Secrets to Becoming a Columnist in Newspapers and Magazines

In this report, you will learn: How to approach editors If they say yes If they say no Writing tips Other tactics Resources to help you Landing a coveted position as a columnist in newspapers and magazines is the dream of millions of people who think they know how to string a noun and a verb together. After all, columnists are often recognized as celebrities in their own communities and industries. They can promote themselves as experts, which leads to more business. And writing a column is downright glamorous. If only they knew. I wrote a weekly column when I worked as a newspaper editor. Trust me when I tell you that despite my strong writing background and keen knowledge of local events, the job often became tedious and difficult. Coming up with compelling topics week after week was a chore. Even worse was writing a weekly column and getting little if any response from readers. Yet good columnists have their rewards. Columnists can land lucrative consulting jobs because their columns give them instant credibility. Columns can help you draw traffic to your web site. They lead to paid speaking engagements. And they provide valuable reprints for your media kit. If you suddenly find yourself unemployed, showing a potential employer that you’ve written for your industry publication might help you land another job that’s even better than the one you lost. This special report is written not for freelance writers who want to get paid for their work, but for the millions of business people and non-profit executives who simply want to appear regularly, or even occasionally, in a newspaper or magazine by writing a column for free and getting all that valuable publicity. How to Get Started --Understand that from the perspective of the publication, you are not writing a column to promote yourself. You are writing it to offer valuable, entertaining, compelling information to readers. --Make sure you are an expert in your topic. If you’ve suddenly taken up gardening and want to write a gardening column for your weekly newspaper, you will have little luck convincing the editors that you know what you’re talking about. Be prepared to offer all the reasons why you are the best expert on a particular topic. --Identify your voice. That is, the style of writing you are most comfortable with. For example, you can write a humor column, an ask the expert column, a behind the scenes political column, or a down-home, folksy column about the do-good things that people are doing in your community. Be ready to explain in 15 seconds or less what your column is about, your voice and why it will benefit readers. --Identify the publications that would be the best fit for your topic. Know the demographics of their readers. You can do that by calling the advertising department and asking for their media kit. The kit, primarily created to help advertisers, will include valuable information about things such as average annual income, education level and geographic location. --Start small. Don’t expect to get the attention of your local metropolitan newspaper if you’ve never been published. Sometimes you must start at the bottom, with your local weekly newspaper, your monthly business magazine or one of several newsletters that specialize in your topic. If you can land a column there and it’s well-received by readers, you can eventually work your way up the ladder and become a columnist for a larger publication. --Identify a need. You must be able to explain to a publication why they need your column. If, for example, you are an expert on how to job-hunt, and your community has a high unemployment rate, your column might be a good fit. --Don’t compete with syndicated columnists or with on-staff columnists. Make sure the publication isn’t already using a columnist who covers your topic, or you’ll waste your time. Syndicated columns are cheap, and the columnists often have more celebrity status than you do.