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On the job hunt - Cut it out

Cheers to a new category: Job hunt.
Here we'll post thoughts, questions and suggestions on job seeking.
I'm not looking for a job, I just thought the category would help some folks out.
I'll start it off with discussion of clip books.
I hope lots of you chime in with your tips on organizing clips, demo tapes, etc.
I'm not looking for a job right now, but I would like to start organizing my clips now so that I can save my stories. (Note: I have clip books of my school newspapers from elementary, middle, high and college - they are my personal scrapbooks.)
I've always organized my clips by cutting out the stories and pasting them on white paper - then I put those in sheet protectors and photocopy as needed. But that doesn't seem to work that well anymore. What about all my Local cover stories that ran five columns wide - those don't fit on 81/2 by 11.
One idea I've tooled with is creating a resume Web site for myself. I could add stories as links and organize them by category - I could even add pdfs of those large stories. My Boston buddy Jaclyn has a personal Web site she made - it's very cool and I wonder how many others have resume sites.
Please share your thoughts!
Published Tuesday, May 22, 2007 3:14 PM by SonyaSmith
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Comments

# re: Job hunt: Cut it out

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 1:14 AM by ElysseJames
The Web site is a great idea. I have all my clips the same way, on a piece of paper and in a notebook. When I started copy editing I would cut out my headlines and decks, just the beginning of stories and put those in the book too, but I do so many in a day I've stopped collecting them. Now I keep a pile of sections I'm proud of (weekend business, beachweek) in a drawer in my desk at work.

# re: Job hunt: Cut it out

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 5:19 PM by SonyaSmith
Thanks for sharing, Elysse. It sounds like the piling system is the most common clipbook (throwing things in a pile). I have personally four piles of newspapers sitting around. I had even taken the chance to clip my whole first year's worth of clips out but I didn't have time to go through and paste those onto sheets - because like I said earlier 81/2 by 11 sheets fit hardly any of those clips. I'm really thinking about the online system - and then saving just my absolute favorites so I can bind them - that way I'll have those gem stories as a sort of scrapbook for the future.

# re: Job hunt: Cut it out

Thursday, May 24, 2007 4:26 PM by Dale Denwalt II
I have a ton of old newspaper bundles lying around, but I am currently organizing all (most) of my stories on the Internet, spurned by something I saw Gen J member John Patrick do.

I have set up a blog at Blogspot, where I upload the image of the story and the text. This also gives me a chance to tell a little backstory about the article - kind of like a reporter's notebook.

Check out what I've got here - http://denwalt.blogspot.com

# re: Job hunt: Cut it out

Tuesday, May 29, 2007 10:04 AM by SonyaSmith
Dale,


Please share how this clipping blog has helped or not helped you at work - do your sources know about it and do they like it? Same question for your editor.

# re: Job hunt: Cut it out

Friday, June 15, 2007 11:22 PM by ElysseJames
Dale, I checked out your blog - that's a great idea! It's nicely organized, and being able to actually see the article in print is very cool. Will you use that as a job-hunt clipbook?

# re: Job hunt: Cut it out

Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:13 PM by La femme blonde
I'm a senior in college and will be asst. news editor at my school this year. So of course, I'm trying to figure out the best way to send out my clips to get a job.

While I love Dale's blog method, I feel like it's difficult to highlight the best clips when you have several from each month. Do you also send off a few of your best in the way Sonya mentioned?

# re: Job hunt: Cut it out

Saturday, August 04, 2007 12:59 PM by Melissa Patterson
Hello all:
I'm a rising senior at the University of Central Florida and I've decided a resume Web site is a good idea. I'm nowhere near done with the whole site yet, but I've included a link to the clips page. I think the key to a clips page is making it visually appealing.

Dana Eagles with the Orlando Sentinel got me into the habit of compiling my clips in plain-text versions with accompanying PDFs of the pages they ran on; it's a great idea, I realized, because so few of my stories seem to fit on the standard 8 1/2 by 11 page. This way, they all do!
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