Go back to the beginning halfway through the feature

I was disappointed to see a religious magazine a few months ago publish a poorly written feature. Once I slogged through the story I could tell the writer had stumbled on something special, but it was written so poorly that I doubt many readers made it to the end.

The main problem is that it was written chronologically. It started with the main character’s childhood, and only at the end does the reader discover the great outcome.

A feature doesn’t necessarily need to follow the traditional inverted pyramid style of writing, but it does need to early on reveal some of what’s to come.

Do this by writing most of the story up front and then, halfway through, going back to the beginning of the person’s life or the trend.

A great way to see this is in The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Interview stories. These are longer features based on an interview with a prominent figure. Read several of them. Nearly all of them go back to the person’s origins halfway through the interview – sometimes one-third or two-thirds the way through. This is very similar to an obit formula. Sometimes the Weekend Interview features go back to where the person was born, while other times the writer only goes back to when they started becoming successful.

The Washington Post Magazine had a great feature on broadcasters for the Washington Nationals baseball team. Sure enough, about one-third of the way through, the reporter went back to a broadcaster’s humble beginnings as a kid and how he got involved in the business. Then, near the end of the story – probably about two-thirds of the way through the entire piece – the writer went all the way back to the start of baseball broadcast history. Later, the reporter told the exciting part – the broadcaster's colorful rise through minor-league broadcasting.

This is similar to the classic Reader’s Digest formula of short tales. A family doesn’t start by sitting at home and then the house catches fire and they all escape safely. Nor do they start with the family having gotten out of the house safe and then reminiscing about how they did it. The formula usually started with the house on fire...then the writer goes back to the beginning, and later the narrative ends the with the family's successful escape.

This is also well articulated in the excellent book “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff. The formula goes like this: 1. Put man in jungle 2. Have beasts attack him 3. He gets out of jungle safely. But as Klaff notes, keep the reader in a bit of suspense by keeping the man on the edge of the jungle for a while.

Now you can re-read good feature stories and watch for some of these patterns. You can learn to use similar foreshadowing and pacing.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not advocating formula writing. But there is a case to be made for formula structure. That case is seen in the numerous patterns routinely found throughout journalism. This blog wouldn’t exist without them.

Hopefully that religious magazine — which reviews a particular religious denomination — will see the need for writers who know these methods of better keeping the attention of readers. Doing so would not only make their own publication better, it would also honor the people they write about.

The difference between a rookie and a veteran

Q: What’s the difference between a veteran reporter and a rookie?

A: The veteran is used to being edited.

Now and then I hear complaints from rookies about how an editor changed their story or that their original version was nearly unrecognizable when it was published.

My advice: Instead of complaining, make yourself better so you don’t have to be edited.

I remember the first time I got published in the college newspaper.  A very reasonable editor changed a few things in my story and I got upset.  I had no reason to do so.

Later, as a veteran, I appreciated my editor making changes to my submissions. When I first covered city council for a newspaper, I would literally look over her shoulder as she edited my story, hearing her say things such as, “I’m just going to punch up this lead, check this out,” or “I’m gonna switch the order of these two ideas, watch.”

As the weeks and months went by she edited my stuff less and less.

I once heard Ken Wells, former Page One editor of The Wall Street Journal, say in a speech that everyone needs an editor.  He's absolutely right.

If you find that your stuff is getting edited heavily, instead of blaming the editor, work hard to make yourself better.  Find an editor who will work with you to improve.  Earlier exercises on this blog will also teach you how to improve.

My speech to the Global Adventist Internet Network 2012 forum

The title of my presentation was "How your division can become more prominent on the world stage." My target audience was presidents of divisions, unions and conferences.

I delivered the speech to the entire group of participants as a conference formatted 10-10-10 presentation: 10 minutes of speech, 10 minutes of individual group discussion, and 10 minutes of feedback and large group discussion.  My speech was accompanied by Keynote/PowerPoint slides (I have included a few), but even just the text below, I believe, makes the point well on its own.

~ ~ ~ begin presentation ~ ~ ~
[title slide]

[slide]

[slide]

 
--Begin speech--

Have you ever been touched by something you read or saw on TV?
Have you ever been touched by something you read or saw and then wanted to do something about it?

I’d like to share with you about two people who were moved by something they saw, and what they did about it.

This is the Descendants.

They are an Adventist singing group in Mongolia. Adventist News Network did a feature story about them. Near the end of the story the writer happened to mention that their rented van broke down 10 times during a seven-hour drive to support an evangelism series.

A man in the United States was touched when he read this and he wanted to do something about it. He bought them a new van. Who knows how much longer they would be struggling without it.

This is Josant Barrientos.

He is an Adventist pastor in Washington D.C.  Every Thursday morning he volunteers as a chaplain at the Washington Dulles International Airport. He is one of 18 chaplains. He’s the only Hispanic chaplain there, the only chaplain who speaks Spanish and can communicate with the large numbers of Hispanics who work at the airport.

Adventist News Network did a feature story on him. A reporter at the Washington Examiner newspaper saw this online. She was touched and she wanted to do something about it. So she wrote her own feature story about him.

That got the Adventist Church mentioned positively in front of 300,000 readers.


These examples are two stories. They both touched someone who then wanted to help. One person helped with money, another person helped with publicity.

We need to touch more people with the content we create. We have lots of effective delivery systems in our global church – web, TV and print – but we need to make sure our content is something that people want. We need to touch our members. We need to touch our community. We need to touch a chord in their minds and hearts so that they will want to do something about it.

We will be able to better accomplish this when we increase the quality of our content.  We can do this by making sure we fill an existing positions at our conferences, unions and divisions with great story-tellers.  They are called “journalists.”

Having a journalist on staff will enable us to tell more touching stories in our magazines, on our websites, and through our videos.

I’ll now share with you three influential people who would support this idea of hiring journalists and story-tellers and why they would support it.

1. Michael Eisner, former CEO of the Disney corporation.
2. Paul Kim, an icon in Adventist media production.
3. Ellen White, a servant of the Lord and a co-founder of our denomination.

Let’s go through these one by one and we’ll see if I can touch a chord in your mind or heart about how hiring journalists and other content creators will further the mission of the church…starting with:

Number one – Michael Eisner, former chief executive officer of Disney, a global media empire worth about 57 billion dollars. He now writes books and works for an investment firm.

 
In a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine, he had some very direct things to say to the media industry about what gets people’s attention:

“The creation of content has never been more important.” 

I know this seems obvious, but it’s huge.

There is content and there are delivery systems. Content is the message that is sent through a delivery system. It can be through a website, printed in a magazine, or chiseled onto a clay tablet. This conference is mainly about the effective use of delivery systems, but both content creators and delivery system experts need to work together. Eisner also said:

“A lot of people can learn to write computer code and understand the inner workings of the technological revolution we’re going through, but if you’re going to be in content…

...and this is huge...

“I would rather you understand what makes a good narrative. To find people who can make you laugh or cry or smile or get upset or learn something about yourself. Those people are rare. They are rarer, frankly, than the others.”

In other words, if you can create good content, then there will be people in delivery systems who can support you. Technology, graphic design and delivery systems are important, but they need to have carefully crafted messages to deliver.

We need to be honest with ourselves.  We need to know our limits. Do you really honestly have a good grasp of technology? Do you really understand how to communicate information clearly through good architecture? Can you really write engaging stories that touch people?  We need to know our own limits.

I know myself. I’m not a graphic designer. I tried it for a week. A friend hooked me up with a designer at the Baltimore Sun newspaper.  He showed me some tips, and what I realized after that experience is that it’s just better for me to hire a graphic designer to do that kind of work for me. I’m a writer and a photographer and that’s what I can offer. I need people like you, who can deliver effective technology and information architecture. But communication is the content, not necessarily just the delivery system. Again, there’s a big difference between content and delivery system. We need to work together. And what Michael Eisner is saying here is that the commitment to content and getting the right people on board should be key.

This is very similar to what Ruben Gelhorn once told me. Ruben Gelhorn is in the South American Division. He is director of public relations at River Platte University in Argentina. He said we need communication students to understand writing and theory. Technology and equipment is something that can be learned later. Production is only part of communication. A TV camera can be part of communication, but it’s only a tool. It's the message creator that's the most important.

Both Gelhorn and Eisner say that the person creating the content needs effective support and it’s important to get someone on a team who has training and experience of writing touching content. Someone who has proven they can write for the public in a big way. Speaking of big ideas, our second person,

2. Paul Kim, is a person who works with big ideas and important people for big audiences.

 
When former Adventist Church President Jan Paulsen wanted to create his official presidential video for the last General Conference Session, Paul Kim was selected to produce it. What an honor, and what a talent. He knows his stuff and he recognizes good content when he sees it. He wrote to me after Session and said, “Who is that reporter you had, Edwin Garcia? Every one of his stories on Adventist News Network was standout.”

I’m not surprised that Paul Kim would say that.  You see, we brought on Edwin Garcia just for Session. And what Paul Kim didn’t know was that Edwin Garcia has worked for nearly two decades as a reporter for major market newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News, which is the newspaper in the technology capital of the world. He understands how to cover major events in interesting ways.

Paul Kim didn’t know Edwin Garcia’s background, but he did know that Edwin delivered an excellent product – great, interesting stories. And if an expert such as Paul Kim recognized good content, you bet the readers noticed, too.

We need journalists and content creators who can impress and touch the other journalists in our denomination.

You know, I could probably fool some people into thinking I’m a lawyer. I could hang out at courthouses and carry a briefcase...

...but very soon, I’m not going to fool other lawyers. They’re going to see that I’m not good at what I do. And you know what? Eventually, the public isn’t going to be fooled anymore either, because they’ll see that I lose my cases. So instead of hiring me and giving me on-the-job training, you're better off hiring a trained, experienced lawyer.

I could fool some people into thinking I’m a surgeon. I could hang out in an operating room and make incisions on bodies with a scalpel. But I’m not going to fool other surgeons. They’re going to see that I don’t know what I’m doing. And you know what? Eventually, the public isn’t going to be fooled anymore either, because they’ll see that, even though I’m sincere, my patents die. So instead of hiring me and giving me on-the-job training, you're better off hiring a trained, experienced surgeon.

I know journalism isn’t necessarily as prestigious as law and medicine, but it’s similar because it does take a long time to learn how to do well – to get at the quality level our denomination needs. I want the content creators in our world church to write stories that stand out to people like Paul Kim. When we get journalists on board who produce content that impresses other journalists, we’ll more effectively touch our members and the community.

But it’s not just me saying this, or people like Paul Kim, and many others here I’ve talked to here, our church co-founder 3. Ellen White had several words of counsel regarding this issue:

“Let the press be utilized, and let every advertising agency be employed that will call attention to the work. This should not be regarded as nonessential.” (Evangelism, pg. 103)

“The character and importance of our work are judged by the efforts made to bring it before the public,” White wrote. “When these efforts are so limited, the impression is given that the message we present is not worthy of notice” (Evangelism, pg. 128).

I think we have message worthy of notice. But sometimes it would be hard to prove based on the effort we put into public relations. We need our best people on board.

This year we’re celebrating 100 years of the Communication department in the denomination. We even had a ceremony at the General Conference. 100 years ago the General Conference realized they needed help to effectively deal with the media. Guess who they hired:  Walter Burgan, a reporter. They hired a reporter because they needed someone who spoke the media’s language.

James White had even been lobbying church leaders about doing this 30 years earlier.

At the 100 years of Communication celebration, the General Conference Director of Archives, Statistics and Research, David Trim, said: “‘Today, we would do well to reflect on this decision, examine why [Burgan] was needed, why he in particular was hired, and how reviving this tradition at all levels of the denomination can strengthen our unity and mission.”

Trim went on to explain how early efforts in public relations were successful because of having trained and experienced staff on board. He went on to say:

“Similarly today, if you’re going to do outreach to a Hispanic community, you need to hire someone who speaks Spanish. And it’s the same with other types of outreach – if you’re going to do outreach to media, you need to hire someone who speaks that language and understands that culture,” he said.

Trim noted that even Ellen G. White urged early Adventists to capitalize on the press and advertising agencies to “call attention to the work.”

Guys, we’re playing a game of high stakes corporate communication. We’re in it to win it. Other organizations are in to win it, too. We need our best professionals on board.

These three people would support the idea – Michael Eisner, Paul Kim, and Ellen White.

If you’re a union president or division president, having an experienced journalist on staff, yet it’s going to raise your own profile as a leader, and that’s fine – you’re not being cocky or arrogant. We need to boost you as our leader to the community. But even more important, getting a journalist on staff is going to offer your members, pastors and institutions the recognition they deserve. They deserve that recognition both within the world church and out in the community.

We want to touch people with the stories we write. Not just to produce something just to say we produced it, but taking the time to make sure it’s something that’s going to touch people and move them to action. I hope you’ll commit to getting qualified, talented journalists and creatives on board in your division. It will make your division more prominent on the world stage, both within the global church, and even more importantly, in your community.

Let’s get qualified journalists as our Communication directors so they can identify news and report it. Let’s get some more vans bought, and our pastors featured in the media, not just in Washington, D.C., but in Seoul, and in Manila, and in every major city around the world.

~ ~ ~ E N D ~ ~ ~

Before we get to the questions, since we met last year in Jamaica, I have written a book on journalism tips, especially for people new to reporting on religious journalism. It’s called Journalism Patterns. And it’s free for you to read. It’s in blog form. The website is journalismpatterns.blogspot.com.  When you go there, I would suggest looking at the first entry … from August of last year and work your way back.

I will say this now.  Write something.  Put something on your website.  Update your pictures in your Flickr account regularly. Even if it doesn’t move people like you would hope, it’s still something. Stale content on a website just bores people. Write a caption that answers the five Ws – Who, What, When, Where and Why.

Also instead of reporting the headline: “Men’s ministry hold meeting,” report what happened in the meeting, what was voted, what’s going to come out of it. Please don’t write, “we held constituency meeting.”  That would be like writing a headline: Korea plays Brazil in soccer match.  Instead, lead with who won the match – the results.

OK, Let’s get to the questions. I’m interested in learning your feedback.

Questions:

1. How can we increase the number of qualified and experienced journalists on staff at each conference and union?

2. How can we encourage more Adventist young people to enter the profession of story-telling through journalism?

3. How can we help administrators commit to content and program creation as much as delivery systems?

# # #

How to write great press releases

Frequent readers of this blog my be able to guess where this post is going. Yep — in order to know how to write great press releases, study great press releases.

Visit the website of some Fortune 500 companies or top global companies and review their press releases. Look at the headlines and subheads of each of them. Study lots of different industries — tech, finance, automotive, energy, hospitality, materials, healthcare, etc. Really study the cream of the crop: Apple, Cisco, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Barclays, Lexus, Acura, Rolls-Royce, Chevron, Shell, Ritz-Carlton, Pebble Beach, Rio Tinto, Tenet Healthcare, etc.  Study the releases of your competitors in your industry, too.

You'll notice that most of the press releases fall into one of the following categories:

—New product
—New executive or board member
—New partnership with another company or charity
—An executive will speak at an upcoming conference
—Releasing a statement on an issue or legislative action
—Marking an emphasis month or day

Quote a source, then ditch ‘em

When reporting a complicated story with numerous sources, try to quote your sources—either one or two or three times—but by themselves. Once you have moved on to quote another source, don’t come back to quote a previous source. 

This may require you to think a bit more, but it will usually make your story flow more smoothly. 

It will force you, the reporter, to explain the story more clearly and only use your sources’ quotes as examples for what has already been stated, not to introduce new information. 

Otherwise, your story can come to look like a list of quotes with readers trying to remember who each source is when you keep coming back to quote them at various points in the story.

Yes there are exceptions, and about the only exception I like is to come back to one source at the end of a long story….if needed. And if you do, remind the readers of who that person is. No need to give the formal title again, but give a generic reminder of who they are. Example…..the first time a source is named in a story is Ting Wu, assistant professor for genetics at Harvard Medical School. If she is repeated at the end of the story, write something like: “For Wu, the Harvard geneticist, the issue remains…”  

Here is a story that took me weeks to report and probably two weeks to write (among my other duties at the time). Notice I never come back to a source. This was a hard feat to accomplish in explaining this complicated issue, but it was worth the effort. I received many compliments on how well the story flowed and for such smooth transitions.

https://news.adventist.org/en/all-news/news/go/2014-06-19/a-division-territorys-self-evaluation-comes-amid-other-changes/

(sorry about the “comprised of”…it should have been “composed of”)

How to get a job in journalism

 

In 2005, Matt Brown wasn’t a journalist, but that didn’t stop him from calling up the big three news agencies—Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse—and telling them he was.

“Yup, fake it ‘til you make it,” he says, summing up how he was able to land freelance assignments, which propelled him on to a dream career in journalism, including a stint as a foreign correspondent for a major daily.

Brown, 33 years old and a former Peace Corps worker in Guinea, has been published in major news outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, Time magazine and the BBC. He’s seen gunfire, dead bodies and burned villages while covering wars. He’s reported on negotiations between dictators, documented court appearances by celebrities and covered speeches delivered by two sitting U.S. presidents. He even once lobbied a news bureau to follow his source, which led a Time editor to shell out for a helicopter rental to fly a reporter into a hurricane-swept area of rural Mexico.

His résumé is impressive, though, oddly, he’s never really needed one. His clips, confidence and a key recommendation by a mentor have each served as stepping stones during his career, which he recounts one recent Sunday evening over Thai food in a restaurant near his apartment in Washington, D.C.

It’s a journey that started with editors denying him journalism jobs, which led him to simply start telling editors that he was a journalist in order to obtain freelance assignments. That move, along with his lobbying, propelled him to cover a war zone in Africa while researching a graduate school project. Then a job back in a small California town covering city council prepared him to go back to Africa as a top foreign correspondent for three years.

Now working in public relations, Brown has just come back from Sudan, where he served as a guide for George Clooney, the third such trip he has arranged and led for the Oscar-winning actor for the Enough Project. The non-profit organization promotes human rights in Africa and uses celebrities to promote their messages.

How does one start?

Brown majored in English at USIU in San Diego but couldn’t get a job in journalism, despite having served as the editor of the university’s student newspaper and getting a few clips published in online travel magazines. “How does one start?” he thought. He decided the lack of a master’s degree was standing in his way.

It was in his second semester at grad school at San José State University that a text about news agencies prompted him to research nearby bureaus. He learned the big three had bureaus north in San Francisco, but not in the South Bay—the Silicon Valley and, in many ways, the technology capital of the world. Time magazine only had one correspondent on the west coast, in Los Angeles, he says.

Brown called up each of them, saying, “‘I’m a journalist, I’m based in San José and I want to get on your stringer roster so that if you need any coverage in San José or Silicon Valley, just call me and I’ll get it done.’”

“I wasn’t a journalist,” he recalls. But he believed he could be.

Assignments trickle in

Within a month, he had callbacks from AFP, Reuters and Time magazine. His first assignment was for AFP, who asked him to cover the launch of the latest iPhone, the first one featuring video. Knowing nothing about technology, he said, “Sure, yea, I follow Apple. I’ll do it.”

He researched Apple and Steve Jobs and interviewed several analysts. By the time he went to the event, he was an expert and had most of the story written, only needing to plug in quotes and color from Jobs’ presentation.

One snag though: He only took his notebook and recorder. In the press pool he noticed other journalists typing and filing their stories right there. “I hadn’t realized how timely it had to be,” he said. Reuters and AP had already posted stories by the time he got back to his desk. Still, that first assignment established him as a writer.

A few weeks later, Reuters called and asked him to cover the unveiling of the statue of the two 1968 Olympic athletes who raised their black-gloved fists in the now iconic Black Power salute on the podium in Mexico City. Both athletes were former San José State students, and the statue's unveiling was on campus. Brown, however, was more than 100 miles away, having spent the weekend at his parents’ home.

“’Yea, sure, I can do it,’” he recalls telling the editor casually over the phone, as if he would only need to stroll across the quad later that morning. 

“You never want to say ‘no’ to these things. You want to seem reliable,” he says.

Brown’s car flew down Highway 101 back to campus so he could quickly do some research in the library, only having a vague memory of once seeing a picture of the event. He arrived on time and even got to interview the participants following the ceremony. He had to miss class that night to file the story. He emailed his accommodating professor: “I can come to class and learn about journalism or I can go be a journalist. Which do you think is more important?"

It snowballed from there.

Time magazine called a month later and wanted an example of an immigrant who sent money back home to his family in Mexico, the practice being known as a “remittance.” His landlord helped him find the perfect profile. When the man’s family was cut off from a local Time correspondent in Mexico by destroyed roads from a recent hurricane, Brown lobbied his editor to do what it took to follow the story. A rented helicopter ride later for their correspondent and Time had the story from both sides.

Time later called up and asked him if he covered tech. “‘Yea, I do tech,’” he recalls saying, as if a deep-voiced, fifth-grade math student was confirming he could cover the stock market. “‘I’ve covered Apple,’” he told them. Luckily he didn’t have to figure out the intricacies of virus-blocking software built by a company but only profile the owner of the business. It gave him his first solo byline in Time.

“Then I just started building up clips. The more you do the more clips you have to sell yourself to the next level editor. I could say, ‘I’ve been in Time magazine, here’s my clip.’”

Not all jobs were glamorous. AP once hired Brown to sit all day in front of the Federal Courthouse in San Francisco just to see if Giants slugger Barry Bonds would show up. Another time, Dow Jones hired him to attend a speech and simply hold his cell phone up to the public address speaker for a reporter back in New York.

Still, he was on his way, becoming more widely known as a reliable stringer in the South Bay.

Africa’s pull

With the deadline for his graduate school project looming, Brown’s experience as a Peace Corps worker drew him back to Africa for an exposé on gem mining in Tanzania. One stipulation by San José State was that he had to get the project or a portion of it published. He used his contacts with AFP in Los Angeles to put him in touch with the AFP bureau in East Africa—Nairobi, Kenya.

He pitched his idea to the Nairobi bureau. They accepted. And off he went. He was in Africa for a month reporting and writing the story. Having a few days to kill after finishing his project, he kept hanging around the AFP bureau offering to help. After three days, the editor who published his story asked if he would go to Juba.

“Sure,” he recalls saying. “What’s Juba?”

Juba, it turned out, was the capital of Southern Sudan, before the country split and became South Sudan. It was 2006 and the Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony (whose notoriety increased recently with the most viral video ever) was to soon have peace talks with the Ugandan government, the first time in 20 years they were sitting down at the table. Kony was supposed to be coming out of the bush and negotiating.

AFP gave Brown a plane ticket and some spending money, and he arrived in a podunk town that had been ravaged by 20 years of war. He lived out of an NGO tent and made his way around the city, talking with the delegation of LRA, meeting with Sudanese government officials and filing a few small stories.

He then learned that the vice president of South Sudan was going to be heading out into the bush to meet the wanted war criminal Kony.

“I thought, wow, if I could get on this trip that would be such a coup,” Brown recalls. He told the veep, “Look, you’re going to want the world media to know about this. I’m one of the only journalists here, so you’re going to want me on the plane, right?”

He indeed talked his way on board the VP’s plane and camped with the delegation on the ground for six days. Kony never came, but he sent his deputy, who was also wanted by the International Criminal Court. Brown was the only person there with a camera, and his pictures of the meeting between Southern Sudan’s VP and Kony’s deputy hit the newswires. Millions of readers worldwide saw his news and pictures in top media outlets.

“It was just being at the right place at the right time, really,” he recalls.

That’s when it occurred to him: “Now I’m a journalist.”

Out of Africa, for now

On journalismjobs.com, Brown found an open position at the Lodi News-Sentinal in California. AFP clips from a war zone helped land him the job. The only problem was convincing his editor that he wasn’t above the position and wouldn’t take off after a few months.

It occurred to Brown that editors were now courting him—less than a year after he couldn't get a job in journalism.

He stayed in Lodi nearly a year and a half covering the city beat and life in the Central Valley. His first coverage of a sitting U.S. president was George W. Bush’s visit to the area.

“Anyone who wants a job in journalism should put in a year or two in a small town paper covering city hall,” Brown now advises. “Go somewhere you have to cover local government. That’s a great school—a great lesson in how to report, really. If you can cover city council, you can cover anything.”

Adventure beckons again

After once having a taste of being a foreign correspondent, Brown decided he wanted more. Networking with contacts yielded little until he got a call from a mentor he had met in Juba. Peter Eichstaedt, a longtime journalist, had traveled on the vice president’s plane with him to work on his book about Kony. Eichstaedt had been offered a job but decided against it. He recommended the organization hire Brown.

It turns out that the sheik of the Middle Eastern U.A.E. state of Abu Dhabi wanted to build the best possible newspaper. He offered big money and recruited top journalists from around the world for the new venture, called The National. For example, the business editor ended up being the former Middle East bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal.

The National’s foreign editor called Brown saying the job was his because of Eichstaedt’s recommendation. Brown accepted the position as the East Africa correspondent, moved to Kenya and worked out of his house in Nairobi filing two stories a week. And they paid him well.

He joined the East Africa Foreign Correspondent Association, which then had about 100 members from the Americas, Europe and Asia. All the biggies where there—The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Associated Press, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, McClatchy, The Guardian and Times of London. Some nights he would play poker with other foreign correspondents.

For three years he served in the position for The National, covering everything he always wanted to—Somalia, Congo, Sudan, and even a speech by visiting President Barack Obama.

“I saw everything. I was a war correspondent,” he says. “Everything I always wanted to do. Check that box. Done. Did my dream job.”

For personal reasons he’s now back in the United States. His experience in Africa as a reporter for a top market newspaper helped land him the job at the Enough Project.

“It’s been an interesting journey,” he says.

~ ~ ~      ~ ~ ~      ~ ~ ~

How to start your own journey:

–Do what it takes to get clips published. They are worth more than money. If you’re good, the money will come later.

–Tell people you’re a journalist. Live up to it. Be able to prove it. Market yourself as good. Believe you can do it (but be self-aware enough to know your skills and areas of needed improvement).

–Learn how to learn quickly. Journalism is as much about writing as it is instantly becoming an expert on something.

–Get out there and apply. No assignment is too small, but be sure to go for the big players, too. You’ll win them over with persistence and by offering to do stories with a servant’s attitude. Demonstrate your humble and strong confidence.

–www.journalismjobs.com

–Go where it’s less saturated with reporters so you can get more experience—either a small, rural town or an out-of-the-way country.

–Treat everyone well and give every assignment your best. You never know when someone—maybe years later—will recommend you for a much higher position. If you demonstrate that you always give 100 percent—even in a small job—you could be given more responsibility.

–Find and use mentors.

–Or go the traditional route: get your master’s degree in journalism, get hired at a small paper and apply for a bigger paper every couple of years. A few years working in the news media can open up all kinds of career opportunities in the future.

Bonus tip: While published clips likely help more than anything, still take the time to get your résumé looking great. Examine articles about résumés and make an appointment with your local community college career-counseling center to ask for a résumé expert. If you pay taxes in a county, you’re eligible to use the community college's services.

Break up a long story with subtitles

Your landmark exposé on an important issue goes long and appears as a huge block of text, both on the front page and on the jump. You can make the layout more appealing to readers by breaking up the text with catchy and well-placed subtitles.

These appear every 7 to 12 paragraphs in a long story. They are just a few words typed in bold and describe what’s going to happen in the next section.

Lots of newspapers use subtitles effectively. One of my favorites is the Arizona Republic. I always make sure to buy a copy when flying through Phoenix. Their front-page Sunday editions usually carry a great front-page package on, say, an immigrant’s story or water rights in the surrounding desert region.

One technique is to write the subtitle about something that appears in the following graf. What I like about the AZ Republic is that they write the subtitle about something that appears in the second graf after the subtitle. I’ve even experienced myself reading farther into a story when this method is employed because the subtitle grabs me, but when I don’t see it in the next graf I keep reading and discover it in the following graf. So already I’ve read one graf father into the story than I would have otherwise. Then a few grafs later, when I’m thinking of giving up, whadaya know, there is another subtitle teasing the next bit of text.

One thing: I like a good formula (this blog wouldn’t exist without them), but make sure your subtitles don’t become too clichéd. Usually when I see a feature about an individual I end up seeing a version of about the same four or five subtitles that appear something like the following:

Humble beginnings

Overcoming obstacles

A star is born

New horizons

Then again, if this formula works, why not use it. Your readers likely won’t notice the formula … only that the story flows well.