I covered a fashion show recently, one called “Fashion Hits a High Note.” The designer, Leonard Simpson, who is a celebrity here in San Diego with his fashion production company Fashion Forward, rushed up and shook my hand after the show. Granted, he hugged about a hundred people before and after he passed the press area where I was packing up. I won’t let that keep me from feeling special.

Over on A Photo Editor, Rob Haggart links to a great list of successful pitches made by writer Dan Baum and his wife Margaret Knox, the same list Jackie wrote about a couple posts ago on this blog. An important thing that Haggart points out is that it’s not just a skill for writers – a photographer should be able to write a good pitch as well.

My networking attempts seemed to have paid off a few weeks ago because I just became the new “Resident Blogger” for Spot.Us, the Bay Area community-funded journalism project I mentioned in my most recent post.

It’s an unpaid internship; we just gave it a new name, but it’s a job that I sought out for the mutually-beneficial potential it has for both me and the organization. In general, I have mixed feelings about internships. I’ve had only one that I think helped me, and I’ve heard of far too many that turn talented young people into glorified slaves for little to no pay and irrelevant job experience. This one, on the other hand, will undoubtedly enhance my blogging and multimedia skills while also offering tremendous possibility for networking, increased exposure, and learning about the industry and issues of the Bay Area. How did I get this internship? I simply asked for it.

Backing up a bit, I met David Cohn, Kara Andrade and the Spot.us crew at a fundraiser/party the night before the May 1 journalis

Perhaps I am a bit biased, living in New York and having been obsessed with the New York Times for the better part of my adult life but I am thrilled about the new photojournalism blog NYT started called Lens. I am hoping Lens provides a daily source of inspiration and another (paid?) outlet for photogs to display their work. The premiere post states:
The New York Times introduces Lens, a photojournalism blog that intends to present some of the most interesting visual and multimedia reporting: in photographs, videos, audio slide shows and any other medium that fits — our format.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

So my pitch for City Scoops might have been successful and all, but what about pitching some of the big boys?

Dan Baum, a former New Yorker staff writer has a bunch of pdfs of the pitches that worked for Wired, LA Times, Playboy and the likes. The lengths of each pitch vary but all put my quick e-mail to shame. One proposal for a series in Rolling Stones is a whooping 15 pages! That is longer than all but one of the papers I wrote in college.

Most of the proposals read very well with plenty of liberties taken with creativity while still laying out the article in very technical terms. It’s a nice refresher course (although I am not sure I can say I ever had a course to begin with) in making the editor curious about the story while proving it is also feasible. Interestingly, he also shares the pitches that failed, although I do not see anything that immediately sets them apart. Just goes to show you editors are individuals with personal opinions and while a pitch for killing and cooking a whole bull might

I have emerged from my lair into the light, just briefly, after several days of polishing photos, getting frustrated, ripping up my portfolio and starting the process over again. The respite comes because the Eddie Adams Workshop has postponed their application deadline until Friday May 15th – as they promised in their very enlightening webinar on Friday.

I recently moved to Northern California, among other reasons, to focus on journalism. Most people think I’m crazy for quitting a perfectly good (although temporary) job while millions are getting laid off to try my hand at arguably the most unstable profession in recent history– journalism. Thinking logically about these facts, most people are probably right. I am crazy. But, out of some strange compulsion perhaps, I feel like I’m right where I need to be: twenty-two years old, ambitious, living in the Bay Area amid a digital revolution.

That feeling was enhanced by a “Journalism Innovations” conference I attended last Friday. I heard about it through  Kara Andrade, a friend of my cousin, who is an organizer for Spot Us–a Bay Area startup that’s experimenting with community-funded journalism. The conference was a meeting of the minds between news veterans and innovation leaders, centered on one main question: what is the fate and future of journalism? Being new in the area, I went to the conferenc

On a daily basis, between work and my Google reader, I must look at close to thousand photos. Besides fffound, one of my favorite places to peruse photos is MSNBC’s Week in Pictures. Looking through the newest photos on Week in Pictures, I noticed that the layout had been changed.

From this two weeks ago:

to this:

Perhaps the powers that be were inspired by Boston’s Big Picture , a few times a week photo essay of newsworthy events or trends based entirely around photos, shown large as all hell and always interesting (their recent essay on North Korea had the mindblowingly simple but spectacular vantage point of getting all their shots from the border). Seeing lovely photos big is akin to a religious experience (for me at least) so it’s quite nice to have more media repping some seriously amazing photojounalism as big as they can.