Q. A colleague and I are having a debate about clips and what they should look like in the post-college world, especially when you are trying to break into a larger paper after a few years on the job at smaller or mid-size papers.
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Do you include the masthead in the clip, so editors know where the story is from?
Should art or layout/graphics be included in the clip along with the story so editors can see if it was a package or a story that was played prominently on A1?
What's your guideline for clip neatness? Can clips be two pages or should they be a larger page folded in half?
Does any of this matter? Does anyone pay attention to these rules in the post-college world, or are they simply looking at the byline and your words?
ClipperA. Each editor is different, so no package will hit all of us exactly the same way, but these standards should work for all:
Keep the type at a readable size. Make the clips easy to handle, file and photocopy. Show date, page and name of publication.
How you do that is up to you.
Some people like to draw circles and arrows to show that their clip covered the whole front page and was surrounded by colored, glossy photographs.
If that's what you'd like to do, send a conveniently sized PDF of the original page, but back it up with a legible printout from the archives of what you wrote.
Coming Friday: The newspaper he has worked at throughout college is interested in hiring him, but he wonders whether he can do better if he plays the field a little.
Well, I wouldn't worry about the lack of art or...
