I knew from a young age that I loved writing and overtime I realised that I wanted to become a Journalist and I know there are other budding journalists such as myself who wants to become one. Personally, I like to write about personal experiences, entertainment, lifestyle, etc, and there are different types of journalists you can become, you have to see which kind fits you. Research is key.
The first thing you can do is search up some online magazines who are searching for writers, many indie online magazines search for contributors to feature in their magazines and this can be an excellent way to get your pieces seen. It is also a good learning experience for learning how to write for a magazine and it also looks good on a resume/ personal statement as it shows you already have some experience writing for a magazine. When you have submitted your work somewhere, I would recommend to not looking at your emails every 10 seconds hoping for a reply, they will reply and it’ll take time, but if they don’t reply then start submitting your work elsewhere. Believe me, I know it’s hard to not look at your emails, I’ve dealt with that problem many times but again you’ll have to be patient for a few weeks and see if they get back to you, if not then again search for other places that are requesting submissions.
Continue to improve your writing, even if you get to work at Vogue in the future, I would still want to improve the style of my writing and see if my points are stated clearly to the reader. Additionally, many magazines accept people with good writing skills so if you could improve that while working, it would be a good thing.
Find what you’re passionate about, every magazine has its main topic that it’s mostly written about, others have different sub-categories about different topics such as entertainment, politics, and feminism. Find what you are interested in writing about and write a lot about it for practice and it can also help you in writing your future articles. Another thing you could do researching things you can write about, any stories that happened recently that you find interesting or ancedotes that you might think people would find relatable.
When I first started writing, I made a blog where I wrote about a plethora of different things such as beauty, lifestyle, travel, advice, etc. even when I knew that nobody would probably come across it, I still wrote it as people read it because when writing articles you will need to somehow interact with the audience. Keeping a blog helps because you can improve writing, get your writing out and it’s also yours so it can be worded how you want it to be.
When you do get to write for magazines, don’t get anxious over things like not getting ideas on what to write, everyone goes through this. One thing you can do to combat this is writing a stream of consciousness, write about anything you’re thinking of and you’ll probably find something to write about in there. Don’t be afraid to write about things that have happened to you personally as that can really help the reader relate to you and the article more, Make sure you get your submissions in on time, I always had trouble with this by juggling school, work and having a social life but time management is always something you can improve on.
Last thing is that don’t let anyone tell you that journalism is a unprofessional profession, if you think that you’re a good writer and you have what it takes then go for it, send your work and ideas in at different magazines, start off small, see if you have a local newspaper/magazine that take submissions and research online magazines who take contributors and from there you can add different those magazines to your resume and also build a portfolio of the different articles you have written for them.
I’m not going to lie to you and say that it’s going to be easy as the journalism industry is very competitive and everybody is looking to get their work out there but if you think that you have what it takes then go for it, don’t give up if your submission is rejected, keep on improving and working hard and you’ll eventually get there.
