Its always been my dream

He could be ahead of his peers, we don't know. I was, and then over the years I saw other kids who were and who went on to have good careers.

I would say that if the kid has professional experience, choosing a journalism school ought to be secondary to choosing a college in a market where there's going to be opportunities to continue to work for professional newspapers. Pick a major city that has lots of suburban dailies. I found college essentially worthless compared with what I learned on papers, and by the time I reached the age at which I would have graduated I already had worked two pro beats and had started working the desk on a 100K.

My niece is a high school sophomore and is taking journalism for a second straight year and she is already features editor on the school paper. She's heard all the bad stuff from me and still wants to do it. That's how I was, too. Nothing sounded bad enough to make me want to scrap the idea. I worry about her.

 

Get a job doing it for anyone, start getting clips, work on developing a voice, avoid cliches and try to make it entertaining. And work on the writing, read what you've done a while afterward and see how it could have been better. Keep it tight and dont try to show the reader how clever you are. It's a job I think you learn by doing...but you need a broad background of interests...then you won't be one of those who can describe the intricacies of an NFL offense but know little of the great unwashed who have made this game the spectacle sport of our time....If you dont count NASCAR, which I don't.