I Work in News, and So Can You!

So, you want to work in news? Seen a few episodes of The Newsroom and think you want to be the next Will McAvoy, eh? That opening monologue from the pilot gives you a half a chubby every time you think about it, doesn’t it? Do you have visions of grandeur and see yourself in your beige-est Richard Engel getup reporting live from behind ISIS, ISIL, or IS (all the acronyms) lines? Well… good for you kid, keep trying. Maybe you’ll get there one day. Maybe I’ll get there one day, who knows? But for now, as you sit there drinking your kale infused vega-smoothie, working on your never-to-be-published memoir, here’s how it really is…

The Competition

Oh lawdy the competition. You will face a lot of it. And it will be tough. Your esteemed author went to a little old state college in little old New Jersey. I didn’t even study journalism (hint: most people in news didn’t, so don’t worry if you didn’t either). Competing against colleagues (and friends) who boast degrees from NYU, Columbia J-School, and (insert tiny liberal arts college you’ve never heard of but smile and nod your head when mentioned because you don’t want to be the idiot from New Jersey who’s never heard of said school) can be daunting. Cowboy up, brother (or sister). Work twice as hard as them. Show up ten minutes earlier than them. Leave an hour later than them. They have a degree to speak for them, you have your work ethic. Show that shit off and make it rain.

The Pay

Eh. That’s all there really is to say. Eh. The money’s okay. I can pay my rent, I can go out a few nights a week, I can live somewhat comfortably. But I am, by no means, well off. Eventually the money can and will come, but for now I’m not exactly swimming in green. In the end that’s fine by me. I worked other jobs and made more money elsewhere, but at the end of the day, I felt empty. I wasn’t inspired. I wasn’t contributing anything to the world. I wasn’t growing as a person. It sucked. So, here I am!

The Hours

Without a doubt, the toughest part of working in news is the schedule. Some mornings I have to be in at 5am, sometimes I need to be in until 2am, sometimes these days follow one another. I won’t sugarcoat it, it can suck. It does suck. I don’t see my friends as much as I’d like, I don’t find the time to do a lot of things that a normal 26-year-old jabronie such as myself would do (laundry, cook dinner regularly, date 😦 )… it can be a real grind. But if you don’t put in the work, your manager probably has the resume of at least a hundred people who will. Keep at it, slugger.

The Job

Despite the less than stellar pay and the sometimes undesirable hours, I’m really lucky that I can say with complete sincerity that I love what I do. Like anything you love in life, it has its ups and its downs. It inspires me. It drives me to work harder. It infuriates me. It frustrates me. It drives me up and down the spectrum almost daily… but I love it.

My favorite part of the gig is not knowing what the hell I’m going to do at work on any given day. Will I work with a reporter and produce a piece for air in the prime time hours? Maybe. Will I head out with a photojournalist to cover a story and see what I can dig up? Perhaps. Will I write an article for our website? Maybz. More often than not, you don’t know. It’s like Russian Roulette, but with less death. Sometimes if it’s slow you can even pitch your own stories that can wind up on air. Yay!!

The Gist

So yeah, that’s kind of a glimpse into the gig. You’ll do cool shit, you’ll do shitty shit, you’ll drink way too much coffee and eat too much takeout, but you’ll get to witness history firsthand. If you can grind it out and see the positives, I promise you it will be worth it.

Toodles!

-DV

What to Expect at Your First Ad Job

So you just got your first advertising gig and the only way you’ve been preparing is by drinking strictly Manhattans because you saw it on Mad Men. You’re diligently working on spending your first paycheck before you even receive it. And when your family asks about your new job, you’ve already experienced the blank stares that follow, “I’m a creative.”

Let me break it down for you.

HOURS

This is not a 9-5 job. I do not care what the HR lady told you. She was lying. SHE might get to leave at 5 and put a square 8 hours on her timesheet every night, but you will not. You will likely be eating sad desk lunch trying to make deadlines and missing your friends and your bed.

If you feel strongly against working 60-hour work weeks, coming in on weekends, and spending most of your holidays with your team, then this job is not for you.

For example, this week, I left my family early after Thanksgiving to come back and work on Sunday. Then, on Monday, I worked until after 2am. The bars closed before our agency did. You think your Monday sucked? Try a 17-hour one. The kind that boils you into a giggly, nauseated crazy machine just trying to finish scripts before the sun rises.

MONEY

Money in advertising is not as sweet as those TV shows make it out to be. The best advice I can offer is to go into negotiations informed. Find out what your position makes in your city. If you can’t get the salary you want, try to negotiate for more PTO. My first ad job offered me a salary so low I honestly thought it was a typo. On top of that, I only got 6 days off in my first year – including sick, PTO, and personal. I got strep throat twice and all of a sudden had no more days to use.

You know those consistent 60-hour work weeks? Yeah, you won’t get paid overtime. Unless, of course, you’re freelancing. In which case, those 60-hour work weeks = CHA CHING. But freelancing can’t last forever, so make sure you know what you’re negotiating for before you go into that office. Know your bottom line. Know what you’re worth – and sell the pants off yourself.

 BOSS

I have worked under a variety of people. From the drunk and unavailable to the overbearing wrecking balls who change your work 3 hours before the client meeting. You may not like your boss (most people don’t), but you do have to respect him (or her). I have not always been so great at this. Also, even if you don’t necessarily understand why your boss acts a certain way, there may be a method to his madness.

I once worked under an ACD who I hated. He was a dick. Just a loud-mouthed, condescending, arrogant dick. I would go home and bitch and moan about this guy. It was only AFTER he left that I realized he actually wasn’t that bad. Sure, he was a pompous ass, but his #1 goal was to make me a better writer. And he did it.

The best bosses encourage collaboration and exploration. They will raise you up, but expect nothing short of excellence from you.  And for a truly great boss, you’ll WANT to work hard to prove your worth to him.

-AM

Why We Write

I write because I have to. This might sound callous or negative, but it’s a simple truth.  I was not blessed with the ability to draw or sing. My expression comes from writing.

When I go for a run and see the sun setting on the faces of statues, I automatically start writing a poem in my head. When I’m in the shower and have been laboring over a headline, I am immediately struck with genius. (Which I will forget as soon as the rinse cycle hits.) Writing is my default. It’s where I feel the most confident. It is my best form of communication. And thankfully, it is my job.

Writing wasn’t always going to be my career. I originally thought I wanted to be an astrophysicist (Can you imagine how proud my parents would be? Ha, whoops.) Then, in high school, in an attempt to avoid a teacher who hated me, I took my senior English at a local college. We wrote about Nirvana songs and the movie Mulan Rouge. We wrote about things I liked and cared about, instead of picking through Hamlet for the 12th time. I learned that you can write about anything and it can be fun. Also around that time, I watched the move Almost Famous and realized I wanted to grow up to be William Miller. These two events pushed me to be an English major at college. My father’s insistence that I not be poor caused me to take on a marketing minor.  In my junior year, in David Allen’s marketing class, I met Brendan Quinn – then copywriter at 160over90. This man taught me that not only can I write about things I like and care about, but I can also get paid for it. I was sold.

Most days, I’m proud to call myself a writer. Or, as my cynical friends love to remind me, I’m a copywriter. Either way, I’m lucky.

-AM

Hmm… what a question. Why do I write? Come to think of it, I guess I really don’t know why I write. Maybe it’s because math always bored me in school. Maybe it’s because I hate blood too much to study medicine. Maybe it’s because I’d rather have a smoke and shoot a water buffalo with Ernest Hemingway than chat with Albert Einstein about relativity and hair care products any day. I suppose those are all decent reasons, but I’m sure it has to go deeper than that.

Neither of my parents worked jobs that they liked. Growing up and seeing the two of them come home absolutely exhausted from jobs that they, to be perfectly honest, despised left a pretty big impact on me as a wee lad, maybe a bigger impact than I realized at the time. The fear of an Office Space-esque existence filled with TPS reports, missing staplers, sterile fluorescent lighting, and Bill Lumbergh sleeping with my girlfriend more or less made my mind up for me.

I could have studied accounting in college. I could have been a business major. Heck, maybe I could have even studied finance and made a boatload of cash after graduating (side note: I left news for a little over a year and a half to pursue a career in finance. Needless to say, it didn’t stick). Long story short, eh. Doing what everybody else did just because everybody else did it never had much appeal to me. Why not take a chance and to do something interesting, original, or unique? Cubicle work will always be available… take a shot at something great!

In the end it boils down to this; I love reading, I love learning, and I love writing. What better field is there to be in than news? I get paid to learn something new every day and witness history as it happens. If it doesn’t work out then fine, at least I gave it a go and hopefully had a lot of fun along the way… but let’s hope it doesn’t get to that. I REALLY hate math, and Bill Lumburgh was SUCH a dick.

-DV