There's always time

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.41.01
Current Song - Easy Lover (Phil Collins/Philip Bailey)

I frequent the SportsJournalists.com message board. I usually go there for tips on how to improve myself as a high school sportswriter.

I'm not in a serious job hunt at this time, but today's tip came from a topic calling for a writer at the Quincy Herald-Whig.

It was about what to put in a portfolio.

I think most good-sized papers ask for a portfolio of five pieces. The advice was to not put all gamers in it, or even four gamers out of the five. I should put a variety of pieces in it.

I haven't inquired at a newspaper since leaving Sauk Valley Newspapers five years ago. I only flirted with openings at the BCR and QC Times, and even those were longshots. Even though I know darn well not to fill it up with gamers, it did make me think about exactly what to put together.

So what's out there? There's game stories, feature articles and columns. That's three. I figure I should get my best game story, my best feature story and my best column. I should put them together with the two ICCJA award-winning pieces (a gamer and a feature).

1. "Not So Fast" - a men's basketball gamer written for the SVCC Voyager in 2007 between Sauk and Black Hawk East. This won second place for best gamer. However, after looking at it one more time the lead looks real crappy.

2. "Young, But Determined" - a volleyball feature written for the Highland Chronicle in 2008 as a team preview. This got honorable mention in 2009.

After that, I'm real weary about putting any piece from NISB in my portfolio. So I have to look deep into the SVN vault. Hopefully spring/summer 2004 isn't too old.

3. "Oh, What a Season!: It was the stuff dreams were made of" - My 100-plus-inch feature on Rock Falls Softball's season and fourth-place finish at the Class A State Tournament in 2004. And yes, it DID run. It may have been the first wrap-around in the sports section in quite some time. The paper does this a lot now.

4. "Sterling's Chiu wins one to write home about" - A gamer of the NCIC boy's tennis meet. Exchange student Koon Chiu was a part of the winning No. 1 Doubles team. Its my best non-Rock Falls and non-softball gamer. The portfolio is supposed to be diverse, right?

The final piece in the portfolio is a column. I only wrote a handful of columns for SVN, but I shouldn't include a third piece from 2004. At the same time I hate digging through the NISB archive, but I think I have no choice.

5. "The Trial of Steve Sandholm" - Yes, THAT one. A copy of it sits somewhere in Sandholm's lawyer's file cabinet.

If there's any other suggestions, or general suggestions, feel free to let me know.

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Another suggestion from the message board topic was to have some sort of background in design. The only layout I currently do is with a website. Of the five semesters I have worked with a college newspaper, I had design experience in two of them. It was with Quark, and I think most papers have transitioned to InDesign - which I have no experience with at all. InDesign costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $500. Do I really have to cough up that much just to toy with it on my own?

It's like the job interview I once had for being a pizza delivery driver (before working at gas stations). "Have you ever held cash?" Well, where do I start???

Have I ever worked with InDesign? No. But how do I start?