B-Roll.net is a sight primsarily for professional news photographers. One regular on the message boards there asked his colleagues to list the things they wish they had known in college about the business....and what advice could be given. Among the replies was this well-thought response from a poster called "newz2me":
1. You will not start out making $40,000 a year.
2. You will be working weekends and holdiays.
3. Try to make yourself stand out in the crowd and be confident but don't ever think you're God's gift to broadcasting and they can't do without you. No matter how good you are, you can be replaced.
4. A bad/snotty attitude will make for a big lonely newsroom for you.
5. There are people who have been doing this longer than you and know more than you. Listen to them and learn from any that are willing to teach you.
6. Understand that moving is part of this business especially early in your career. In order to make more money you need to move upward.
7. Market size doesn't always equal a better work environment or better equiptment or pay.
8. Thank God for the internet....Do a search on the ownership of the station you're looking at and try to determine if this is the place you want to go.
9. When going to personal interviews, look around the newsroom and see how the staff reacts. Are they calm/relaxed? What are the expressions on their faces? Do they look tired? If possible try to talk to a couple of them. What does the equipment look like(computers, cameras, studio)? Is the live truck 20 years old? Are they driving around in 10 year old rusted out Kias?
10. Your social life WILL suffer for a couple of years get used to it. However, you'll meet interesting people in the same boat as you and you will gain insight on life and maturity that you never expected.
11. Get used to covering the same story for days on end until you're sick of it.
12. Never trust consultants.
There's countless more but that's what floated to the top for now.
The rest of the posts are here, but I think this one is good enough to be thinking about for now.
