To the Journalism Class of 2012 (and beyond)

Their newsroom technology was even outdated then.

There's nothing like working at a newspaper. I say that despite not having much experience working outside a newsroom. I've been a softball umpire, a soccer field painter, a baseball ticket office worker, a sporting goods salesman and an electrical helper. I've also been a live-in nanny.

I've never had a 9-to-5 cubicle job. Nobody really wants one but they are an inevitable fact of life for most. That's what makes a career in newspapers such an odd beast.

I have no business being a relatively successful writer. Everybody I've ever known in newspapers just mumbled at their computer, "Don't worry, you're not successful." You'd better get a little jaded fast if you're going to last in this business. I only got my start because I was willing and able to go somewhere.

I worked with a guy in college who had a wife and a kid. He was clearly the best writer and reporter at our paper. But he was trying to be a husband and a father. That meant he had to do artisinal concrete work. It paid well. He eventually gave up on college, then journalism. Another guy was the best wordsmith on our staff. He was surly as hell but he straightened out copy like a machine. He was married. Had a kid. He does marketing now.

You're going to have to move. You might not have to move around the country from job to job, but your first job is probably not going to be in the town you grew up in. You, Mr. New College Graduate, are off to the backwoods of New Hampshire. Or somewhere in Louisiana. Or Texas. Or, God help you, Rawlins, Wyoming.

Unlike most career-minded folk, your employment options are severely limited by sheer logistics. Unless you're from New York, there are only one or two newspapers in your hometown. And even if you're from New York, it's a safe bet The New York Times isn't hiring too many fresh-out-of-college journalists to write point/counter-point columns with Maureen Dowd.

Go where the jobs are. There are no absolutes in this job hunt, but a daily paper would be best. The general rule of thumb is that the bigger the circulation, the better. My first paper was around 20,000 daily. I was lucky enough to work with The Donald, a beautiful hippy of a man. The paper, The Valley News, stylizes itself on The Times. Get details. Cover issues. Write long. A year and a half at that paper was better teaching than anything I learned in college.

Get to know people in the business. I didn't see many other reporters when I covered Dartmouth men's hockey, but I did get friendly with a guy from the Burlington, Vt., paper. It was around 50,000 circulation. The other reporter and I had a home-at-home dinner series, hosting the other when our teams played on the road. He knew I was 24 years old and living in the middle of nowhere. When he heard a copy editing job was available, he helped me get the gig.

Never complain. There was a copy editor at the Burlington paper who liked to complain about being forced to start her career at that paper. She was a Missouri graduate and therefore was entitled to start in a bigger, better town.  Having spent a year and a half living in a town of 7,000 people that didn't have a bar, I wasn't sympathetic. We all move around. We all leave things behind. Welcome to newspapers.

Follow the money. Papers will hire you young because you are cheap. My first job paid $10 an hour. My second job was $15 an hour. So, when a job came up at a unionized paper in Duluth, I jumped at it. It was over $20 an hour. That was a fortune in Duluth 10 years ago. Probably still is. It was a chance to be closer to friends and family and it was a career move that made sense. You have to move around if you're going to get paid fair market value. Because they are the only game in town, newspapers aren't exactly in a bidding war for talent.

Give it everything you've got. I suspect the only reason I got the job in Salt Lake was I was the only applicant with any qualifications who was willing to live in Utah. The state struggles to attract talent because people think it's weird there. And it is. But that's a whole different story. It was a 125,000 circulation paper and they needed a page designer. Finally, I was at a paper in a town with an international airport. That was my definition of success. That's why I busted my ass. I wrote 90-inch enterprise stories while working on the copy desk. Nobody assigned me the story. I just wrote it. That's part of why I got promoted a couple of times. It was about doing something you love to do.

Be passionate. A couple of weeks ago I was in a job interview at a small newspaper. They looked at my resume, read my clips, and asked me, "With your wife working as a physician assistant, and you having done all these great things in your career, tell me, why do you answer the phone on a Saturday night to go downtown and cover a fire for this paper?" Because I'm passionate. It's easy to become obsessed with how big your paper is or what your job title is. It sounds simple, but it's really not. Be passionate.

You will see people sleepwalking through their careers or complaining so loudly about management that they forget to do a good job. Don't be that guy (or girl). You're getting paid to write. Very few people can say that. If you want to take it for granted or do a half-assed job because doing it the right way takes too much time, I suggest there is probably a cubicle spot available for you in a nice, faceless corporation somewhere in your home town.