The recent Ask Ed column advising against grad school struck a chord with a number of Edsters and started quite a debate on the message board. To get to the bottom of this, we decided to investigate the question further: Is it worth it to get a master’s in journalism?
What advice can you give recent graduates?
Try your hardest not to get discouraged. You’ll see your [non-magazine] friends landing jobs at big companies, entering sales training programs, making pretty good salaries, etc. You are not in the same kind of business so don’t compare yourself to them. You may not get a job right out of school and you may not even have a staff position a year after you graduate. But that doesn’t mean you can’t work in the industry as soon as you want to.
Freelancing while on staff can lead to more money, better clips, and even a new job, but every opportunity has its risks, most notably losing your day job. Read on to learn from the mistakes and successes of our most byline-weary Edsters!
Not to get all biblical on you, but whenever Ed sees someone commit one of these sins in her cover letter, that applicant will need help from a higher power before she gets called in for the job. So keep these in mind the next time you apply for a spot, and thou shalt receive an interview:
1. Thou shalt not address her cover letter to “Whom it may concern.”
Ed’s friend just put a call out for interns, and she included her name in the job post. She intended to get cover letters addressed to her, but instead, there were some who were addressed to “Internship Coordinator,” and worse, “Whom it may concern.”
Ed loves giving you info about getting your foot in the door straight from editors who’ve done it, but now he’s offering you a new perspective. Check out what Jayne Jamison, Vice President and Publisher of Seventeen, thinks you ought to know:
What should junior editors know about the publishing side of magazines?
OK folks. Let’s end the confusion on what makes a good resume here and now. Ed’s seen a bazillion. And if you don’t trust his judgment alone, trust the judgment of editors of top magazines in New York City and the reps at the HR departments of the top magazine companies ‘cause Ed talked to them about what they like and don’t like, too. (Yeah, Ed has boring conversations, but he does it all for you.)
Here you go:
• Keep the thing to one page. When you become editor-in-chief one day, maybe then you can make it two pages.
Follow this advice for a resume that gets read—and gets you interviews.
1. Make it easy to read.
Most editors don’t have time to decipher an illegible, disorganized resume, so keep yours neat. Don’t use colored ink, more than two fonts (and avoid crazy ones!), or big font sizes (your name can be slightly larger, but making it HUGE looks juvenile). Italicize all publication titles and spell out the months in your dates of employment, instead of using numbers. “February 1999-present” and “Feb ’99 to present” are both fine, but be consistent throughout.
Your internship may have ended, but there’s still work to be done if you want to get the most out of your time in the office. Here’s what you should be doing after your last day.
At last week’s Dot-Com Panel, edsters heard panelists discuss the death of print, love of self-promotion, and why top ten lists get the most traffic. Read on for more advice from panelists (from left) Marc Boxser who has worked as a Digital Media Consultant at grist.org and several other sites, Dodai Stewart, Senior Editor at jezebel.com, Julia Allison, co-founder of nonsociety.com, and Julie Hochheiser, Senior Web Editor at seventeen.com.
The National Magazine Awards, an event that was formerly full of magazine higher-ups, welcomed more junior-level staffers to attend this year—and I got to go. On Thursday night, April 30, 2009, the finalists from the pool of more than 350 print and online magazines that entered gathered at New York City’s swanky Jazz at Lincoln Center to honor the winners. Considered the industry’s top honor, the American Society of Magazine Editors hands out the awards annually; this was its 44th year.
Ed’s interviewed lots of whippersnappers and has heard them utter many deal-breaking phrases. Learn from their mistakes with these awful responses to popular interview questions:
The question: “Have you read our magazine?”
Bad answer: “No” [OR] “I just looked at your Web site.”
Editors know that 22-year-old EA applicants don’t read MORE magazine every day, but no editor wants to hire someone who’s never picked up their magazine before! Do yourself a favor and read an issue or two. You should understand what the magazine covers, how they cover it (in a snarky way? matter-of-factly?)
Everyone thought I was crazy when I left my secure job at Twist in the middle of the recession to take a freelance celebrity reporter gig at Star. Sure enough, I was laid off just a few months later.
It turned out that losing my job was the best thing that could have happened. Before that, I had always found ways to avoid working online—it was so intimidating to me! But once I saw that the majority of job listings were for web positions, I decided to learn my way around the big, bad webosphere.
This fall, like any other semester, hundreds of internship listings went up on Ed2010. But unlike other semesters, the demand for interns is outweighing the supply. Magazines that typically attract dozens of strong applicants, from CosmoGirl to The New Yorker, are now struggling to fill fall spots, and some positions are still open. “I’ve never had such a hard time finding interns before,” says one women’s magazine internship coordinator.
No, it wasn’t because your resume disappeared into an abyss. Ed asked a few of his friends who recently posted jobs and internships, and, even though they got dozens and sometimes hundreds of applicants, they read every single e-mail. Here’s why you never heard back:
You relied on a gimmick
The best career advice today isn’t coming from college advisors—it’s coming from our favorite TV shows. Tanner Stransky, editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and Ed on Campus director, searched for the best advice from the small screen to apply to the real world for his new book, Find Your Inner Ugly Betty: 25 Career Lessons for Young Professionals Inspired by TV Shows.
By Anonymous
If you think getting fired from magazine job will turn your world upside down, you’re right. But that devastating feeling is only temporary. Even if you can’t look back and laugh about the day Susie Smith didn’t invite you to birthday party, you will be able to laugh about this one day. But first, there will be some tears.
I had recently been promoted to assistant editor after about a year on the job. So when the editor-in-chief called me into her office less than a week later, I didn’t think she was going to tell me she was thinking of firing me. After a search of the staff’s emails (yes, they can—and do—do that), an email I sent was deemed to be inappropriate, and I had signed a contract my first day on the job promising never to use the company email system inappropriately. I had violated a company policy.
When Ed heard about the “Intern Queen,” who had a total of 15 internships during her four years of college, he knew she had to have some interesting advice to share. When you intern 15 times, you’ve clearly seen it all. Here, Lauren Berger, the self-professed “Intern Queen,” tells you her top 15 things she learned from all her internships.
Brooke Parkhurst, author of Belle in the Big Apple, recently spoke to Edsters about blogging, book deals, and how to succeed in NYC. Here’s one of our favorite tips:
In our first-ever salary survey, Ed got the scoop on the skeletons in your paycheck…
Most of you are making $31,000-$39,000 a year—and 70% of you think you deserve more. Over 300 Edsters took the survey: the average is 23, female, working entry-level jobs in New York, and graduated in 2006 sans j-school. And until you get promoted, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything you can do about it.
An HR representative at a major publishing company (who requested anonymity) does not think entry level is in any place to negotiate. “A lot of kids are dying to get this position. Provided that the salary is in the range that they’ve heard, they should be happy about that opportunity,” she says. “Most of the time the salaries are fixed.”
Ed’s Guide to Not F***ing Up
Warning: This is for the Thick-Skinned Only
Before Ed gets to what you want to know, he has one point to make. Indulge him.
For those of you already in the biz, you know that one of the rules in magazine
service writing is to never be negative. You shouldn’t point out the bad
behaviors of your readers—like that the vast majority of them are gorging
themselves with fast food, and therefore dying of heart attacks and complications
from diabetes. As an editor, you must find a way to spin the story so your readers
aren’t inadvertently offended by the messenger (your magazine), but will still take
the steps to improve themselves. For instance, the story about obesity that
should be “Why You Need To Stop Eating Like a Pig or It’ll Kill
You” would be more likely titled, “10 Ways to Feel Better About
Your Body.”
That said, the service article Ed is about to write here would be titled “How
To Get Ahead in the Magazine Business,” but Ed feels that unlike the mass
market of consumer interest magazines, you can handle the truth. So the title
of this service piece is,
Hed: What You Are Doing Wrong
Dek: How To Know If You’re The One That’s Annoying An Editor
or Potential Employer
By Erin Quinn
After two years, one month and 12 days as an editorial assistant, I am free of that lowly title. I have finally—finally!—gotten a promotion. Pleaseallow me to introduce myself: I’m Sunny Sea Gold, assistant editor at Glamour magazine. I’d give you my card, but they haven’t come in from the printers yet. You’ll have to take a rain check.
So, how’d I make it happen? First of all, I put in the time—about twice as much as I thought I’d have to. See, my mentors—all in their late 20s and early 30s—were leaping from magazine to magazine in the bull market of the ‘90s, climbing another notch (or two) up the masthead every year. Naturally, I thought I would too. But things have changed, honey. There’s lesson number one: be patient. The economy sucks and the competition for jobs is seriously stiff, which means no one’s moving around and your employer knows you’re not in a huge hurry to quit if you don’t get a title change.
After a few months of pitching stories from home in my pajamas and slippers, a friend told me about an opening for an Associate Editor at a women's magazine. I had left an Assistant Editor job at another women's magazine to freelance-and I did enjoy the schedule-but I was ready to return to an office where I could talk to people instead of the squirrel on my window ledge. I sent in my resume and a few clips, and I had a meeting with the Managing Editor the next week.
“Instead of trying to connect with an EIC, try connecting with the senior editors—make yourself memorable to them. Can you get things done quickly and well? Do you complain?
A website offers practical tips for magazine editor wannabes and other new journalists
By: Jaclyn Greenberg
Date: Nov. 24, 2006
