I’ll never forget how dad introduced me to his staff in the Lakeland newsroom of the Tampa Tribune back in the 1970s. He was the bureau chief, and I was meeting him for lunch.
“This is my son,” Dad said. “God help him, he wants to be a journalist.”
About five years later I was standing in line outside an auditorium at the University of Florida, waiting to be seated for graduation exercises.
“Is this line for the journalism school graduates?” a student asked.
“Yup, it’s the unemployment line,” another said.
In a sense, it was true. Through most of my life, there has always been more applicants than there are jobs in journalism – especially for beginning journalists who just want to have enough money to actually go out to eat for lunch once a week.
“You brought a bologna sandwich again, Germond?”
“Ham,” I said, with pride.
In the 24 years I’ve been an editor, I’ve interviewed probably hundreds of applicants aspiring to be reporters and photographers. Sometimes, the process depresses me, even when I’m confident I’ve hired the best person for the job.
I know that for every applicant I’ve hired, there are countless more that we didn’t hire who have great credentials and would be willing to work for peanuts. Some applicants land jobs elsewhere, but others must turn to other lines of work while their diplomas collect dust.
Over the years, I’ve also received countless calls from students asking for internships, especially here in Pinellas County.
The problem is, we just don’t have enough personnel to effectively train and coach interns. I would say that about 40 percent of our editors’ time is spent on some type of deadline. It’s certainly not the time to be showing a journalist how to deal with a press release.
Also, contrary to what students or teachers may think, our newsroom isn’t a great learning environment. What they learn is we spend a lot of time checking e-mails, talking on the telephone and staring at a computer screen.
The best advice I can give for any college student wanting to open doors for themselves is simply – go get me a story.
I say it again – go get me a story.
This county should be a dream for aspiring journalists. We have festivals to cover nearly every weekend, a wide variety of sporting events, 24 municipal governments, great parks and abundant wildlife.
More than a year ago, an enterprising college journalism student sent me a story on the problems erosion was causing along the Dunedin Causeway. Though I didn’t assign her the story, the student did an excellent job on the issue; she talked to numerous sources and conducted research. I ran it on the cover of the Clearwater Citizen, if memory serves me right.
Nothing beats having a clip file – stories that have been published – when it comes to applying for a newspaper job.
Of course, we strongly encourage our correspondents or student journalists to contact us before they take on a story because we want to avoid duplication, especially if they want to cover a government meeting. E-mail is the best way to communicate.
Good journalists are resourceful. They have the ability to sniff out stories. It’s all about curiosity, instinct. Either you have it or you don’t. You won’t learn it by job shadowing or being an intern, at least not here.
If you want to be a journalist, go get me a story.
From there, we can give you pointers on how to make the story more concise, crisp and interesting – and maybe assign you more stories.
Sure, from time to time we talk to classes and groups about what we do, how we decided what to cover, how to write a press release.
We are community-minded, but our resources are limited.
This is a great place to work, but the news is out there – not in here.
Tom Germond is executive editor of Tampa Bay Newspapers.
