Q: I just discovered your Q&A blog, and it's been very helpful. And I realize as I write this I may be just worrying for no reason, but I'll ask it anyway, because I don't want any more surprises than necessary.
I'm a senior in college, on track to graduate in December. However, it's with a liberal arts degree, not a journalism one. I've already been looking at job postings to get an idea of what's out there, and some places seem to require a journalism degree, while others ask for just a related field or some sort of experience.
I starting working at my college paper my sophomore year, and because of that, I had a very good internship last summer at a nearby daily newspaper with about 15,000 circulation. Around the middle of my internship, the need for a weekend reporter came up, so I started working weekends and continued to work there part-time and on weekends after the internship's end. It's a good job, and I like it there.
However, I still feel something of I guess what I'll call a non-comm major inferiority complex. I'm wondering how much that's going to hurt me when it comes down to applying for jobs. I've covered a lot of things here, from features to a hurricane that came through town, so I think I'm doing okay at building a solid selection of clips. While I know a journalism major would have helped me, and I have taken one news writing class, I feel what has helped me more than anything is actually being in the newsroom and writing stories.
So basically I'm asking if I'm on the right track, and what else I can do to ensure success after graduation? And also, I'm hoping, upon graduating, I can land a job at a daily newspaper of about the same size I'm at now, give or take a few thousand. Is this unrealistic? I'm willing and even eager to see other parts of the country-I've been in the same state basically all my life.
Wondering in Texas
A: You are fine.
Most editors vastly prefer experience and no comm. degree to a comm. degree with no experience.
Your mid-internship promotion is an excellent indicator of success and your continued work -- while juggling school -- shows the editors' faith in you as well as your commitment and work ethic.
I think you will be able to start at a paper a little larger than the one you're at now, provided your work is solid and your geographic aims remain wide open.
Yet, I understand about the security issue. Having spent very little of my career as a reporter, and almost all of it on the editing end of newsrooms, I have that, too.
Do this: Try to learn these important aspects of journalism while you are in college: ethics, journalism law, media and economics. Try to talk your way into one of the advanced writing classes if you can. They might not let you in for lack of prerequisites. You have learned for more about writing, editing and news judgment in the newsroom than you would learn in a classroom.
I am not worried about you. I worry about mass comm. and journalism majors who will graduate in December without any significant experience.
