Back in college, to write for The Daily Texan (#1 college newspaper in the country) you had to:
- Generally be in certain classes
- Apply for the job
- Go through interviews
- Submit writing samples
- Be a “staff” writer for a year
- Get promoted up to a writer
I wanted to publish some business-related stuff in the newspaper, and all that BS above seemed useless and time consuming.
Figuring that EVERYONE who applies says, “I want to write for you guys”, I tried the opposite (kind of like this mentality).
Before I ever talked to ANYONE at the organization, I went ahead and actually wrote out three full, quality articles. I even went out and got quotes from experts and copied the typical newspaper-story format.
I then printed out four copies of each news story and brought them along with me for my very first talk with someone at the newspaper.
I literally walked into the office and asked, “Who do I speak to about publishing something, I’ve got articles ready to go.” The person in the office was a little intrigued that I had ALREADY written the articles BEFORE I’d even made an arrangement and took a quick glance at them. Deciding they were decent enough, he walked me over to the “Special Features” editor and told him I had three good articles ready to go.
Now a newspaper has to pump out quality content every day, that’s hard, and I somehow KNEW they would accept my articles quickly, but I didn’t realize HOW quickly! They asked me to come in later for an editing session….me and editor sat down for two hours brooding over every sentence (a process I didn’t really like), and the 1st article was ready for print that week!
BAM…I was a published newspaper writer in two days :-)
The next several articles were the same story. Editing session –> publish.
Some good advice Linda?