Luber: Hey everyone – Marc Luber here - today on JD Careers Out There we’re looking at
what it’s like to use your law background as a journalist – so stick around!
[theme song] Alright, today’s guest is Jill Schachner Chanen, who left the practice of
law for a career in journalism.
Today she’s the assistant managing editor of the ABA Journal and she also teaches journalism
at Columbia College in Chicago.
As you may already know, at JDCOT, we explore career paths both in and out of law to help
you find a fulfilling career that fits you and help you succeed using your law degree.
Today, Jill’s gonna tell us all about working in journalism, so let’s get started.
Jill, welcome to JDCOT!
Jill: Thanks, Marc, it’s good to be here.
Luber: Definitely, thank you for being here.
And Jill, I’m going to ask you to tell us all about this path, who makes a good fit
for it, how to break in and stuff like that.
But first, tell us, what do you as a legal journalist?
Jill: Well I’m an assistant managing editor at the ABA Journal of the American Bar Association
and we’re a monthly publication that goes out to about half a million lawyers every
month and we like to say we cover the law, the legal profession and trends in the law
from Wall Street to Main Street nationwide.
What that translates to as a legal journalist may mean something different every single
day.
I, as an editor, help plan the magazine, help assign stories, actually edit stories and
I’m also taking on some new roles, as many journalists are these days, in trying to monetize
our editorial content.
So looking for business development opportunities, we’re expanding into programming, seminars
and the like, so it’s always a jam-packed day; it means lots of different things.
But the essence of being a legal journalist is really being a reporter or an editor and
covering the law, whether that’s a Supreme Court decision or trends in the law, writing
profiles of interesting people in the law and just covering the industry in general.
Luber: Interesting.
So can you describe to us how the role of editor would differ from the role of reporter,
both in the day-to-day work as well as the lifestyle of the job?
Jill: Yeah, that’s a great question.
Let me just start, a reporter generally is somebody who, really, his primary responsibility
is writing and they may have responsibility for coming up with their own story ideas or
taking assignments from editors and doing the story idea.
And they may have a certain quota every day if you’re working for a daily newspaper,
for example.
You may have a quota of stories you have to write every day; you have to cover a beat,
which means a certain topic or subject area and turn in a certain number of stories.
Working for a monthly magazine, we’re probably a bit slower pace; we don’t have as many
stories but we’re also thinly staffed like everybody else is these days, so we’re doing
more with less.
As an editor I, on occasion, write.
I guess I have the benefit and the luxury of being a little bit choosy if I want to
write something or I want to assign it out.
I have a lot of responsibilities, planning…actually editing, taking copy in - raw copy that comes
in and working with it and rewriting it and working with reporters.
I do that on a daily basis.
And a constant responsibility to come up with content for the magazine.
I’m not the only editor; we all have those responsibilities, but it’s a lot of pressure
to always come up with current, interesting copy and that requires a lot of time, research,
talking to people, being out in the street.
Luber: Alright, so that should give you a little taste of what it’s like to work in
journalism.
If you’re watching on YouTube and this was helpful, please give us the thumbs up!
And if you want to see the full interview with Jill, come on over to JDCOT.com - I’ll
throw a link right there – and you’ll hear Jill talk about things like a typical
day, who makes the right fit for this path, how to break in and lots more.
Make sure you join our membership – so that way you get access to all the helpful video
content and the transcripts.
Thanks again for watching everybody.
I’m Marc Luber and I’ll see you soon.