For my article, which is a how-to article about properly writing a resume, I felt it was a good idea to attempt to get it published in a newspaper. In order to make this possible, I sent my query letter to both the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Tribune Review newspapers. The query letter was another assignment we were tasked with completing over the course of this semester for Writing for Publication. I waited until receiving the graded version of my query letter from Professor Wilson so that I was sending the revised copy to these newspaper outlets.
I researched other stories that were similar to mine and found that, aside from business magazines, my subject of properly writing a resume would work best in a newspaper, a local newspaper to be more specific. My story has a quality of proximity that I feel meshes perfectly with articles found in the Local section of these two Pittsburgh-based newspapers. The Valley Independent was also another outlet I considered contacting, but it is a smaller newspaper and I wanted to aim a little higher with my expectations of being published. I did not really tailor my story to fit the publisher that I was hoping to be accepted by, I had the idea that the article would fit best in the local section of a newspaper after I finished writing it. The fact that most of my sources are local makes these outlets an obvious choice.
I did extensive research on the Internet on the proper steps to take when writing a resume for a job. Several websites featured their own opinion of what steps are most important, which I found to be extremely beneficial to me. I interviewed several excellent sources to bolster this story.
Rhonda Gifford, the director of Career Services at California University of Pennsylvania, was an excellent source that provided a wealth of knowledge about the importance of writing resumes and her experience with helping students properly create a resume. My second authority source, despite being a relative, had previous experience teaching a class at a local library teaching citizens how to create a resume. Carol Sepesky was made a big contribution to making this paper strong by offering in-depth quotes from the perspective of someone who taught this skill. My last authority source is Dr. Pratul Pathak, an English professor at Cal U. He teaches a course called Science and Technical Writing at the college and was a great source on the subject because he is teaching the exact age demographic I was targeting with this piece. I also interviewed Max Freese a Senior at Cal U majoring in English with a concentration in journalism. He actually took Sci-Tech Writing at Cal and his instructor was Dr. Pathak. It was nice two takes on the class one from a student and one from a professor. I only sent this piece to the two outlets I mentioned above and thus far I haven’t yet gotten a response from either newspaper. They were sent just earlier this week so I am optimistic that I will get feedback from at least one of the newspapers in the near future.
It is much more difficult than I ever imagined being a novice writer trying to break into the world of writing. There is so much that goes into making just one particular piece as strong and well written as possible. Being a writer means being able to have certain qualities, such as patience and perseverance in order to deal with the process of getting a work published.
It seems like there is not much return on the investment of being a writer, but I disagree. I believe that there are more rewarding experiences than seeing your words in print or published online in a major outlet.
I researched other stories that were similar to mine and found that, aside from business magazines, my subject of properly writing a resume would work best in a newspaper, a local newspaper to be more specific. My story has a quality of proximity that I feel meshes perfectly with articles found in the Local section of these two Pittsburgh-based newspapers. The Valley Independent was also another outlet I considered contacting, but it is a smaller newspaper and I wanted to aim a little higher with my expectations of being published. I did not really tailor my story to fit the publisher that I was hoping to be accepted by, I had the idea that the article would fit best in the local section of a newspaper after I finished writing it. The fact that most of my sources are local makes these outlets an obvious choice.
I did extensive research on the Internet on the proper steps to take when writing a resume for a job. Several websites featured their own opinion of what steps are most important, which I found to be extremely beneficial to me. I interviewed several excellent sources to bolster this story.
Rhonda Gifford, the director of Career Services at California University of Pennsylvania, was an excellent source that provided a wealth of knowledge about the importance of writing resumes and her experience with helping students properly create a resume. My second authority source, despite being a relative, had previous experience teaching a class at a local library teaching citizens how to create a resume. Carol Sepesky was made a big contribution to making this paper strong by offering in-depth quotes from the perspective of someone who taught this skill. My last authority source is Dr. Pratul Pathak, an English professor at Cal U. He teaches a course called Science and Technical Writing at the college and was a great source on the subject because he is teaching the exact age demographic I was targeting with this piece. I also interviewed Max Freese a Senior at Cal U majoring in English with a concentration in journalism. He actually took Sci-Tech Writing at Cal and his instructor was Dr. Pathak. It was nice two takes on the class one from a student and one from a professor. I only sent this piece to the two outlets I mentioned above and thus far I haven’t yet gotten a response from either newspaper. They were sent just earlier this week so I am optimistic that I will get feedback from at least one of the newspapers in the near future.
It is much more difficult than I ever imagined being a novice writer trying to break into the world of writing. There is so much that goes into making just one particular piece as strong and well written as possible. Being a writer means being able to have certain qualities, such as patience and perseverance in order to deal with the process of getting a work published.
It seems like there is not much return on the investment of being a writer, but I disagree. I believe that there are more rewarding experiences than seeing your words in print or published online in a major outlet.