ASK ED: Answers to your magazine questions
Dear Ed:
I just graduated from college and I am having trouble
finding my first job in magazines—I’ve been looking for months!!!!
I’m considering going to graduate school for journalism, but it’s
a lot of money and I want to make sure it’s the right decision for my
career. What do you think? Should I apply?
Confused in New York
Dear Confused:
Your question is probably the second most common question
Ed gets (after, How do I find a job? of course). Graduate school seems to have
the perfect solution to your problem: you can delay the job hunt, go back to
your cozy college environment, learn more about journalism and get your parents
off your back (“Have you been on any interviews this week, dear?”)
for another 2 years.
But don’t do it. Ed’s not a fan. Why? Let
him count the reasons:
- It’s expensive. You can shell out $30K (or
more!) per year for two years in graduate school when you could be earning
the equivalent a year in salary and benefits. Granted, you don’t have
a job yet, but you will get a job within two years. Even if you don’t,
you’ve only lost your living expenses, which can’t possibly be
the cost of tuition and those other ridiculous fees schools add on. Besides,
if you are prepared to spend $30K, why not keep it (or not apply for the loans)
and instead get a post-graduate internship? You won’t make money (unless
you get lucky—most don’t pay), but at least you’re not hemorrhaging
money AND you’re getting more hands-on experience, which is far more
important to employers than taking more classes. You could even work at Starbucks
on the side (they provide health insurance—take that Wal-Mart!).If you have rich parents or your grandma just croaked and left you a hunk
of cash, keep reading:
- It’s a waste of time. You’ll get the
same job after you graduate from J School as you would graduating with an
undergraduate degree. That can’t be right!, you say, That’s not
fair! Well, it may not be fair, but it’s da truth. Graduate school,
in your case, is good at delaying the real world, but it doesn’t prepare
you any more for it than undergrad. What prepares you for the real world is
real experience. Internships are the key to getting your first job. Repeat
after Ed: Internships. Internships. Internships. When it comes to filling
Editorial Assistant positions at most consumer magazines, the applicant with
the most internships wins. OK; so it might not be that cut and dry, but the
point is that practical experience—including writing and editing on
your college publications and freelance writing for off-campus publications—is
what editors want their entry-level editors to have. But what if I have tons
of internships and experience on my college paper and I go to grad school?
you ask. Surely, I’ll get a better paying or slightly higher level-job
out of grad school, right? Not necessarily (and don’t call me Shirley!).
The entry-level editorial jobs at consumer magazines are editorial assistant,
researcher, reporter and copyeditor. For the most part, they pay the same,
no matter what your experience (usually somewhere between $25-35K). Some of
the larger publishers even have unions that mandate that the salary of entry-level
employees is exactly the same for everyone. Plus, let Ed remind you: You may
be overqualified for an entry-level job, but you are underqualified for the
job above it. Basically: You can’t get the job after the entry-level
job unless you have the entry-level job first. So suddenly you have all this
education and no one to reward you for it.
- Grad school grads are overqualified and arrogant about
it. Ouch. I know, it hurts. Not to stereotype, but hey, might as well—they
have an attitude that says, I’m important and therefore you must hire
me! After $60K and thousands of discussions with professors about ethics and
freedom of the press and other scholarly topics, you deserve to get that editorial
assistant job over Julie Schmoe who’s fresh out of undergrad. Besides,
you’re older and wiser. You have more knowledge. You know the AP Style
book by heart. You know your shield laws from your freedom of information
act. You can write a 10,000 word essay on Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper.
That’s the problem. You are too good. You’re overqualified. With
the exception of some chi-chi places in the publishing world (see below),
consumer magazine editors want to hire the 22-year-old whippersnapper fresh-out-of
college. There’s only a small window in life—Ed believes it begins
senior year in college and ends about a year later—where you are bursting
with enthusiasm and naïveté without a shred of cynicism. That’s
what editors want: Whippersnappers who are so excited to be in the magazine
industry that they’ll do anything with a spring in their step and a
smile on their face. They are excited—no, down-right thrilled—to
make a trillion photocopies, answer annoying phone calls from readers who
want their subscription without “those annoying blow-in thingees,”
and run an editor’s package to his freelance writer after the last messenger
has gone home. The implication with grad school grads is that they’re
trust-fund kids who are too good to make copies and (gasp!) get coffee for
their boss—they need to be practicing their craft. But I’m not
a cynic!, you say. I’ll make copies! I don’t have a bit of blue
in my blood! I’m just a normal girl standing here in front of a normal
editor asking him for a … job. Well, my dear. It doesn’t matter.
We already think what we think. And you know how it is about self-fulfilling
prophecies.
Did you survive that? Ed was pretty harsh. But sometimes
he has to be—it’s his duty to spread the truth in this crazy business.
Sure helps that he’s anonymous and has no identity whatsoever (he’s
even gender confused!). Anyhoo, after that rampage, he does admit that grad
school can be good for some people. Here’s who should send in an application:
- Rich people.
- Rich people who want to work for any of the following
publications: The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time,
Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. Of course,
a graduate degree is not required to work at any of these publications, it’s
just that they tend to hire J School grads more than other mags. Yet, Ed knows
people who work at these publications who only went to undergraduate school—some
of them even to (gasp!) public universities!
- People—rich or not rich, assuming you can get
loans—who discovered after four years in college studying pharmacy,
physics, popular science or whatever, that they love magazines and want to
make it their career. They’ve never written for a magazine, they’ve
never been on a staff, they don’t have a single internship under their
belt. Essentially they have to start over. These people should go to graduate
school in journalism. You get to create a new major for yourself—and
this time it’ll only take two years to graduate instead of four (hey,
there is good news in here!). Ed’s good friend went to J School after
she worked as a paralegal for a couple years after college. She was so bored
out of her mind on her job and found herself drawn more to People magazine
than legal briefs. (Um, who wouldn’t be?) So she quit the law firm and
went to J School. She’s now one of the most sought-after celebrity cover
writers in New York. So grad school can be good. It can teach you about journalism
when you knew nothing before. It can teach you the basics of writing and reporting.
It can even introduce you—depending on the school and its location—to
some movers and shakers in the industry. And, it can provide opportunities
for you to work on student publications (and thus make you qualified for internships—remember:
internships! Internships! Internships!) if you didn’t partake in undergrad
because you were too busy injecting lab mice with poison or something.
OK, Confused. There you have it. I hope that answered
your question. Good luck. And if you don’t have an internship yet, there
are tons of ‘em on Ed’s Ed
on Campus whisper page. Check it out!
Much love,
Ed
