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Boba Fettuccine posted:I don't want this thread to die, so I'll ask a question. Gonna hop in here. Speaking from more of a photojournalist than a writer, so take it for what you will! Ironically, I was a student at Mizzou for three semesters as a Psychology major before giving that up and moving across the country. I didn't get into journalism and formal news until well after leaving such a huge journalism-focused school. But, I've been a photographer hobbyist for a long while, so throughout everything, it was just a matter of taking pictures and then taking more pictures. Mizzou is, if anything, a fairly pretty campus with lots to do, so it kept my enjoyment of photography from dying out. Really, thanks to the internet, it's been just a matter of getting work out from there. I'd landed a bottom-rung job at a major entertainment studio in L.A. after moving here, which gave me tons of production experience relevant to a lot more than just news, and being in a major city has enabled me to get to situations or events that people in other parts of the country wouldn't be able to go to. I went out to do some shots for a Wonder Woman pilot after work one day, and next thing I know, the LA Times blogroll is asking if they can link to my Flickr. Another time, I went out to take pictures of the space shuttle parade, uploaded it to iReport, and a quick email later, it was one of the headline pictures on CNN. It was really just one thing leading to another, which came to another thing, which led to getting published. Half of working as a photographer isn't about getting good pictures; it's about putting yourself in an area where good pictures can happen, and I somehow flopped around into that circumstance. Using those experiences got me my current job working for a fairly respected communications non-profit. It's not really field work at all, but we're the only photography space in Los Angeles that focuses on editorial content, so it provides a lot of opportunities. Our last show was National Geographic's birthday exhibition, so it was a great learning experience getting to meet with and learn from some of their biggest names just about every week for six months (including getting to interview Steve McCurry, which was an honor in itself). I'm going back to school now to try and do things "the right way." It's only one or two classes at a time in local community colleges while trying to work full time. I've thought about going back to Mizzou, as well, since LACC's journalism department is a hot mess that needs to reprioritize, and getting into USC's Annenberg School doesn't make sense to pay more and have to jump through more admittance hoops when I could just go back to a better school I've been to already. I also run a gaming news site called ActaDinerda, but that's only a few months old and can only be updated when I have a free moment until more writers get on board. I wouldn't recommend doing what I did. Jumping right into freelance work and hoping you land a job vaguely related to journalism is hard as balls, and I was extremely lucky to somehow navigate into this position. Plus, it's still a long, long way from being a field photographer for a major magazine like NG or Time or something. Going to school will get you those connections and, at the very least, a portfolio to show to others when the time is right. You'll have a lot more, and sometimes better, content when someone's holding your feet to the fire to get it done for a grade. Freelance is a lot of your own money and time, not mention forcing yourself to get motivated, for results that may or may not be useful to someone somewhere. P.S. - awesome thread and it's good to know there are still people trying to keep the fire alive against the cold, hard wastes of short attention spans and reality tv. Axel Serenity fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 06:41
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Depends on the publication, really. Smaller publications are sharing more and more work, in which reporters will also be doing copyediting or even their own design work (The O.C. Register I think does this.) Most of the larger publications and magazines will have their own editing team that is completely separate from the reporters. At something like National Geographic, where photographers and writers are usually not even remotely in the field at the same time, an editor who is solely focused on putting those stories together is crucial. There's enough content there that editing/copyediting/layout is a job on its own, and a great editor can make or break a feature story based on how they put all those pieces together. Sometimes, the editors got their jobs without ever doing a single reporting job just because they have a great eye for what makes a good story or picture that fits with a publication's mission.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:07
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Great! Now to just break into this niche... Well, if you have the option, maybe go back and take a couple classes, making sure you tell the professor you want to be a section editor. Depending on the size of the class, you may still have to do reporting, but you'll get a chance to show potential employers "This is what I did with my section." If you live in a larger market, there are usually a ton of magazines and publications looking for editors as they try to build an audience. You might not get paid much, but it's all about having work you've done to show others and building that network. Show people you can have a focus, mission, etc. Also that you can manage/fact check a bunch of different stories and reporters without getting sued. Everyone wants to be a reporter, but copyediting is kind of a specialty thing that usually doesn't garner much interest. If you can land a couple gigs doing it, you'll probably have a lot of luck. e: alternatively, go to Creative Convention and fix errors in goon novels for mad money. Axel Serenity fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 02:34
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JohnSherman posted:How much communication is there between the writer and the editor once a piece is submitted? If the editor is going to be making changes (clarity, length, etc.), do they generally run them by you first? I'm curious because a few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for the local Deaf community about an event they held, and submitted it to one of the newspapers that covers our area. Apart from telling me that they liked it and were going to run it, I didn't hear much from them, and so I assumed it would run pretty much unaltered. When it came out, the editor had made several changes without consulting me, including replacing instances of "deaf/hard-of-hearing" with "hearing impaired," using a subtitle that referred to deaf people as disabled (both major faux pas), and replacing instances "Deaf" with "deaf" despite their different meanings. To the Deaf community, it looked like I was just another hearing rear end in a top hat who could never understand them, and I ended up taking some serious blowback from my Deaf friends. Am I wrong to believe that the editor should have consulted me, especially since it's my name in the byline? Depends on the paper, assignment, length of project, and a ton of other things. If you're submitting freelance (which it seems you did here) or the article seems otherwise fine to the editor from a developmental standpoint, they will probably do the copyediting and cuts without consulting the reporter. As for your changes specifically, it ultimately comes down to what the AP Stylebook says. It doesn't capitalize "deaf" in the book, but it does look like maybe using "disabled" perhaps went too far. Editors handle a lot of different stories of varying interest and subjects, so it's nearly impossible to know the unwritten rules within a particular community for every story. If the facts of the story look right, most of the phrasing and grammatical rules will be consulted via the AP Stylebook and that will be that, which seems to have happened here. Unfortunately, the listing in the book for how to write about disabilities is fairly broad and open aside from really blatant rules (like calling someone mentally retarded). It's not something he would have consulted you on, but, yes, he could have done more research into making sure he didn't upset the people involved in the story. e: If your friends are really upset, have them write to the publication. If the paper is trying to be fairly credible, they tend to take that stuff seriously since it not only paints the paper in an insensitive light but also may affect other stories. Most editors will want to make sure they're getting things in the paper correctly since, well, that's kind of their whole job. Axel Serenity fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 03:38
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