Pursue career goals aggressively

A recent message from a reporter at a weekly newspaper asked advice in trying to find a new job.

He said he had been seeking work at a daily newspaper but was encountering a bias among editors at dailies toward job applicants from weeklies. His first question for me was whether such a bias was widespread and why it existed. I didn't have a lot to say. All editors have their biases and your challenge as a job applicant is to make yourself so irresistible that the biases become irrelevant.

My advice to the aspiring daily reporter (and others pursuing other career goals) follows four primary tracks:

* Develop skills that are in great demand and short supply. That will make any editor's biases irrelevant.
* Freelance some stories for the papers where you want to work, so you can develop connections. As a stranger applying for work, you are victim to the editor's biases, which may fill in what she doesn't know about you. As a known and valued talent, your perceived shortcomings may never come into play.
* Invest in your own career by attending seminars or conferences or taking graduate courses that will enhance your skills and expand your contacts.
* Market your services as aggressively and persistently as you would pursue a big story.

If you have skills that are in demand, your services will be in demand, regardless of where you've worked. Mostly I'm thinking of high-tech skills, such as computer-assisted reporting, multi-platform skills, interactive journalism skills.

In an interview with Robert Niles for the Online Journalism Review, Adrian Holovaty suggests that journalism schools should be teaching computer programming. Holovaty developed interactive databases that let readers choose the information that makes the story personal for them. Check out his Chicago Crime site or the Congressional Votes and Faces of the Fallen databases he developed for Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive. If you could combine traditional journalism skills with computer programming and develop interactive databases, you would have your pick of jobs with daily newspapers' online operations.

If that kind of work doesn't appeal to you, consider developing some other skills that enhance your online storytelling - learning to shoot and edit digital video perhaps or learning to do more basic interactive features, such as maps. And if you develop advanced interactive skills, such as the ability to program games, your value goes even higher.

Computer-assisted reporting skills should be part of any reporter's toolbox. If you haven't learned how to use spreadsheets, databases or mapping software, those are skills that would enhance your appeal to prospective employers.

As important as those computer skills are, they are not the only way to get ahead. Polish your storytelling skills - narrative writing and the ability to conceive and deliver alternate story forms.

Develop your investigative skills. Learn to dig for records and uncover the story no one else can. Join Investigative Reporters and Editors, attend IRE conferences and learn from colleagues on the IRE list-serv. Buy and read The Reporter's Handbook and practice the investigative skills described there.

Identify a couple weaknesses in your writing and reporting. Then work like crazy to turn them into strengths.

If you're a pretty good reporter with traditional reporting and writing skills, or even a really good reporter with those traditional skills, you face lots of competition for every prime job you want. In that competition, you can blame your lack of success on an editor's biases. And you might be right. But wouldn't you rather be packing your bags for that new job than making excuses?

Connections are as important as skills. I think I've had worthy skills for every job I've been hired to (and some where I was turned down). Still, connections have been as important as skills in landing most of my jobs. Having skills is nice. Letting editors know you have skills is even better.

In your current reporting job, you write about people who aren't originally from the community you cover. If some of them might be newsworthy in their hometowns, you can freelance a story (perhaps in an alternate story form or a story with strong interactive online elements) for the hometown paper. This gets your name and skills known to that editor (and a few more, if you do this a few times). One of those connections could turn into a job.

Eight times I have been hired by an organization in the newspaper business. Each time I was a strong candidate for the job, based on merit alone. But I'm sure other candidates had similar merit. At least five of those times, my connections helped me get the job - either the new boss already knew me or someone else at the organization knew me and spoke highly of me. In each of the other three cases, I know that strong references helped me get the job. Maybe it's unfair that connections mean as much as they do, but a reporter needs to be able to develop a strong network of sources. How likely is that if you can't develop a strong network of colleagues?

Conferences and seminars are a great place to make connections and develop skills. Sometimes your editor is too cheap to send you to professional development opportunities. Sometimes your editor genuinely has too tight a budget. Then invest in yourself. Find the right opportunity to help you develop skills and make connections and pay your own way.

API's Compelling Storytelling Innovations seminar Oct. 15-20 in Pomona, Calif., would be such an opportunity. Or maybe the right program for you would be presented by the Poynter Institute, IRE, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism, your state press association or a group organized by beat specialty or ethnicity. Or maybe a course or two at a local university would help expand your skills. No one will benefit more than you will from your career. So don't wait for your newspaper to invest in you.

The reporter who wants to move to a daily asked whether I thought studying Spanish would be a wise use of his time and money. Yes, absolutely. Too few American journalists are fluent in multiple languages and Spanish and Arabic are the languages in greatest demand. Learn one of those languages - or Chinese, perhaps - and your value to prospective employers soars. Remember my first point about developing skills that are in demand.

Finally, you must be aggressive and persistent in pursuing the job you want. Don't just send a résumé and an application. Follow up by phone and by e-mail. In person if you need to. Send the editor links to new stories you've written since applying. Develop a web site where prospective editors can read your clips (you send a few with the application and refer editors online for more) and read about your career.

Yes, you may bug some editors by your persistence. So what? Those editors didn't pay attention initially anyway, so you haven't lost anything. Editors want reporters who are resourceful and persistent, sometimes annoyingly persistent. You can demonstrate those traits in your pursuit of the job.

I was hired for this job on my fourth attempt to hook up with API. I had pursued at least eight other opportunities to move to a full-time journalism training position. I practically scheduled my own job interview, telling my future boss not only of my interest in this job but that I was going to be at API later that month as a discussion leader for a seminar. I suggested that we could meet then. We did and I got the job.

I also scheduled my own interview with the Omaha World-Herald when I was unemployed in 1992. They had shown interest upon my initial application, but did not have a job available then. I was going to be nearby for the holidays and scheduled an interview with the managing editor between Christmas and New Year's. A month later, I had the job.

I don't know (or care) what prospective employers I might have annoyed with my aggressive pursuit of the jobs I wanted. But I do know I have landed good jobs that required the persistence and confidence I was showing to the people making the decisions.