How many clips to send journalism

In her career, Kate has edited millions of words and helped dozens of bestselling, award-winning authors grow their careers and do what they love! Your email address will not be published. What Is a Clip? Why Do I Need Clips?

Take a deep breath. The best clips are ones that show your best work in a certain area. So to recap: You need published writing samples in order to get paying writing work. You should have samples of your published work in any target field, showcasing a variety of styles.

You should host your samples in a portfolio on your website and also keep copies as PDFs. Broadcast journalists hunting for work rely on the resume tape — a compilation of video and audio samples. The more this young reporter and I talked about clips, the more I wanted to know what others — especially reporters and editors with stories to tell about approaches that succeeded or failed — have to say on the subject.

Here are the people, places and things that had a big impact on the media this week. Plus, why inflation can be good, road salt is more expensive and plow drivers are hard to find, a look at what's getting pageviews, and more.

All 50 U. None permit 'implied consent' for vaccines. Fairly new president Rashida Jones has a lot to figure out in the coming weeks and months. Celebrate journalism: Get tickets. Login Register. By: Chip Scanlan. Try to include the following: One or two stories that you reported and wrote on daily deadline: a meeting, speech, or public safety story.

A story that you wrote on assignment from a teacher or editor as well as a story that you came up with yourself. A feature story about a trend or a profile of a person. A personal essay on a serious or light topic. Should I send originals or photocopies? Fortunately, it is possible to get excellent writing samples without having any to start with.

Simply having a few good writing samples can make the difference between writing for 2 cents per word or 20 cents per word. And that is not an exaggeration. So how do you go from having no writing samples to having enough writing samples? You just have to take it in steps. Because not all clips are created equal. The sort of clips that will get you clients are clips that are similar to the content your target clients are already publishing.

Your freelance writing samples about parenting, or travel, or gardening will not reassure prospective clients that you can actually do the writing they need done — unless your writing samples are related to their industry or business. They assume you know how to write well. And no offense, but there are a lot of writers available for them to hire.

They are hiring you for the combination of your writing skills AND your understanding of fintech. You get the idea. Clients need a very specific type of writing that communicates their messaging to their customers.

They do not want to hire James Joyce. Or Hunter S. Or Leslie Lovelace, romance novelist. The worksheet has room for five dream clients. Is it really dry? Do they use terms only millennials and Gen Zers would understand? Is it corporate? What type of images do they use — animated GIFs? Charts and graphs from research studies?

Sometimes a piece of content will mention the target audience directly in the article. It will tell you more about what to leave out or not say than it will tell you what to say. It will help you create far better clips, and that will make you much more likely to get hired.

You could reduce that down to within the last year if your client publishes a lot of content, but the time frame is flexible. The number of topics you identify is flexible, too. This research only takes minutes, but it will give you an idea of what other content managers think are important topics.

Sometimes, writers pick topics that may be personally important to them, but are things that a marketing manager would probably pass on. At last! Now you can write your clips.