I absolutely agree with you that careful feature writing can be very complicated than the classic hard reports stories. I don't think that your particular preferences necessarily make you far more suited for magazine work when compared with newspaper work, nevertheless, I do think that you should consider chasing a feature writing career instead of a hard news career.To find about Olcbd, click here

Whatever you decide to pursue, the good thing about hard reports and features for each paper and magazine is you can use your creative composing skills for virtually any tale. A "feature" lead is the rage anyway. If only I had more concrete guidance for you, but perhaps these types of comments can help you find the right route for you.

You're aware that that you can do the creative feature-writing you care about at a newspaper, right? A great deal of my newspaper career was a student in the "Living" section of several newspapers (the section that contains the soft news, characteristics, articles on health, engineering, recipes, interesting people, and so forth ). The larger newspapers can provide you more latitude intended for writing features because they have got a larger budget and more staff members; the smaller ones may have far more budget constraints and a lot fewer staffers, leaving you fewer hours for features.

Then again, maybe you have to chase hard reports more at the big reports and have time to get to know your own personal community and write the genuinely up-close-and-personal stories at a scaled-down local weekly paper. A good deal depends on the publication's solutions and editorial emphasis. You'll want to read a lot about each syndication to decide.

One of the great things about currently being on the newspaper's features staff members is the latitude you have; you will have a beat to cover, sure, you could basically write any characteristic story you want, with your editor's approval. It's a tremendous amount regarding autonomy.

You also might take into account working for one of the news providers such as AP, Reuters, and so on; a lot of the wire stories I actually pulled during my newspaper job were features. I'm uncertain how to get started with them, but it would not hurt to ask your mentors how to get started. Many college students "string" for them and establish themselves as reliable journalistic specialists that way.

I also suggest that anyone looks at newspapers that post the kinds of stories an individual absolutely love and concentrate on them for their job research. Search for award-winning feature reports online, or perhaps scan journalistic think tanks like the Poynter Institute for ideas. Many papers are large enough that they'll and will cut one or two reporters loose from their regular jobs for special-assignment reporting instructions such as an in-depth six-week series on teen drug use, etc. Often they're just simply seeking awards, but long-view stories like this really do the actual community, and it's a great event for you if you can land the item.

If I had to make an idea, I would suggest that you work at a new newspaper and freelance for just a magazine. My opinion is that they have a harder to break into attribute writing at magazines if you don't go with the "trade" stories, as I did. I think it may be easier to break into magazine-creating full-time with more writing loans under your belt.

We have worked for a family-owned each week newspaper (invaluable end-to-end knowledge for a beginner journalist), a motivated daily newspaper owned by the non-profit association (unusual enterprise set-up, but a solid location to work), and a smallish Gannett chain newspaper. If I were required to pick one of the three, I would go with the independent everyday paper; great latitude, very good circulation size, decent payout, and a more appreciative frame of mind toward the employees.

The Gannett location was, for me, an incident of employers wanting to shake the last drop of a lifetime out of employees. But Rankings bet you'll find that the individual newsroom composition, personalities, goals, and so forth, play a larger part in your on-the-job happiness than if you work at a small/large or indy/chain paper.

Certainly that the magazine world is more openly tied to advertising profit and control of editorial information, although it's also a noiseless but authoritative presence in many newspaper editorial decisions. (I recall wanting to do a very simple consumer story comparing selling prices at local grocery stores -- a feature that my paper's executive editor drastically confined after input from all of our paper's very alarmed promoting directors. ) At the newspaper where I edited for 2 years, the core of the editorial calendar was gathered by the advertising director, together with only input from the article staff and management.

Yet that reflected the frame of mind of the company's publisher and also owner, who -- similar to most investors -- followed the bucks trail more closely as compared to anything else. They don't tell you inside journalism school, unfortunately, precisely how powerful the advertising section is in influencing journalism's higher management; after all, they are the moneymakers who bring in the advertising and marketing dollars, so when they communicate, the big bosses listen. It will take tact and a deft give with office politics to know to work cooperatively and correctly in such situations - although that's another topic!

Although like I said it can be up to you how you would like to period career choice. Just remember you just read up on both sides of journalism. You might end up finding out you would rather stay with one edge of the journalismworld than the case with the other side. Aim to make sure that you get as many facts before you make your choice. You could perhaps try and get a job in journalism and see what you like most on that side then the other edge of journalism.