How do you sell articles to trade magazines where most other contributors write for free?

Many trade publications -- as well as academic publications -- don't pay contributors.

The reason is that the people who contribute are getting something other than money in return: free advertising. For a lawyer, CPA, engineer, or other professional, the exposure may well be worth quite a bit.

However, editors have to spend quite a bit of time recruiting these experts and holding their hands through the writing and revision process. While writing is a joy to some people, for many people it's an odious chore and a reminder of bad old school days and essay assignments.

Finally, the results are often unreadable and editors have to spend quite a bit of time getting the pieces into shape, or risk alienating readers. In effect, the publication is padding its pages with advertorials. And if a reader has a choice between a well-written piece that quotes an expert, and a barely-readable piece from that expert himself, readers will often choose the piece written by a real writer.

As a result, expert-written publications often have limited markets, or are distributed free to readers.

Moreover, experts -- while they are able to write a column here or there on their areas of expertise -- are rarely able to consistently produce work. They are also notoriously bad at meeting deadlines -- after all, if they have other, paying, work to do, the free articles will go to the bottom of their lists.

As a result, some publications do a combo approach -- use experts for occasional columns and writers for the material that just has to be in, and just has to be readable.

I occasionally write for publications that are partly expert-written and enjoy high word rates (probably the editors appreciate what they're getting).

If you're just starting out, how do you come up with story ideas?

If you're new to freelancing or new to the area, you might not have a lot of story ideas handy, and you need a LOT to be a freelancer.

Once you have contacts in an area, of course, you can mine them for story ideas -- chambers of commerce, local artists' guilds, politicians, etc... are all happy to showcase their members and accomplishments.

If you don't, here's two easy ways to generate stories: GENERALIZE, and NARROW.

For example, say you're pitching stories to a regional daily. Look at national pubs -- newspapers, magazines, etc... and localize them. If there's a national obesity trend, how does that affect your area? Are local schools changing their menus? Does a local nutritionist plan to hold a seminar?

You can also look at more narrow publications -- those same church bulletins, library newsletters, and free weeklies that you've moved up from. Take a story and generalize it or expand on it. If a clown came to the local library, does that clown travel to other area libraries as well? What kind of a life is that? If there's a paragraph about a business getting a new contract, what does that mean for the local economy? How did its owner accomplish that? Is there a management lesson in there for other businesses?

Finally, you can call potential news sources out of the blue and ask them for ideas. Make the questions specific. Call the chamber of commerce and ask if any new businesses have opened that haven't been profiled yet in the local press. Find out if there have been any senior management changes recently, or mergers or acquisitions. Call the arts council and find out if any local artists have won awards. Call the schools superintendent's office and find out if any teachers have innovative programs, or if any student groups have travelled overseas or won competitions.

Ask for free subscriptions to their newsletters.

How to get started as a foreign correspondent

Looking for outlets to send you abroad is actually the *last* step of a going-overseas process.

• The first thing is, you need to ask yourself a few questions:
• What level of risk can you handle?
• How willing are you to learn foreign languages/how many foreign languages do you already know?
• Where can you get a free place to stay?

So if you have friends or relatives in a particular country in Latin America who can offer you a couch, and you already know Spanish, and you're comfortable with the level of stability (or instability in that country), then you go there.

I had a grandmother in Moscow, and the remnants of Russian from when I was a kid. (I only stayed with her for a couple of weeks, but it was nice to have her couch when I was getting started.) I was interested in warzones, and Chechnya was right there, and all the other post-Soviet wars.

My husband had a year of Chinese in college and a strong interest in their space program, so he picked China. He stayed in a cheap hostel when he first got there while he was looking for a job.

Then you buy a one-way plane ticket (I skipped on my last months' rent to pay for mine) to whereever you decide to go. These days, I would recommend Latin America, the Middle East, and China. (If you go there to teach English, they might even pay for your ticket.)

When choosing a country, you look for two major factors:

• A lack of local English-language talent. (That way, you'll have less competition for the English-language jobs, which pay the most.)
• Lots of changes. (Either military, political, economic, social or all of the above, which gives you lots of things to write about.)

Once you pick your country and find your free couch (or the reverse, as the case may be) then you call everyone you know who might know anyone in that country. You tell them that you'll be over there, and ask to meet with their contact.

Then you get to that country, go to all of those people, and all of the people those people recommend, and all of the people *those* people recommend and you ask them all for a writing job. In addition to meeting with all your contacts (you're a journalist, you should be good at that part) also go in and meet face-to-face with all the editors of local English-language papers, all the news agencies (AP, Reuters, AFP, etc...) and the bureaus of all the major papers -- LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, NY Times, Wall Street Journal. Many of them use freelancers.

It took me three days to get a fulltime job in Russia, proofreading a Russian human rights newsweekly that was translated into English by Russian translators. It needed a lot of style work! Working there, I got my Russian up to speed, and I met all their correspondents -- great people who were located throughout the former Soviet republics.

In my next job, I took them all on as freelancers.

Then you work your butt off -- and keep following up with all your contacts because, chance are, your first job is going to suck. (Mine had cockroaches in the computer keyboards, and banana slugs crawling on the ceiling that kept dropping down into my hair.)

How to get into freelancing

I've been a freelancer for most of the past ten years, and have also edited the work of many freelancers in various editing jobs.

Here's my advice:

First, collect all your information: clips (everything from college papers to "sample" articles that were never published to printed stories), resume, bio, information on relevant experience (paramedical training, what have you).

Identify possible featury-type areas you'd like to cover: medical issues, local arts and culture, personal profiles, business profiles (the business profiles generally bring in the most money).

Track down all the publications within a comfortable driving area -- free weeklies, major dailies, wire service bureaus -- and rank them by which ones are the most important to you (by pay, prestige, etc...).

If there's more than one editor, call the publication's switchboard and find out who is the person who deals with freelancers. Now call them.

Ask for an opportunity to come in and introduce yourself, and to bring in your clips, resume, references, etc...

At the interview (I always made time to talk to potential freelancers -- you never know when you need one, and it's nice to meet them ahead of time), explain who you are and what your background is, then ask what sorts of freelance material the editor is looking for. Encourage them to go into detail -- what kinds of stories, what length, etc... If they tell you straight out that you're not qualified to work for them, ask for referrals to other editors in the area who will work with less experienced freelancers. And DON'T FORGET -- ask whether you can come back once you have more experience. Be nice, professional, and insistent. Any editor will be happy to see that you're persistent, in fact -- it's the major job requirement for a journalist!

If the editor was positive about the idea of you writing for them, go home and come up with story ideas that were in line with what the editor wanted. Keep pitching until they like something -- after all, they've already indicated that they want to work with you, now all you have to do is find the right topic.

Otherwise, go to the next editor at the list. Eventually, you'll find one who'll take your work, even if it's just the local free paper, a church bulletin, or the library newsletter.

Once you have three clips from the this publication, mail copies to the next-better publication on the list, show that editor how much you've improved, and tell him that you'll give a call soon to talk about pitching some stories.

On the value of interships

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 work against you much more than the lack of any particular summer intership.

If you're uncertain about your career choice, or uncommitted to it, an internship will help you decide if you want to do it or not.

If you're shy, or insecure, or have a hard time getting going or getting organized, you need to work on those areas. Being aggressive -- or, let's put it, self-starting, motivated and assertive -- is a great asset in any career, and especially in journalism where competition for jobs is high. If you don't have those character traits, you might be better off in another career, instead. You'll go farther and make more money and have better working conditions than in journalism.