Writing For Newspapers
Newspapers buy literally
thousands of features every year on a wide variety of subjects from British gardens to whale watching. You can tell which
newspaper features have been provided by freelancers by a notation just under the author‘s name that says “Special
to the Chicago Tribune,” “Special to the LA Times,” or whichever newspaper it happens to be.
I have had students who specialize in selling newspaper features; I frequently clip articles from several of
them each week just to keep track of what’s being purchased. Believe me the variety of subjects is mind-boggling.
A
Collection of Subjects
I recently found the following subjects in my files: “Sprucing Up Your Car with a Used-Car Dealer’s
Finesse,” “Biking Norman Rockwell Country,” “antique Tools—Growing Interest in a Young Field,”
“Family Papers—Proper Conservation Saves Treasures,” “Ballooning; Thrilling, Invigorating, and Elemental,”
and Ancient Teeth Yield Clue to Origin of Oldest Inhabitants of North America.
Can articles like these be sold to a number of different newspapers? The answer is yes. After all, newspapers
go to only a limited circulation area. Only newspapers like the New Your Times and USA Today cover the country. Some newspapers
are regional or cover most of a state; others may serve a region or a particular county; still others have a readership limited
to one city and its outlying population area.
Most newspapers let you resell an article outside their circulation area. This means you can sell the same feature
to the Seattle Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Kansas City Star and other newspapers.
One of my writing students has had good luck with an article on poison oak and poison ivy. The first year he
took in about $3,000. He then decided to get scientific about it. From Bacon’s Magazine and Newspaper Directory http://www.bacons.com/newspaper-magazine-directory.asp he put together a list of about 1200 newspapers.
These he divided into statewide papers, regional or local papers, and lower levels of non-overlapping circulation.
He entered this list on a computer disk. He sends out one category a year. Each mailing results in the sale of about 50 articles.
By the time he gets through all categories, he’s ready to start over at the beginning of his list. In four years the
same subject is good again.
There is also good list of newspapers at http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/usstate/usnorthc.htm.
In class I have had inconsistent results in trying to make multi-sales to newspapers. Some students did well;
others sent out as many as eighty articles and made no sales.
Syndication Rules
From these experiences I have put together a few rules that seem to work well.
- Study the newspapers to see what kinds of articles they
are taking and how they want these articles put together. Keep in mind that these articles must appeal to a very general audience.
Clip out a few features as models and construct yours the same way. Keep the length to about 1,100 words or less.
- Make up your own newspaper list from Bacons newspaper
list. You will probably find this in your library.
- Divide this list so you have separate listings of statewide,
regional within a state and smaller newspapers including weeklies.
- mail you article to about 30 statewide newspapers the
first year, regionals within a state the second year and the remainders the third year.
