I have interviewed thousands of people at well more than a hundred job fairs. Shoot, I'm organizing my 16th and 17th this year. In the 1990s, no one -- no one -- recruited at more of the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Asian American Journalists Association and Native American Journalists Association than I did. If you go to these, catch me and say hi.
I frequent three major types of job fairs:
ASSOCIATIONS: Organized by journalism associations, they are open to all who register, members and non-members alike. I have found that each association has its own culture and recruiting approached must be tailored to be compatible to the culture. The largest job fair I have ever attended was UNITY, 2004 in Washington, D.C., where some 9,000 attended the convention. A large and well-coordinated Detroit Free Press team interviewed 190 people. Although we went under a hiring freeze, we hired 10 of those people in the nesuing year.
COLLEGES: These take work, so they can be a sign that the career services people are on their game. I frequently recruit at Columbia, Medill, Howard and Missouri job fairs, in additon to ones in Michigan. If your university is not attracting recruiters with a job fair, take heart, In 2006, the students at Bowling Green State University ion Ohio started organizing their own.
THE SPIRIT OF DIVERSITY: This is my baby. I organized a job fair in 1991 and then teamed up with the people at The Detroit News and what is now the Detroit Media Partnership to do it every year. We have been putting one on each November since 1993. Along with the great job done by the people at Newsday, this is one of the nation's oldest continuing newspaper-sponsored job fair.
I am working with Bobbi Bowman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors to organize a new-media job fair.
To check out upcoming job fairs, check out my job fairs calendar on the JobsPage.
Bringing the News Century-old postcards celebrate newsies in photographs and artwork, in groups or singly, black and white or color. The newsboys -- and girls, as well as a few adults -- are always portrayed in hard-knock ways. Feet and calves are sometimes bare. Patches cling to elbows and knees. They cover their heads with stocking caps or the floppy hats we still know as "newsboys." If there is inside you a scrappy, survive-by-your-wits newsie, you'll enjoy this collection of cards and carriers bringing news in old-fashioned ways. (Twenty-five images.) 