Journalism Options

[Ashley_Brook]

I'm aspiring a career in journalism, preferable writing articles in lifestyle/fashion/beauty magazines, but I'm not sure what the actual type of journalism that would be called. I mean, there's different types such as "broadcast journalism" "news journalism" and etc. But what would be the type name of magazine article writing?

[mipadi]

There's no real term per se. "Journalism" is basically it. You could call it "magazine writing" or "creative non-fiction writing" if you really want to get fancy, but there's no specific term. You could refer to it as "print journalism", too; when it comes to journalism, there's only two basic kinds: "broadcast journalism" (TV, basically), and "print journalism" (anything that's printed).

Oh, and if you're really interested in becoming a journalism, I'm going to give you two key pieces of advice: write a lot, like every day, for local newspapers, magazines, and a blog -- having a blog can really help; and get an internship, like every summer, and try to get one with high-profile publications. Journalism is a really hard field to break into. Even before the economic troubles, most newspapers and a lot of magazines were scaling back their staff; that's only gotten worse since September. I'm not talking about small newspapers, either; even big names like The Washington Post and The New York Times are scaling back. A lot of newspapers and magazines are going online, and print journalism is a fledgling industry. Also, journalism is very much an "old boys' club", meaning who you know and where you went to school is, unfortunately, a lot more important that what you know and how good you write.

The good news is you can make decent money as a freelance writer now, since most publications don't want to hire new writers, but will gladly buy pieces on an as-needed basis. Freelance writing won't pay the bills (trust me ), but it can help a bit, and it's (kind of) fun.

Anyway, I'm not trying to dissuade you -- just wanted to give you some tips to keep in mind.