Q: I'm 54 and will graduate from college in May.  I've done an internship at a business weekly and worked for the college paper for a year.  Is it realistic to think that I could land a job on a metro daily?  Or do I have to start with a small-town daily to get some experience?

What would be the best approach to convert my 30 years of small-business acumen into journalism?

Larry

A: It seems unlikely that your nonjournalism experience will trump that of other candidates' journalism experience applying to metro dailies. The successful ones will have done some excellent work at mid-sized dailies. Start smaller and, if your goal is a metro, move a couple of times to get there. Don't, in the process, have such short tenures that, piled on top of your earlier, nonjournalism career, editors start to see you as a "job hopper." And I suggest that you try to do this through business reporting, where your acumen becomes more of an advantage and where there is less competition for openings.