A week or two back we kicked off our blog-post series on careers ideas with a look at newspaper journalism. Today we’d like to introduce you to its more laid-back, slightly more hip brother, magazine journalism.
Some people are under the impression that the people who write magazines are the same as the people who write newspaper articles. But while there’s some overlap between the two fields, they’re in many ways different beasts from one another.
Newspaper journalism is generally a lot more of an intense career than magazine journalism. In addition to it requiring journalists to churn out stories to very regular and tight deadlines, the race to be the first to cover a story also makes the newspaper journalist’s life rather hectic.
Magazine journalists, on the other hand, don’t have to work under quite the same pressures, though they too have plenty of deadlines to meet. But because much of magazine journalism is based around feature articles or reviews, the journalists are under less time pressure.]
Magazine journalism’s big challenges instead come from different areas. In this field there’s more emphasis on producing articles that are a pleasure to read. While newspaper journalism is often quite functional, magazine journalism is about putting an innovative or engaging spin on something that could otherwise seem quite ordinary, or capturing the emotions and atmosphere of something that the reader may have never experienced before, whether it be getting caught up in a riot or trekking through the Amazon Rainforest.
If you actively enjoy the challenges of producing good-quality writing, then, magazine journalism could be an ideal career for you.
Another important difference between magazine journalism and newspaper is also the qualifications needed to do them. While newspaper journalists need to learn all sorts of skills that’ll help them as they’re on the hunt of a story, which they acquire usually through a degree or postgraduate diploma in journalism, the pathway into magazine journalism is a bit more open. Essentially, if you can prove yourself as a good writer then you’re in with a shot of finding work in this field.
The difficulty can be getting the chance to prove that you’ve got what it takes. Editors aren’t going to take you at your word. Or rather, they are going to take you at your word, but only if that word is accompanied by lots of others in a collection of beautifully written and original articles within a portfolio of your work.
Where many people come unstuck when trying to break into a field like this is that they think they need to get a paid job in the sector before they can get this experience. But in actual fact you really need to get this experience so that you can get the paid job. This means doing things under your own initiative, such as running your own blog, getting involved in student journalism and writing articles that you send to magazines in an attempt to get them published. As part of this you’ll probably have to turn to publications that don’t pay their writers.
Getting work experience at a magazine is also good experience, as editors always appreciate people who understand the behind-the-scenes mechanics of producing a magazine. So by doing something like sub-editing or secretarial work you can get an idea of how magazines work from the inside and use it to your advantage.
Many magazine journalists don’t strictly speaking work for magazines at all. Instead, they are freelancers who write for a variety of publications on a regular or semi-regular basis, having gained the trust and confidence of their editor. On the one hand this gives them a varied workload that they control, but on the other it can seem like a bit of an uncertain career path where you’re only as good as your last article.
In spite of the difficulties of breaking into the sector, however, if you enjoy writing about real life–and especially if you have a passion for a particular field about which lots of magazines are published, such as video games or sports–then magazine journalism is certainly something you could consider trying your hand at.