The first newspaper I worked on was the 'Springfield Union' in Springfield, Massachusetts. I wrote over a hundred letters to newspapers asking for work and got three responses, two no's.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I've written at least one piece for them before firing me.
I come from a long line of people that write. My folks ran a weekly newspaper.
I am glad I worked on a newspaper because it made me know I had to write whether I felt like it or not.
I used to work for a newspaper that covered local resource issues, and my coworkers and friends were journalists. Their reporting work was always pretty grim.
I did not read newspapers until I became a reporter.
I grew up with 'The Denver Post' and the 'Golden Transcript.' There was never a moment that I thought I'd work at the 'New York Times.' My goal, starting out, was just to see if I could be a journalist.
I had some connections from the newspapers that I did work with up there, so there was a newspaper publisher in Hollywood, and they promised me work and so on.
I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'.
The first writing I did was short short stories for a newspaper syndicate for which I was paid five dollars a piece on publication.
I worked at my high school newspaper at Andover, which came out weekly, unusual for a high school paper. Then my first day at Penn I went right to the 'Daily Pennsylvanian' and pretty much spent most of my college career working both as the sports editor and then editor of the editorial page.