Designing the layout of a paper is a major undertaking and there are many skills involved. First and foremost, you have to be able to catch everyone’s attention. You can have the best news in the world, but if you can’t get their attention, no one will read it. Those big catchy headlines and colorful front page photos that you see are done for the purpose of making you want to pick up that paper and buy it.
Of course, papers are not made for free, so the layout must also include ads. The challenge with that is to have them not overwhelm the paper and make it look like a portable billboard. If you do that, who is going to want your paper or publication?
Another challenge you are going to be met with is filling all the space. Anyone who is in charge of designing the layout of a newspaper must make sure that they fill all the space. White space is something that you just cannot have in this industry. If it is white, there better be an ad or print in its space, otherwise it is simply wasted space.
Laying out a newspaper, along with many other jobs in this industry are some of the most sought after during this day and age. Right now, this is a booming business, and while the internet is taking over as the information highway, people love to sit down and read their papers. This is a solid industry with a bright future. The challenge with the industry is to keep people coming back and to keep them interested. Getting and keeping their attention is what it is all about.
Now this is a challenge that you look to meet, but you need to know how to go about finding the jobs. You are going to have many opportunities for positions if you know where to look. If you took up journalism in college, you are off to a good start, but as you can imagine, that is not the only place people in this profession come from.
Before you ever apply for a position in journalism, you are going to need to make sure that you have writing skills. If you already have exceptional skills, you are ready for your journalism job search; if not make sure you have honed them before jumping into the field.
Job boards on the internet will be your first stop. You are going to want to search all of the major job search engines. You are going to find all kinds of outlets to look into and will have the availability to search nationwide. You are going to find hundreds, if not thousands of jobs in journalism job postings on the internet.
Your next step will be to go to industry specific boards. As with just about every industry in business today, they all have specific websites that are dedicated to just that profession. While the normal job search sites will have a lot of positions for you, industry specific journalism job listings boards will have many jobs that you would not find anywhere else. Companies these days know that other than the large job sites, most people will check industry specific sites so they don’t even waste their time elsewhere.
Another area that you can check on is the local newspapers. If a paper is looking to fill a position, they will definitely have the ad in their own publication. Your job search will usually only be limited to the local area by doing this, so if you are looking to relocate or for all opportunities available, you are better off sticking to the net as most of these positions will also be listed there.
In addition to print media, you can also check their website. That’s right; just about every paper nowadays has an online edition where all of these listings will be posted. Some people may actually only have their listings posted on the online site as it is a little less expensive to do so.
When trying to find journalism job listings, you may want to also check for college job fairs. Local universities usually have job fairs during the course of the semester to try and find their students jobs. There is nothing wrong with checking them out and trying to land a job yourself.
Finally, the last way you can find journalism job listings it to do it the old fashioned way. Just pick up the phone and call up your local papers to see if they are hiring. A position may have just opened up and you can get the jump on everyone else by applying in person versus waiting for it to get listed and hit the net.
