Clips advice

The problem is, most of my writing clips are old because I've been on the desk for nearly 10 years. The clip I have, I like. Should I put an explanation with the clip that the hed bust wasn't my mistake?

 

Sure. But it's not going to make it any better in most editors' eyes. I'm sure there are a few out there who won't care, but most I've known would dump the application for sending a clip out there with a mistake, with or without an explanation.

 

You're basically trying to penalize a guy for something that he had absolutely nothing to do with.

Another example: I do some freelance work for a paper that doesn't circulate in print where I live. So my choices for clips are (1) print off the online version of their website or (2) use the original copy from my hard drive. Nothing unethical about either.

We're talking about original, creative content here. The guy/gal is interested in what YOU can do, not what the folks on the desk could or could not do.

 

*I'm* not trying to do anything but tell him how hiring editors will think.

 

A related question, from someone who is quite the luddite:

When job openings seek online-only applications, are PDFs of pages with your story on it the preferred way to go? Or, if the story jumps, PDFs of both pages?

I'm enough of a dinosaur that the last time I really applied for reporting jobs, the photocopying of actual, cut-out-of-newsprint "clips" was how it was done. Apparently that's often not the case these days.

Any advise from SportsJournalists.com folks would be greatly appreciated!

 

I just made a PDF of the print friendly version of the stories.

 

You only use what's published. Before this crazy thing called the Internet showed up, you could only clip out a story from the paper. It's a basic question of the ethics of sending in published work.

Mark2010, you're building a nice rep. Racism, no paid vacation, pleading with schools to change game times and now saying it's okay to send in unpublished work.

 

It is absolutely OK to submit unpublished work in some instances.

Case in point: I majored in broadcast journalism, never wrote for the school paper and got my first job out of school working as a sports agate clerk for a decent-sized daily newspaper. I never had the opportunity to write for that paper while I was there.

Since I was interested in writing, however, the editor of that paper encouraged me to "cover" a pro game in my free time by watching it on TV and using the post-game quotes for my "story." He then was good enough to take a look at what I wrote and provided me with pointers. This work was OBVIOUSLY never published, but was an exercise in bringing along a young journalist.

I used one of those "clips" - with a note spelling out exactly how the story had come to be written - and some college writing assignments from the previous year to land my first full-time sports writing job at a small, rural daily newspaper. NONE of the clips had been printed. I didn't have a published clip at that point in time.

But I was just starting out and I was very honest about letting the managing editor who hired me know that the clips were never published. It was merely the best way I had to showcase my writing ability. Of course, I also had solid references from the SE at the bigger paper and from the dean of journalism at my school, which I'm sure were equally important.

Would I submit unpublished work for a job opening now that I've been in the business for the better part of a decade? Hell no.

But there are, without question, circumstances where submitting unpublished work is acceptable.

 

you send what ran. the end.

one of my best stories -- writing-wise -- I can't use in a clip file. I had an error in there. stupid mistake and doesn't really take away from how well it was written. thought it had a shot at an award or two, to be honest. but couldn't send it in for a contest and can't include it in clips. it may be a story that was told extremely well, but it's got a factual mistake in it I should have caught. so it's out of the running. same thing here.

and to answer pdf questions ... when I sent out clips in my last round of job hunting, I clipped the actual story from the page, pasted it and then made copies. seemed to work out well for me. (though for any that wanted electronic apps, I did just pdf the whole page/jump page).

 

Clips advice?

Save them for posterity and to show your kids one day after you come home from work at your law office, doctor's office, or any other office not associated with this biz right now.

Sorry for the pessimism. :-[

 

Thanks for the advice, all.

Angola, I wasn't saying I'm pissed at the desk for slashing the story. Hell, I honestly have no idea what happened there, so I'm not trying to assign blame - I'm sure it was just one of those things that happens sometimes. I just wrote as much as I was told and sent it in. If I'd known ahead of time I would actually only have about half the space I was told, then I could very easily have condensed some things to make it fit. My lede was soft since I had some extra space; therefore, since they just hacked off what didn't fit, a good portion of the meat was lost.

It was just disappointing since I really liked the way the story turned out. And then to have the same thing happen the very next night, with another story I really liked, and have a hell of a kicker lost along the way, that kind of sucked. Now since they've recently run majorly over budget, I probably won't have any work with them for a while, so I was hoping to salvage the work that I did since what actually ended up in the paper just isn't worth sending.

I wasn't talking about making any changes either, merely sending out what I sent to the desk. I thought perhaps including the clip of what DID get published along with the original might work, but the majority feeling here seems to be no. So it goes. I have a magazine piece I'm working on right now but that won't be out until next month, so I'll just have to wait until then to spruce up the clips unless something pops up in the meantime.

 

If I understand the question correctly, I would crop the PDF to feature only the clip that you want to be viewed, not the entire page.

In a general sense of online/digital clips, though ... PDFs are preferred in the sense that you don't have to worry that an editor doesn't have the right program to read/format the file. (Such as sending an MS Word document to someone with a Mac.)

With PDFs, like with a hard-copy clip, you have control over the image that you're sending in. Anybody with an Internet connection can view a PDF (by downloading Acrobat Reader).

And anybody with an Internet connection can download CutePDF (cutepdf.org) or another PDF writer to create your own PDFs. (Adobe Acrobat, of course, can give you many more tools to work with, including the ability to create one PDF from multiple files.)