Writers/Journalist needs for questions

[79sunrunner]

Hello,
My career I'm hoping to go for is journalism, specifically automotive journalism. Yes, I understand that is an extremely hard sector to get into and I doubt the pay will be very good. If there are any automotive journalists on here, please tell me about your daily life

. Here is my question to anyone who wrote for a newspaper whether for a job or college newspaper, is how did you get stories, did you ask around in college? Keep up with scheduled bulletins? I was just accepted to write for my college, and I'm trying to think of a topic to write on (I dont need help with that), but how you guys obtained information. We all have had bad days too, and maybe we came really close to a deadline, what did you do to meet a panic dead line such as the steps and so on.
I'm basically picking out the worst case scenario for this job, and how to cover myself up. Any life experiences?

 

[97prizm]

Well I have written a few papers relating to automotive articles, mainly for my classes. I'm a semester out from having my Journalism/Airline Management Degree. Send Matt Farah an email at the Smoking tire. I did a couple of years ago and he wrote me back fairly quickly (The same day!). I could have packed up went to New York and worked for them for no money! Having a portfolio, large knowledge base, and drive no pun intended.

 

[79sunrunner]

Originally Posted By: 97prizm

Well I have written a few papers relating to automotive articles, mainly for my classes. I'm a semester out from having my Journalism/Airline Management Degree. Send Matt Farah an email at the Smoking tire. I did a couple of years ago and he wrote me back fairly quickly (The same day!). I could have packed up went to New York and worked for them for no money! Having a portfolio, large knowledge base, and drive no pun intended.


Wow thats great, I should try to contact the "greats". I would have never guessed one would reply. Hmmmm now if James May were to reply an email DDDD

 

[bvance554]

My advice would be to not corner yourself into an automotive niche just yet. Be a good journalist. Get your wheels under you (no pun intended), then once you're established cut your niche.

 

[rjundi]

Not a journalist however tech writer/web application architect and know a few folks who did your steps.

Get a "real job" and do it on the side until you get a full time gig doing journalism. A friend mine did sports writing for major state paper but in parallel became communications director for our university alumni and recently a major sports equipment company.

Do you have anything out there in a form of blog showing your skills off? Its a very easy outlet for your writing and also a sample of what you can produce. Social media makes it easy to advertise. At the very least you have an extremely easy place to show your writing sample off in an email or resume.