The Journalist

Two years is an amazingly short period of time, especially for career training.
That's exactly how long they gave us to learn the basics on how to be effective reporters, editors and, to an extent, photojournalists.
For the past two years people would often refer to me as "the journalist". Ironically (well not really ironic now that I think of it) I never once called myself a journalist in the past two years. I called myself a journalism student, an intern reporter or a journalist-in-training. Now that I think of it, I really was a reporter, for a school paper. I found out after working for the Mississauga News that real newsrooms work just about exactly how the school paper did. Maybe my college just had an especially well organized and high quality paper. I haven't seen any other college newsrooms nor have I been to any professional newsrooms aside from the Mississauga News so I really have very little to compare.
Regardless, now that my program is just about over (I have one missing credit to make up for a general elective before I'm a real graduate) I'm starting to realize how tough the whole freelance game really is.
No car means no staff reporter job. Also no diploma makes things even more complicated. I have a sort of "job" writing "articles" (see "glorified blog") for an "online magazine" I don't care to name. granted, they won't accept anything and they do pay for articles (although I have yet to see a dime due to a very long uploading process since we don't get to work face-to-face with the editors) however it's really more a side-thing I do for fun, like any other blog.
But a real freelance job, that would be a nice change of pace. However none of the local papers seem to care to return my calls as an official freelance reporter for the paper. And finding stories worth selling are hard to come by on your own.
So here I am, a freelance journalist without work. Still not quite feeling like a journalist. When i pointed that out once, a friend told me;
"Isn't that what a freelancer is?"
And I got to thinking, yes, I guess that is true. A freelance journalist out of work is a freelancer. I guess you're not really a journalist until you have a job. Or maybe I'm just completely green still and have no idea what I'm talking about.
However, I'm working at what I can, given my limitations. I'm making contacts where I can and slowly, I getting stories together that may never be published, but the important thing is I'm getting practice and, most importantly, making contacts for the future.

I don't know if anyone will ever read this blog, but I will continue to record my freelance career here. Maybe it will help others in the future. Who knows.