Ask the Recruiter

I am a college graduate who has had several different careers. In addition to a bachelor's degree, I also have a legal background and am currently attending law school. Since I have been writing on various topics for various audiences throughout my adult life, I wanted to give freelance and/or a reporting gig with a local newspaper a shot. My question is, how would I go about that?

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I am 40 years old and have never worked for a newspaper or otherwise been employed as a reporter; however, in the past four years, I have taken a college-level journalism class. And while I suppose that I could intern, at my age, and from what I have seen, I don't have a lot of confidence that I would be taken seriously. Interns tend to be college seniors and/or freshly minted graduates. What would you suggest would be a viable alternative to someone like me wanting to break into news and/or freelance reporting?

Regards,

Christine

Freelancing is the way to go.

Few newspapers would hire you -- not even for an internship -- unless you have some published clips to show. You can get those by freelancing.

Joe Grimm

You could be taken seriously as an intern candidate if you made a good case as someone who wanted to use it to switch into journalism -- but you'd still need those clips.

Pay attention to how journalism is changing. The jobs you're thinking about may be the very jobs that are morphing into something with much more reporting and writing for online, including gathering audio and photo and even video. That could be exciting for you or a turnoff.

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Coming Friday: This 24-year-old loves her job in the sports department of a good-sized paper, but she wonders whether grad school would accelerate her career.

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