Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Journalism and the World” blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments). Every day, Alex Dai, one of my full time employees, spends about an hour an a half looking for stories for the next day’s news feeds. He needs to find about 14 to 15 potential story ideas, based on local newspapers, press releases, government announcements, and similar sources. Then he sends them to Chicago for the editors there to pick six (more or less). Sure, we get some news when companies send press releases directly to us. As CardLine Asia-Pacific gets more and more well-known, this happens more often. But, for the most part, we scour local newspapers in the countries that we cover. Google News … Read entire article »

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Journalism and the World” blog. Click here to see the original post. If you’re in town in Shanghai on a Thursday night — and now you have an excuse to come visit — join us at Cotton’s Bar on the corner of Anting Lu and Jianguo Lu. The owner, Cotton, is an old friend of my ex-husband. Tell her I sent you, and that I say “hi.” She joined us tonight as we were discussing Russia’s right-wing extremists and war reporting (two of my favorite topics). Wang Lili, a Shanghaiese novelist joined us. In addition to writing novels, she also has an English-language blog. Other drinkers included folks from Germany, the US, South Africa, and Holland. You know, the usual crowd. Again, the gathering … Read entire article »

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Journalism and the World” blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments). Tonight, at our weekly drinking session, a fellow journalist called me on the fact that I was planning to name names and point fingers at companies that gave money to journalists to cover their events. But still haven’t. Did I chicken out? Almost. A person from company I was planning to name first (see below) called me up two days ago and asked for a favor for a friend. Then his wife called me up to arrange details. To make it worse, another friend of theirs was at our drinking gathering tonight. A real journalist wouldn’t care, Fons told me. (He’s the founder of the Foreign Correspondents … Read entire article »

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Journalism and the World” blog. Click here to see the original post. I’ll write more on this topic later, but right now I’d like to point everyone to a fantastic post by Michael Yon about how he started as a war correspondent. It’s a fascinating read about Iraq and is yet another example of how to become a foreign correspondent without going through the traditional channels. I still have a hard time reading articles like his. The need to go back to the front lines is still embedded pretty deeply in me. (See my earlier article in Quill: Addicted to War or, if you don’t have access to Quill, ‘Addicted to War‘ is also reposted on my website.) Does anyone know … Read entire article »

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Journalism and the World” blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments). I get asked this question a lot “how do you become a foreign correspondent”?I’ve answered it a lot as well (one of these answers is posted here: http://maria.trombly.com/FAQ.htm#correspondent). But my perspective on this has changed over time as I gained more experience in the field, and as the industry has changed. Traditionally, there have been two main ways to become a foreign correspondent: 1. Wait for the newspaper to send you. 2. Go on your own and freelance until someone hires you. The first option has always been problematic, since it usually took years of working for a publication before they would … Read entire article »

Pay for freelance journalism is atrociously low pay. But I think the problem goes deeper than stingy bosses, etc… I think that journalism is one of those jobs, like tending bar, that you don’t really have to know much in order to be able to do well. You need to be able to write the inverted pyramid, and you need to be able to ask questions and keep coming back until you get some answers. So the college graduates are always going to be competing against non-J-school grads for jobs. I myself was a math major and only graduated from college because I was the eldest in a (poor, starving) immigrant family and couldn’t let everybody down. Otherwise, I would have gone into newspaper work right out of high school — … Read entire article »

When I left college I had a handful of clips from the local alternative newsweekly, one of them a cover story on town-gown relations. That’s it. No journalism degree, no internships, no other editing or writing experience. I went to Chicago, and, within a couple of months was working as one of the “full-time freelancers” for the Chicago Tribune in the northern suburbs, covering about a dozen municipalities and all the associated government boards. One of my features ran on the front page of the Trib (not the front page of a section, the front page of the Trib itself). A harder story on the drug trade also got high placement. From there, my career path would have been pretty straightforward at the Trib, except that I decided to go … Read entire article »

I beginning journalist asked me this question: I’m worried about getting a journalism job. Should I go to graduate school? I’m sure plenty of people will disagree with me on this, but, having been in a position to hire recent graduates in the past (and having faced this same question myself) I have to strongly vote against grad school. I first left school in a similarly bad market, and I had to work my butt off to get started. But the experience you gain will be worth more than grad school ever will. Here’s my advice: move to an area where you can get free or cheap rent, in a large metropolitan area if you can find it. Get a day job if you have to, doing whatever you can. And spend … Read entire article »

A beginning journalist asked me about the value of interships and networking. I haven’t done any interships. Will that hurt me when I look for my first job? Also, I haven’t done as much networking as some of my classmates. Do you have to be really aggressive to be a journalist? You don’t need interships, even a journalism degree to be a successful journalist — if you have a good reason for it. However, at whatever point you find yourself, you do need to be making the most of it. So, why didn’t you apply for summer interships when you knew you should have? Why aren’t you making the contacts you need? Are you shy? Are you uncertain about your career choice? Are you just uncommitted to journalism? Any of these factors will … Read entire article »