Yesterday, we talked about how blogging is like being a columnist. Today, I’d like to discuss how to become a newspaper or magazine columnist.
I told you that it was once my desire to be a columnist. I became a columnist for a while and truly enjoyed it. In fact, I believe that this experience was an important step in my writing career. It taught me a lot about meeting deadlines, quelling writer’s block, the interview process, developing articles from column ideas and so much more. The little weekly newspaper column that I wrote for three years, helped groom me for my lifelong writing career.
If you want to realize your dream of being a columnist, here are some ideas to help you get started.
First, let me say that pay for writing a regular column might not be all that impressive. It depends on the publication/website. The pay for a newspaper columnist is notoriously low, unless your column is syndicated and published in large newspapers nationwide. That’s where the bucks are. Most likely, you’ll land a job as a columnist in your small or medium-size community newspaper. As for magazines, if they pay $1,000 per 1,500-word article, the pay for monthly columns will be similar. If the magazine pays only pennies per word for contributions, you can expect to get the same for your column pieces.
There are a variety of types of column types:
• Essay (you share your thoughts and perspective on world events, education, politics or?).
• How-to (you teach aspects of some activity—cooking, gardening, parenting, crafts, healthy living, for example).
• Reporting (you write about what’s happening in sports, world events, local schools, politics, etc.).
• Theme (seniors, pets, book reviews, ghosts/spirits, art…).
• Informative (medical, hiking, real estate, automotive).
• Advice (relationships, health and fitness, spirituality, religion, psychic…).
How do you land a column? Here are some ideas:
• Look for a need. What is missing from your local newspaper or your favorite magazine, ezine or website that you could provide? As I mentioned yesterday, when I decided I wanted to write a column, I noticed that our community (a tourist town) had quite a turnover in businesses. Interesting people would come to town and start a new business, but they didn’t last long. I was curious about some of the proprietors and I thought others might be, too. So I developed my business column, “Profiles in Business.” Of course, this was a win-win situation for everyone. I was getting exposure, experience, a little wage, ideas for magazine articles and I was having fun. The business owner was getting free advertisement and some of them were starting to pay for newspaper ads.
• List column ideas. Can you come up with enough ideas to fill your column for the next several months? If you can’t list a year’s worth of column ideas (for a monthly column) or three months worth (for a weekly column), you might want to consider another theme.
• Create some sample columns. Go out and interview a few people or write a few essays and then present your idea and the examples.
Tips:
• A new publication might be more open to column ideas. They are also more prone to closure, too.
• Consider the audience before pitching your idea. If you’re writing for a regional publication, make sure that your column always has a local flavor. If it is a regional magazine on parenting, then your audience is interested in parenting issues and activities, events, services occurring/rendered locally. If it is a national health magazine, your focus should be aspects of health for all Americans.
• Mix it up. It’s your column and sometimes you’re given quite a bit of leeway. If so, you might write about your experiences in this theme, conduct an occasional interview (with experts and with regular citizens), review related products, report on extreme happenings and occurrences within the realm of your theme topic, express your thoughts on the topic and so forth.
Syndicate your column. What is syndication? It means that your column is published in more than one newspaper or magazine. There are a couple of ways to get syndicated.
1: In some cases, other newspapers will pick up your column.
2: If you own the copyright, you can pitch your column to various syndications in hopes that they will arrange to have your column appear in newspapers throughout the U.S.
3: Or you can self-syndicate, which means that you hand-sell your column to individual newspapers or magazines of your choice.
Not all column topics are conducive to syndication. If you want syndication, you’ll need to come up with a topic/theme that is universal, such as pet care, health/fitness, world events, seniors or travel, for example. You’ll also have a better chance of getting syndicated if you are an expert in your field. Do you have one or more books on this subject? Is this topic related to your profession? Have you been writing, practicing or teaching in this field for many years? In other words, do you have a platform?
You’ll find syndicates to contact here: http://www.writing-world.com/links/syndication.shtml or http://www.syndicatedirectory.com
Hello,
I love writing about everything and anything that is going on. I tend to think of things differently than most and present ideas that cause people to say, “aha”. I am a shy person but very passionate about things. My mom tells me I should be a lobbyist, but I have trouble with public speaking. My English Lit professor told me My writing ideas were insightful and enlightening. Do you have any tips for me?
Hi Sarah,
Yes, keep writing! Whether you’re writing to please yourself or entertain, enlighten, educate others, it’s a matter of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Decide, at some point, what you want to accomplish with your writing. It sounds as though you like giving readers an “aha” moment. If you are leaning toward writing for publication, figure out who your audience is–who you want to reach–who would be interested in reading what you write–and pursue the avenues to those readers. This might be magazines, newsletters, the Internet, or books. Maybe you want to be a journalist for a newspaper. If you give me an inkling of your writing desires, I might be able to guide you in that pursuit. Contact me here: PLFry620@yahoo.com
Patricia Fry