Clips (continued)

I asked George Beetham, Jr., to respond to Sarah's post. Here is his reply.

Pat's comments offer a couple of strategies. But I want to address the nature of clip files and, by extension, resumes.

What you really seek to do with both resumes and clip files is to present to prospective employers a digest of why they should hire you.

You need to understand that employers will receive many resumes from many people. What you need to do to attract that employer's attention is stand out from all the rest.

If I am looking over resumes, trying to decide who will be invited in for an interview, I look for a resume and clip file that demonstrate the applicant's interest in and fitness for my publication's mission and philosophy.

I look, therefore, for resumes and clip files that demonstrate a candidate's interest in and commitment to community news reporting.

So clips from non-related publishing ventures are not going to trump clips from newspapers, everything else being equal.

For me, journalism was a second career after the first of writing journalistically styled reports for a government agency. So I not only didn't have a clip file, my work being locked away, but nothing to indicate that I would succeed in journalism.

I wrote freelance stories for little or no monetary remuneration to build a file. I talked to the editor of a local weekly paper to find out what he needed in the way of stories, and what he needed was features. I set out to write them with a vengeance and soon had a file that got me through the door.

As an aside, the editor who eventually hired me said he put little stock in clip files because he thought they represented the work of the copy desk rather than the writer. But other editors value clip files because they do demonstrate not just writing ability, but a reporter's grasp of issues.

It's correct to assume a clip file consisting of poorly edited stories is not going to get the job done. But it's also essential to present a clip file that is germane to the position for which you are applying.

So the course of action I would recommend is to contact the editor of a small, community newspaper and seek out ways to write stories the paper can use, even if it means doing that for free (a price that is always right in an age of limited budgets).

A further benefit for this strategy: I have hired people who have been freelancers or stringers who demonstrated their fitness for journalism in this way.

Another approach might be to seek out an internship, even if it is unpaid (assuming you do not have an overwhelming need to put food on the table and pay the rent). People have interned while holding down night jobs, by the way. I have hired former interns, again for their demonstrated ability.

Editors seek out people who will become good journalists. They want people who are motivated and outgoing. Journalists interact with people from government officials down to the common man/woman. Anybody who demonstrates an outgoing, but not dominating, personality and journalistic credentials makes the hiring process easier. That's your goal, to make that process a slam-dunk.

Good luck.

Clips

George Beetham advices budding journalists to build a clip file for job applications. I know having a large number of clips from which to choose and show future employers is important; but, as Claire and I touched on last class, what if your published stories have been mangled by the editors? The mistakes the Ka Leo editors put in stories are, frankly, embarrassing. My friends and I agree that we don't want to send in our stories because when they are published with stupid errors, we end up looking like the fools. But sometimes a school publication is the only avenue for student journalists to get published. In these situations, is it better to have many published, poor quality clips or unpublished, better quality stories?

Puncuating abbreviations

I always get confused about how to puncuate a sentence that ends with an abbreviation.

For example: "We will have dinner at 8 p.m.(.)" Is there a need for a period or does the second period in p.m. act as the puncuation?

Same goes for "Do you work at the U.N.?" Is this over-puncuating?

This is a little similar to our class discussion about how to puncuate the sentence "Do you Yahoo!?"

Editing Hawaiian Words

I know that for the test this coming Friday we will need to know how to correctly spell Hawaiian words. How do we write the insertion mark for a kahakou? I can see indicating the need for an 'okina the same way one would an apostrophe, but do we use a caret or just draw a line over the vowel?

Risky Business

Sometimes when I interview people, they are fond of cursing. They do so out of passion for the subject of which they are speaking or out of habit. My journalism professors have told us to just take out the four letter words unless we feel the word is ABSOLUTELY necessary to add life to a story. On the other hand, my English professors (esp. my creative writing professor) was fine, even encouraged, the use of curses. In short, what is the general rule about using obscenities? Are there set ways to spell certain words, i.e. f*#!ing v. f*#!in' v. some other way, or is it at the discretion of the writer and editor?

Ellipsis

In Chapter 10, p. 141, the book shows examples of how/when to use an ellipsis. However, there are no spaces between the ellipsis and the surrounding words. I have been told in both my English and journalism classes that there should be a space before and after an ellipsis. Is this just a style difference (MLA and AP v. Chicago) or did the book make a mistake?

Em-dash

Just to make certain for the upcoming test:

An em-dash is simply an elongated hyphen with no spaces between it and the surrounding words? How exactly are they used?

Freedom of speech or just bad writing?

I was thinking about a few of the in-class exercises we have done where we were given songs and poems to copyedit. Yes, the poem we were given was hard to understand and had excessive errors. And I agree, "Lay lady lay" should be "Lie with me across my big brass bed." In fact, I've caught myself wanting to correct a Wings song ("But in this ever changing world in which we live in" -- redundant and ends in a preposition). But who am I to tell Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney his hit song is grammatically incorrect? In these instances, should the copyeditor correct the mistakes or leave the errors due to artistic freedom? Is there such a thing as too much freedom (where the work makes absolutely no sense but the artist pulls the freedom of expression card)?

Straight or Curled?

What is the difference between a looped cancel mark (as the answer key shows in Ch. 4) and a strike-through line (as we were told to use in class)? Is there a major difference between the two or is a regular line just easier to make than a looped line?

Copyediting for the web

How would one copyedit text on the web? Hardcopy is being replaced by online text -- how would copyediting symbols be used (or converted) when there is only this version of copy available?