It's a glossy lifestyle ...

Vincent Burke discovers some vital tips on how to get ahead in journalism while (below) Nick Walker provides the stoic voice of experience A career as a journalist on a glossy magazine is many people's dream. The attractions are obvious - glamour, excitement, the chance to meet the rich and famous, travel (sometimes) and great fun (often).

Whether it's editing Frank, being the hairstyle correspondent on Soft Lad magazine or freelancing for Bognor Nites listing magazine, the competition is horrendous.

More than 20,000 people apply to do media/communication studies each year, believing that it will lead to a job as a journo. Just as many are disappointed. According to the NUJ, four times as many people take such courses as there are jobs in the industry. A qualification from a media course may - just may help. It may not. Much depends on the quality of the course and, more important, you. So, before signing up at your local college, find out how much practical experience you'll get. If you're not careful, you could end up wasting your time writing sociological critiques about EastEnders and the nearest you'll ever get to a microphone will be a karaoke night at the student bar. Vocational courses run by such bodies as the National Council for Training of Journalists or the Periodicals Training Council are the most useful. Competition for places is fierce and only those with energy and ambition succeed. Experience - whether on a college mag, a local hospital radio station or nearby cable TV station - is therefore paramount. Age is not necessarily a barrier and a large number of mature students win places on these courses, often after getting involved in workplace newsletters or in-house publications. Indeed, time spent in a relevant industry will be invaluable if you apply to work on a trade magazine. In the end, no amount of qualifications will help if you don't have the personal qualities required- persistence, creativity, initiative and energy. Peter Howarth, editor of Esquire magazine, graduated in English before moving into marketing for fashion designer Paul Smith. He started off doing book reviews and interviews with authors for Arena, which had just launched. "As it was a new mag, the competition was less severe than for a national newspaper", he explains. Making it into print, he believes, is a crucial first step. "Once you've actually got something published, other people start to take you more seriously." After her one-year NCTJ course, Mandi Norwood, Editor of Cosmopolitan, did a Fashion Writing course at the London College of Fashion during which she got the all-important work placement on the young women's magazine, Look Now. Once there, she admits, she "bugged" the staff into offering her a job. At 22, she went freelance and a year later was features editor of the BBC's Clothes Show. After a string of editorial posts on other women's magazines, she landed her current job in 1995. "Working on a magazine is most certainly all it is cracked up to be - and more," she says, despite it being "fiercely competitive - internally as well as externally - exhausting, and, at times, horribly stressful." Good IT skills will help you too. "Being comfortable using computers will become an increasingly important asset for any media- type," according to Bob Forster, acting head of recruitment services at the BBC. "Research is increasingly done on the Internet or other electronic databases." Given all these demands, together with the cut-throat competition and the increasing uncertainty of the job, is it really worth it? Mandi Norwood has no doubts. "It's huge fun, it's exciting, demanding and, yes, glamorous. I go to lots of parties, dinners, fashion shows, launches and viewings." Peter Howarth feels the same. "I think I've got the best job in the world. We have a very good time at Esquire, discussing the sorts of things that you would talk about down the pub with your mates - Spurs, the latest Tarantino film, that sort of thing." * For more information contact the National Council for the Training of Journalists, Latton Bush Centre, Southern Way, Harlow, Essex CM18 7BL; National Union of Journalists, 314 Grays Inn Road, London WCIZ 8DP and Periodicals Training Council, Queen's House, 28 Kingsway, London WC2B 6JR. FORGET about a career in journalism.There is no such thing. I have qualifications up to my eyeballs: law degree (Cambridge 1989-92), internship (The Village Voice, New York, 1991), journalism post-grad (City, bursary from The Independent). All pretty much useless. Journalism is not a profession. Qualifications are, to use a legal term, otiose. And not only is this quite right, it's an enormous relief. Once you ditch the idea of a career, quash the clamour for qualifications, shun the pursuit of a position, you're left only with the work itself. In journalism, that means stories. It all sounds too noble for words, and journalism, or at least its freelance limb, is more like the career equivalent of Care In The Community. But since I sidelined any hopes I had of securing a job or a career, work has never been the same. I have been chauffeured through Monte Carlo in the back of a silver Mercedes with Claudia Schiffer, I've interviewed a young mother in the northern suburbs of Sarajevo who had her leg blown off by a landmine - if the story is good enough, in the words of the Nike ad, just do it. It's not the letters after your name that count - it's the words that follow your name that make a difference.

Copyright 1998
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.