I have always loved to write and often dreamed of being a reporter for a large newspaper when I grew up. Quite a few things stopped me from fulfilling my dream of covering exciting events as they happened all over the world, but the dream of writing has never faded.
When I was fifteen, we lived in a place called Walker, Oregon. Walker was what most people would call a “wide spot in the road.” Actually, if I recall correctly, the spot wasn’t even wide. Highway 99 split the community right down the middle and a few residents lived in houses built back from the road a bit. There was one gas station with its 3 tourist cabins, and a picturesque white church with a steeple sitting up on the hillside overlooking the community. Adjoining the church was a graveyard with more residents than the small “town” it overlooked. The few children in Walker attended school in a nearby town so we did get a reasonably good education.
My mother came back from shopping in the nearby town one afternoon and said, “Guess what? You and I have a job. We’re going to be stringers.”
My idea of a stringer was someone who ran the string from bean plants to another string high off the ground to train the plants to grow upright instead of lying flat on the ground. I already picked beans for a month and a half every summer to make money for school expenses, so I wasn’t overly interested in adding “stringer” to my resume—at first.
Since my mother seemed excited about the new opportunity we had been offered, I heard her out and then I got excited, too. It seemed that a stringer was someone who submitted community news to the local paper, and got paid by the printed column inch. The going price at that time was 5 cents a column inch.
It wasn’t the money that excited me, though. It was the prospect of writing something that would actually be printed in the paper—with my name on it—for everyone to see. Now that was something I could get excited about.
There was a drawback to the job, though, and that was that the community our bylines would appear under was Walker, and Walker had zilch as far as community activity was concerned. Where were we going to find any news to write about?
Being stubborn, we knocked on enough doors to make about a dollar a week between us. Mrs. Conroy’s cousin had visited the week before, and the Millers were expecting a great-grandbaby to be born any day. The Smiths had a 4-generation picture from their family get-together at Christmas if we wanted to use it. Etc. Etc. Etc. (I forgot to mention that we were going to get 25 cents extra for each picture we included with our news.)
Unfortunately, our zeal didn’t last long. Soon our weekly column ended up featuring the same cousins visiting the same members of the community week after week and, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t seem to find anything more interesting happening in Walker. The most exciting columns we wrote were the ones where we could do a write-up on a new addition to the cemetery. Fortunately for our already tiny population, that kind of story didn’t come along very often.
Our job evaporated when we moved the next year to a new town that didn’t have a paper so no one was in need of experienced writers like my mother and me.
Many years later, I did move into a larger town and found several newspapers not only willing to publish an occasional article with my byline, but also willing to pay far more than 5 cents a column inch for them, so, off and on, I have profited from my early writing experience in Walker.
If writing is something you enjoy doing, why not cash in on your talent and get something in return for your efforts?
1. Check out opportunities in your area.
Don’t stop with the local newspaper. The chances are that someone (or several someones) already have that source covered, but do check them out, just in case. Then look for alternative papers like the Senior News, or a gazette about what is going on in theatres, sports, or business in your area. Our town has a newspaper printed entirely in Spanish. If you know Spanish, there might be an opportunity for you in something like that. Look in the yellow pages. Search for papers in nearby towns or even statewide. List every possibility.
2. Prepare some writing samples.
Make notes by each possibility on your list. What kinds of columns do they run? How long is each column? Does the writer have a bye-line? Is each column one of a series on that subject, or does it stand alone with the columnist writing about an entirely different subject the next week?
After you are pretty familiar with the policies of the possibilities on your list, choose one of them and write 2 or 3 articles for it. If you are trying to land a column writing about a particular subject, then keep your articles about that topic. Keep your article length about the same as other articles in the publication. If there are no other columns, try for 500-700 words. That is long enough for an editor to check out your writing skill and decide whether or not he is interested in working with you.
3. Submit your samples.
If possible, make an appointment with the editor of the newspaper you are interested in writing for and take your samples to him in person. If this isn’t possible, send a well-crafted letter, telling him that you would like to come by and discuss the possibility of doing a column for his paper. If you have credits from items you have published elsewhere, include them in a list, and offer to submit several sample articles, (the ones you have already prepared), for his approval.
If you are invited for an interview, dress like you would for any other job interview, (even if you like to do your actual writing in your pjs), and remember that you are selling yourself as well as your writing. Be ready to talk about the direction your column would take.
4. Decide ahead of time what direction you would like your column to take.
You may not always have the final say about your column. You may want to write only about nature and the outdoors, but your editor may prefer a miscellaneous type column that covers a wide variety of subjects. You may want to stick with writing about pets, but your editor may prefer sports or politics. Be sure the direction the column will go is something you can live with before you agree to do it. A lady writes for our local newspaper and every column is different. One week it may be about her husband’s operation; the next about karma and how she thinks she is affected by it. Once she wrote about the stray cats invading her backyard. The lady who previously wrote the column only wrote about businesses in town–mostly restaurants. (Personally, I like variety, myself.)
5. If you are offered a job, try to pin down the following specifics.
Before you write your first column as an actual employee, you should hopefully have a contract. (Some smaller publications don’t bother with this, but ask anyway.) The contract, even if it is verbal rather than written should spell out things like:
How many columns will you write? (One a week–one a month?)
How long will the column (your job) last?
How much will you be paid for each column?
When is the deadline for each column?
Will there be extra pay for photos you provide with your copy?
If you are given a special assignment, will you receive expense money?
Are there any taboos or controversial topics you should avoid?
Is there a possibility of keeping the rights to your articles for later use elsewhere?
Most people never get rich writing for newspapers, but it is a nice little sideline that can provide extra spending money while you wait for that “Great American Novel” to take shape. And writing for the local newspaper does provide some interesting perks; such as having someone at the grocery check-out counter tells you how much they enjoyed reading your latest column, and then act as though they have just made contact with royalty.
