Otaku Links: From Mangirl to boy’s love

Otaku Links

narwhal

  • If you want to buy a more original gift than a Fruit of the Month Club, the Ostrich Farm on Etsy has a Narwhal of the Month Club. Going viral on Tumblr has depleted the shop for now, but they’re still taking custom orders.
  • My favorite lorem ipsum filler since Cupcake Ipsum: Riker Ipsum. (On a related note, if I ever became a graphic designer, I would call my business Lauren Ipsum.)
  • The best part about writing that piece for Forbes in 2011 has been the opportunity to meet so many fellow young journalists doing what I did. The most recent is John Fleshman, who is documenting the beginning of his journalism career at his blog, Fleishters.

(Screenshot via the Ostrich Farm)

Announcing the Otaku Journalist e-course!

Careers, Journalism

When I was in journalism school, the job I wanted didn’t exist. I wanted to write about my passions for a wider audience, so I built my own career from scratch.

Almost every week, I get emails from students asking me how I got to do what I do and, more urgently, how can they do the same? It’s a tough question to answer, because journalism is changing so quickly. So I decided to write a book about it. I took everything I learned in four years of fandom reporting and poured it into 150 pages of my most potent advice. This is not a rehashing of the way I learned to be a journalist in school. This book is my prediction for the future of news.

Today I am announcing the Otaku Journalist e-course, my eight-part manual on how you can make writing about your passions into a career in journalism.

I’ll be releasing one chapter at a time every two weeks. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to:

  • Build a personal reporting beat in a fan community
  • Generate high quality story ideas fit to pitch to magazines
  • Impress convention press liaisons into granting you a press badge
  • Maximize your research and reporting opportunities at a con
  • Reach out to people you admire for interviews with confidence
  • Plan, conduct, and transcribe interviews with accuracy
  • Build a professional online identity and personal brand as a reporter
  • Pitch finished articles to publications as a freelance journalist

Better yet, I’m giving away the first chapter, Going from fan to pro, absolutely free. That’s a 14 page workbook—plus two worksheets—of my best advice, straight to your inbox. Just sign up for my newsletter to get a download link instantly.

Thank you for joining me on this new adventure!

What is your fandom resolution?

Fandom

homestuckkids

This year, what are you going to do to make your fandom better?

After spending my year reporting on fandom in all of its forms, I truly believe that what happens to your fandom is entirely up to you. It’s not the creators and their works that primarily drive fandom news. It’s the fans themselves—their projects, gatherings, and derivative works.

Do you think My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic would have been a major news story without fans creating a prime-time commercial inspired by their love for the show? Would the mainstream media care about Homestuck if millions of us didn’t? And how else would a Twilight fanfic become an international bestseller? Now more than ever, fans have a heavy hand in creating the news.

How will you contribute to your fandom in 2013? Will you:

  • Quit pirating and spend more money supporting creators?
  • Spend less money on your fandom (and put more in the bank)?
  • Attend your first fandom convention?
  • If you’ve already done that, volunteer for a fandom convention?
  • Participate in more discussion on Twitter, Tumblr, and forums?
  • Contribute more fanart and/or fanfiction?
  • Lead a fandom RP with your friends?
  • Start a manga reading or anime viewing club?
  • Wear your Homestuck shirt or a casual cosplay in public and see who recognizes you?
  • Embark on a reporting project or documentary about your fandom?

My fandom resolution is to share the truest stories I can about fandom by talking directly to fans themselves, preferably in person. There’s only so much an email interview can get across.

Let me know what yours is in the comments!

(Photo by Jack Liu)

Otaku Links: a very anime holiday

Otaku Links

tnkk1

(Screenshot via Beneath The Tangles)

How to get hired as a journalist when you lack experience

Uncategorized

Every now and then, students and aspiring journalists write to me for advice about entering the field. Here’s an email I sent to a journalism student recently, published with permission.

As a journalist with not a lot of  “official” experience under my belt, how would you recommend catching employers’ attention?

It’s getting really frustrating because I’m hearing most places aren’t even looking at your cover letter or samples—they’re checking to see how long you’ve been employed by publications and tossing your resume at that. So I feel like I’m caught in this game of pong—being sent away for not having experience, but not able to gain experience because no one wants to hire me.

How do you fight against that and make yourself stand out?

This is all anecdotal of course, but you want to know what worked for me and helped me stand out? It all boiled down to this: I presented an ultra niche, super specific set of skills.

At the beginning of my job hunt, I figured it’d be best to be as general as possible. To submit samples of a wide variety of types of writing I’d done, from personal to technical to news to features. And to showcase ALL of my skills—wouldn’t they be impressed that I can code, design websites in WordPress and Drupal, master the Adobe suite, build infographics, and teach? Because that would mean a much wider variety of companies would think I was the perfect fit, right?

Not so much. I hardly ever heard back from anyone when I used that approach. I guess I came across as bland, one of a thousand “versatile” journalists.

Here’s what did work: picking a beat and sticking to it. Saying I’m Lauren, and I write about geeks. Writing only about fandom on my blog. Submitting journalism, photojournalism, and videojournalism about maid cafes, artist alley denizens, and furries. I reworked my resume to put my geek experience up front: my internship with Kotaku, my year running the Anime USA marketing team.

After that I was no longer some journalist. I was the geek journalist (or as I like to call myself, the Otaku Journalist.) I definitely still got lots of rejections, but people remembered me. This approach weeded out anyone who might be ambivalent toward my skills. They either loved me or they hated me. Plus, I knew the people that loved me knew EXACTLY what I was all about, and that if they thought I’d be a good fit, I’d be a good fit.

I think humans naturally have a need to categorize things in order to remember them, so why not take the guesswork out of it for them? I’m sure there’s one aspect of journalism that you’re either REALLY good at or REALLY passionate about—or both. Figure out what that is, rework your resume and cover letter around it, and see if people don’t find you more memorable.

Do you have a question you’d like to ask? Drop me an email or visit my Tumblr Ask box.