I got a new one, I sent it with my resume to all the suburban papers around Boston, where I lived at the time. For the first couple of years, nobody replied.
Then I got a call from a fellow who identified himself as the city editor at the Lowell Sun. He invited me in for an interview. Why? "We had five copies of your resume in the file, and we decided we had to either hire you or get rid of you. We don't have any more room."
I did get hired, but not on the staff. I was given a halftime position with no benefits, at a rate of $100 per week. I was told that if I worked 40-50 hours a week in my "halftime" position, and if I did a spectacular job, they might–might–hire me as a regular staffer. It took me about a year to get hired.
It has always been tough to break in to journalism. And it's tough now. But if you're trying to do that, and you'd like a little help, you can find it in a nice post by Bora Zivkovic at Scientific American. It's entitled "How to break into science writing using your blog and social media."
Zivkovic is currently typing with one hand as he convalesces after shoulder surgery. Even at half speed he has a lot of good advice to offer. We can only imagine what he might have written with two hands.
-Paul Raeburn
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