With apologies to Dinah Shore and a certain automobile manufacturer, that’s exactly the slogan graduating journalism students need to adopt…Go where the job takes you, learn your trade and eventually, move on…It might be Auburn, California, Eau Claire, Wisconsin or Jonesboro, Arkansas …Everyone starts somewhere and everyone has a story to tell about that start…
News Director Amy Beveridge of WMTW in Portland , Maine and Boston.Com Editor Ron Agrella offered insight and advice to a group of soon to be graduates at the Boston University sports journalism seminar series…And honestly, I think the times have changed my thinking on starter jobs…Normally i wouldn’t recommend taking a job on the overnight assignment desk or answering phones and editing copy at a newspaper as a way to get your foot in the door but Beveridge, for one disagrees…”It’s going to make you more marketable and you’ll be immersed in a newsroom, said Beveridge, you can do that for a couple of months while you look for what you really want to do…I will be much more impressed that you worked an overnight desk than, ‘well, I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted so I worked at Abercrombie and Fitch”…
Another issue the about to be grads fail to come to grips with, perhaps due to their own lack of confidence in themselves, is their own worth in the emerging job market…Knowing how to shoot their own video, edit on their laptop and being amazingly conversant in multimedia skills is no small fete…As I’ve said many times, these are skills those working in these very same small markets don’t have and the are afraid of you for having them…You are the new competition, the young guns with the latest tools at your fingertips…You have something valuable to add to their newsroom…
Finally, one thing that hasn’t changed despite new technology and social media is your attitude….A potential employer wants to know what you can bring to your new place of work….Agrella summed up what every potential employer wants to hear from you, “I don’t care how many hours I need to work, what hours I need to work…If I need to work holidays or nights, I want to be here…I want to be part of this organization”…he said he hears very few candidates say that directly to him but warns, “Now just don’t say, it, you have to mean it…”
You’ve worked hard for that sheepskin, now go do it!
