I will graduate college in May, and I am starting my paid
internship/first-job hunt in the coming weeks. The advice I seem to be
getting from your column, as well as the journalism professors at my
college, is to look for a smaller daily paper to work for, as the large
metropolitan papers are tough for a fresh grad to break into. How do I
FIND these smaller papers?
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I have no preference as to WHERE I work, but Googling for and looking
through every newspaper in the country seems like a dumb idea. I just
don't know, besides the big names where everyone wants to work, what
papers are worth bothering with. The journalism department at my school
is tiny (only a few full-time faculty), and I've already asked them for
advice. Any more tips?
Rachel
Several online directories can help you.
One approach is to type "all newspapers" into a search engine and look
to see what comes up. With a few clicks, you can be looking at all the
newspapers within a given state -- with links to their Web sites.
You'll
have to do some hunting within that list to find the circulation size
of those newspapers. Circulation is measured by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which
keeps a list of the largest 200. Within its Web site, you
can look up circulation sizes state by state.
Newslink will give you state-by state lists,
too, and it separates the metros from the other dailies and the weeklies.
Another approach is to explore newspapers by company, figuring out
which are the smaller newspapers in good companies by looking at
corporate Web sites. Several companies are really pipelines, moving people along.
Not all good, smaller newspapers are owned by larger companies, of course. So,
you might also try state press associations, which will list their
member papers and some details about them. Find them by going here.
A more graphical approach is to go to the Newseum for its list of 500 front pages from around the world. Many are larger, but not all of them are.
With this approach -- cross-searching by state, company and front-page
content -- you should be able to search smarter. Good luck!
Additional strategies: Andrew Pritchard makes this suggestion:
"In addition to papers' circulations, state newspaper or press associations often maintain their own job postings on their Web sites. These are typically small- to mid-size papers and let you see what types of positions are available, as well as the hiring manager's sales pitch for the paper. Check when the jobs are posted, though. Some of these sites update weekly, while some let posts become months out of date."
