Journal of Mass Communication at Francis Marion University, Fall 2007, Vol. 1, No. 2
Maintain your contacts
By Tim Hanson
My first newspaper reporting job came relatively late in life – I was 28. And if it hadn’t been for a former professor of mine – the outdoor humor writer Patrick F. McManus – that first reporting gig might not have presented itself until much later.
My late start in the profession was not by design. I had been busy with other things over the previous decade. I was a sailor for four years, earned a degree in journalism at Eastern Washington University, made numerous extended solo trips into Mexico and Central America and logged several seasons as a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service in Western Montana.
It was near the end of my last season with the Forest Service that I telephoned McManus to see if he knew of any reporting jobs that might be available. And, as chance would have it, he did know of one – at a newspaper called The Sandpoint Daily Bee – in his hometown of Sandpoint, Idaho.
Pat provided me with the name and phone number of the editor. I later got in touch – making sure to mention that I had been steered to the newspaper by McManus – and drove to Sandpoint for an interview.
I showed up with a pretty thin resume, as I recall, but I offset that shortcoming by also bringing along a fistful of stories I had written and sold to newspapers and magazines over the previous several years.
That seemed to do the trick and he hired me on the spot, officially ending my days of eating smoke and digging fire line.
For the next several weeks, I wrote about and photographed life in and around Sandpoint. The newspaper paid me one hundred and sixty-five dollars a week and I lived in a tiny apartment above a muffler shop. I owned no furniture – not even a bed.
After I had been at the paper for two months, I got a call from Doug Clark, who was at that time editor of The Coeur d’Alene Press in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho – less than fifty miles south of Sandpoint.
Doug, who is now a columnist at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, and lead singer and guitarist of the rock band The Trailer Park Girls, was looking for a reporter. He had called McManus (Doug also was a former McManus student) – and Pat recommended me.
I drove to Coeur d’Alene for an interview – bringing with me my growing collection of by-lined articles – and was hired as a staff writer. My salary was bumped to $225 a week and I was able to move into a nicer apartment. I even managed to furnish the place.
More importantly, the move helped flesh out that weak-kneed resume of mine and allowed me to write bigger and better stories. And those articles – combined with the valuable experience I gained from writing them – helped me more than double my salary by moving on to a larger newspaper two years later.
In the succeeding years, the pattern repeated itself – with McManus always there as my supporter, writing letters of recommendation when I needed them and in general just being a good friend – and I moved to Asia where I worked as a newspaper reporter, wire service correspondent and magazine editor for nearly a decade.
So, for aspiring journalists, the message should be clear:
And that is that while you can learn a great deal from your professors during college, it pays to maintain those contacts. If you work hard in school and show promise as a reporter and writer, most professors will support you as you move into and through your career as a journalist. It can, in some cases, be the deciding factor in an editor’s hiring choice.
The other, equally-important part of the equation is that it is critical for you to write and publish as many articles as possible. This will help you acquire the skills you need to survive in the field of journalism and – trust me on this – you will need these pieces to present to editors as proof that you can do the job.
I amassed my clips by writing about things that interested me.
While stationed in the Philippines with the American Navy, for example, I used my weekends and vacation time to travel around the country to write about one fascinating subject after another:
- Juanito Piring, who for many years had been voluntarily nailed – really, nailed – to a wooden cross every Good Friday.
- The nomadic Bajau people who live out their entire lives on small boats, only rarely venturing onto land.
- Ghostly tales from the World War II island battlefield of Corregidor.
- Two of the most volatile volcanoes in the Philippines – Mayon and Taal.
The Times Journal in Manila, one of the many English language newspapers there, bought five of my pieces and paid me in Philippine pesos the equivalent of about twenty dollars for the lot. While that was less than five dollars per story, the sale gave me something of much greater value – my first by-lined clips.
When I got out of the Navy and returned to the United States, I continued writing and publishing articles in newspapers and magazines. I wrote about Transcendental Meditation, smokejumpers, bison roundups, river rafting, bald eagles and Native American legal rights. I interviewed actors, writers, musicians, convicted murders, radical lawyers, spies, communists, consumer activists, civil rights leaders, mountain climbers, artists, Jesuit priests, doctors and B-52 bomber crews.
I was a busy lad.
Most of those articles were self-generated. That means I came up with the ideas, did the research, conducted interviews and wrote and submitted stories to editors.
You must do the same – the only caveat being that you should find the entire process from idea generation through publication curiously satisfying.
If you find it to be otherwise, some quiet reflection on how you wish to spend your days might be in order.
But for those whose journalistic direction is set, I can only suggest that you seek out that which interests you and write about it. Publish and grow your stack of clips.
And find a friend, as I did with Pat McManus, among your professors.
You just never know.
Tim Hanson is an assistant professor at Francis Marion University where he teaches print journalism courses. Before joining the faculty, Hanson held a variety of journalism positions, including managing editor of The Reader’s Digest Asian edition in Hong Kong, South Asia correspondent for United Press International in New Delhi and Philippines News Bureau Chief for Pacific Stars & Stripes in Manila.
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