Readers!
Time to dust off the mail bag (sorry to the letter writer, who sent this last summer. But hey I got to it!)
A reader asks: How do I break into journalism (feature writing, specifically)? I studied marketing and have a lot of experience writing marketing content, and feel like I could be decent at feature writing, too, but I don’t know how to get that first assignment. I have specific ideas that I’d love to pitch, but am too embarrassed to pitch when I know I have no education nor experience in journalism. Also, I am in [redacted country] but would like to write in English, so “pitching smaller local publications” doesn’t work, at least not in any obvious way. What would you do?
I have a few thoughts:
- Write really good pitches. The best way to break into feature writing is to make sure you’re targeting the right editor, and to write solid and perhaps longer than normal pitches. I know that’s a pain in the ass, especially coming from someone who has written at length about why pitching is a pain in the ass. However, when you’re new, you have to prove to an editor that you can write. And SINCE NO ONE READING THIS NEWSLETTER WOULD EVER DARE TO USE THE LYING PLAGIARISM MACHINE, an editor should be able to read your pitch and see that that yes, you can do this. One of my former editors told me she sometimes liked being able to make a judgement of someone’s skills off a pitch instead of a published piece, because she had no idea how much work and how many people it took to get the piece to look like that. I know it’s been a billion years since I started freelancing, but I got my first few national bylines, when I had very little to share in terms of clips (both because I was new and because most things weren’t online so I couldn’t just send links), by writing longer pitches. That way, once they got to the bit about reading my bio, they were already hooked.
- (Almost) no one will care about your education background. Not having a degree in journalism isn’t going to matter much to most editors — they just want writers who can produce clean copy and turn things in on time. I say most editors don’t care because I’ve met my share of snobs, but my counter to that is Peter Jennings was a high school drop out. When I started freelancing, no one I pitched was grilling me about my lack of a journalism degree. Yes, I had been editor of my college newspaper, but I really learned how to report by doing it, with my first features being not much different than what a marketing piece might be — profiles of authors, articles about a neat t-shirt, or a quick feature about a Jersey Shore boardwalk shop. When I freelancing part time and still working corporate, nobody really cared about my day job either (of course I wasn’t pitching anything related to who I was working for, because that’s a big no no). Again, a lot of this is solved by longer pitches because they can see you can do it, which is what matters most.
- Pitch the right publication for your idea, no matter the size. As to “pitching smaller local publications” won’t work, it can. I redacted the letter writer’s country, but there are English language publications in that country. There are also foreign bureaus of major English language publications there. If I can write about Italy for American publications, why can’t someone from another EU country do the same? Bonus that the letter writer can speak both languages where my Italian is, well, mediocre at best. I also know of U.S.-based editors who would love to have a local write about their country, especially when it comes to travel. I also don’t want you all to hem yourself in by thinking that you can’t pitch larger publications. I was 25 and a nobody when I started pitching the New York Times. The editor I pitched rejected the first few ideas, but encouraged me. Why? Because he liked my writing, and that was enough (and no he never asked where I went to college or what I studied).
- Try stringing. Letter writer can offer to be a stringer for international publications. That’s where you’re on a list, and if news is about to happen or is happening near you, you get the call. You often don’t get a byline as you’re going to provide color for another person’s reporting (though you might get something like “contribution by YOUR NAME”) but it can be a valuable way to establish a relationship with a publication, which could lead to your own bylined pieces. I did that for the New York Times for two years, and while I had been writing for a few sections here and there, stringing for the news and sports department meant I got to cover the 2008 Phillies World Series parade solo. I stopped doing it because the pay wasn’t great, and by 2010, I was more established at the publication, so I didn’t need to drop my plans to, for example, go interview the family of a pilot who had just crashed. But I still sometimes get stray calls or emails and recommend college students for it. I don’t know exactly how you’d break in — my name was just passed onto the right person at the time. If you have any ideas, leave a comment below (if you’re getting this as a newsletter, click on through).
- Don’t let fear stop you. When I coach people on freelancing, the number one thing holding most people back from trying to take the next step is fear, or embarrassment, as the letter writer wrote. If you’re reading this and feel the same way, I want you to ask yourself this: What’s the worst that can happen? What is the worst that can happen if you pitch a story and they don’t like it? They’ll say no, or they won’t respond. That’s it. Big whoop. Who cares. Who cares! The sky will not fall. The world will not end. But you will re-package the pitch for someone else, and then move on. And if that fails, ask yourself this: would a mediocre white man be scared to pitch the story? Of course not. Pitch away.
By the way, if you’d like coaching, drop me a line.
What I’m Reading
- A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous. This is the diary kept by a female journalist in Berlin from April 20 to June 16, 1945, which documents the overtaking of the city by the Russian Red Army. In that time, an estimated 100,000 women were raped — the author was raped by three men in the first 24 hours of the takeover. It’s a really awful story, one of violence and grief, starving and survival. But because it was told by a professional, she is clear, direct and meticulous of recounting what happened. A quote: “These days I keep noticing my feelings towards men — and the feelings of all the other women — are changing. We feel sorry for them: they seem so miserable and powerless. The weaker sex. Deep down we women are experiencing a kind of collective disappointment. The Nazi world — ruled by men, glorifying the strong man — is beginning to crumble, and with the myth of ‘Man.'” Phew. The book was first published in English in the U.S. in 1954, but not in German until 1959 (by a Swiss company) where it was reviled. The author, still anonymous, said she didn’t want it published again until she died. In 2003, it was published in German again, and spent 19 weeks on the German best seller list. The edition I have, a 2011 English translation I bought at the Imperial Warm Museum in London, theorizes that the author was journalist Marta Hillers, who died in 2001 (and based on what I’ve researched read, this seems to have been accepted as fact). From the 2005 edition, in a translated post-script written by Hans Magnus Enzenberger, the 2003 German publisher: “German readers were obviously not ready to face some uncomfortable truths… German women were not supposed to talk about the reality of rapes; and German men preferred not to be seen as impotent onlookers when the victorious Russians claimed their spoils of war. The author’s attitude was an aggravating factor: devoid of self-pity, with a clear-eyed view of her compatriots’ behaviour before and after the Nazi regime’s collapse, everything she wrote flew in the face of the reigning post-war complacency and amnesia.” I think about that with the COVID amnesia that seems to have taken hold — this idea that we’re supposed to forget or not remember what really happened. Like Hillers, I kept a diary through the worst of it. And no I won’t forget.
- The Calamity Club by Kathryn Sockett, read by Jenna Lamia and January LaVoy. When I told a friend I was listening to this, she told me she was concerned. Sockett wrote The Help and while it sold a lot of copies and became a successful movie, it got a lot of well deserved criticism for its portrayal of Black women. I checked in with her this weekend, and after reading it we both agreed she was not going to make that mistake again with The Calamity Club, the first book she’s published since (and she has been open about taking that criticism to heart). This book focuses primarily on two people living in poverty in Mississippi during the Great Depression: Birdie, a spinster who has to travel to Oxford, Miss. to beg her sister who married a banker for money to save their family home; and Meg, an 11-year-old orphan who is being treated extremely harshly in a local orphanage. Their stories, of course, intertwine, as do those of a case of mostly white women who are just trying to get by, including through sex work, which they are pushed into at the hands of men, and then punished by them for it (including one character, who was forced into it by her uncle to spare her 11-year-old sister. She was only 12 herself). Sockett also writes about how the book was shaped by learning about America’s mass sterilization programs, which the Nazis used as a blueprint for their own heinous crimes. Yes it’s a heavy topic, but I enjoyed listening to this. The women, both major and minor characters, show such a range of what women were dealing with at the time, without pressing too hard by making clear the parallels to what a lot of women are going through today.
What I’m Watching
- Grantchester (season 11). Alas, our 11 season romp with a series of sad, hot vicars who solve crimes in Cambridge has come to an end. I think they might be setting up a spin off with Larry, who is not who I’d have picked when the character was introduced, but they seemed to be forcefully making him more interesting this season. We’ll see!
- The Six Triple Eight. This is a biopic about the 6688 Central Postal Directory Battalion, which was the only Black and multi-ethnic U.S. Women’s Army Corp to serve overseas during WW II. Their job: fix the mail. It was a mess. It’s a bit of a corny WWII movie, sure, but doesn’t everyone deserve to get that kind of treatment? When I as in Normandy, our guide pointed out that three members of this division were buried there (of the four women total). Especially given what’s happening in the military right now to women and people of color, being spearheaded by a bozo who stood at The American Cemetery in Normandy and gave a speech saying clearly he’d have been on the other side.
- In the Grey. A shoot ’em up, thriller of bad guys shooting bad guys, good guys shooting bad guys and sometimes a good guy dying valiantly after being…shot by a bad guy, from Guy Ritchie starring Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhall and Eiza González (who is on the cover of the poster online but not the DVD for some reason?) I put it one while I was working, and it was perfectly fine. Fine!
- Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill. In 2019, Lauren Kanark was shot by Michael Barisone. He claims insanity. But was he? This is a very odd documentary about very rich horse people, and no one comes out of this looking like the good guy. Yes, despite what happened.
Nail Polish of the Week
Acid Orange by Sephora. Once again lamenting that Sephora does not sell their branded nail polish in the U.S. Alas! I got this in Italy last year, and it’s a great orangey red. I have enough, but a friend who is in Paris right now did pick me up two bottles of Sephora’s top coat, which has become my favorite. Phew!
Until next time!
Jen A. Miller (she/her)
Notes from a Hired Pen ebook series
Like this post? Buy Jen a Coffee!
Book links are affiliate links.
Leave a Reply