Angling Journalism

[Barnese]

Hey all,just wanted to pick your brains about something i've been interested in for a long time now.

I have always been interested in writing about my outings on the bank for a local newspaper/magazine or something similar. Not as a full time occupation but just as something i could do to pass the time.

I just wondered if anyone knew how to go about this?Is it just a case of writing an artical and sending it off to a couple of newspapers along with some pictures and see what happens?

[Nugg]

Of course one could always start here.

 

http://anglersnet.co.uk/cgi-bin/search.cgi?articles

[chevin]

I don't know how much things have changed since I lived in the UK, but when I started writing for magazines I first wrote topical letters for the letter page. If you can get involved in some good discussions and show that you have something to offer, then so much the better. Once your name has appeared a few times, start writing articles and submit them to the magazines most likely to be interested in them. Don't excpect immediate acceptance and keep a copy of everything you submit. Eventually, you will have an article accepted if your subject matter is what is required and if the editor thinks your writing will entertain his readers. As your acceptance rate increases, drag out the rejected items and re-assess them. It might be that they were only rejected because of your style - which may have changed with experience - in which case it might be possible to modify them and resubmit them successfully. Once you are having material published on a fairly regular basis, go and see the editors of any of the local papers in your area which do not have an angling columnist. It is quite likely that an editor of such a publication knows nothing about fishing, so take along some examples of your published work and then sell to him the idea of his paper having an angling column. Those papers don't pay a lot, but the columns are easy to do, in fact you can get your material given to you each week just by asking local clubs for weekly reports on match results, water reports and forthcoming events. Once you get on top of things, you will find it easy to run several of those columns each week as each one will take just a few minutes. At one time I was running three of them each week, doing some free-lance work for magazines and books as well as holding down a full time job.

 

Basically, the hard work is selling yourself and your work, it doesn't come easy but you get a great sense of achievement once you have succeeded.

[Barnese]

Thanks Chevin,although I am not particularly interested in how much money I will make from doing it, this was a great help!

I am going for a weeks barbel fishing on friday so will take my pad and pen an see what I can come up with!Also I'l start writing some letters as soon as I get the time.

There is a local weekly newspaper which do not have an angling section (but for some strange reason have a cricket one!) which I could approach, but also there is an angling section in the bristol evening post (not sure if you know the evening post stil!).Would it be worth writing to them??

[poledark]

I went straight in at the deep end, about 1960 and sent a piece to AT and it was published!! Never had an article refused from then until I stopped in the mid seventies.

 

So with all respect to Chevin ( great respect actually ) I would say keep it short and precise and send it off, most editors are pretty good at spotting potential.

Good luck,

Den

[Barnese]

Thanks a lot Den, I think that my writing is quite good..but then I may not think like an AT editor! I dont want to do anything big like that tho..just as a hobby alongside the fishing and then see where it goes

[poledark]

You see, you have already done it!!!! precise, to the point and nicely phrased

 

 

Den

[John Ellison]

I was our angling club's publicity officer for a few years. I started sending match reports to the local paper, and once I got to know the deadlines and the way the system worked. They printed everything I sent. One weekend the whole of the outdoor sporting calender was wiped out by a heavy fall of snow. We had a match on the trent and were half way to our pegs when snowflakes started falling like half crowns, and I had my 35mm slr with me. I phoned the sports editor and told him I'd a lengthy report and a roll of film

to develop, he nearly sent a car for me.

He was looking for copy, and I'd got it. It was a broadsheet at the time and I got a third of a page. I then penned angling articles relating to local angling issues for quite some years on a voluntary basis.

The sports editor would sent a cheque for a few beers at christmas. This annoyed the odd 'better anglers than I would ever be' but I had put myself out, they had not.

As a child I used to read John Nevilles articles in the Derbyshire times. My grandmother used to send them in her weekly letter to my mother.

Many years later, I met him fishing at Ladybower. What a gentleman. We agreed on one thing. You can make some serious enemies if you are not careful.

Never put anyones name to anything unless you are saying something good about them. I'd get photo's of mates in with their good catches. Cost ( a pint ). I always had plenty of takers.

I even had some fan mail sent to the letters

page, that gives you a lift.

I never professed to be anything flash, I still don't. I enjoyed my fishing and I enjoyed writing about it. Our club secretary was a headmaster and he thought my articles were brilliant. If you can fit it into your life and have an apptitude for it, do it.

[chevin]

poledark:

I would say keep it short and precise and send it off, most editors are pretty good at spotting potential.

Good luck,

Den

Yes, the short and precise bit is very good advice. Some writers do have the ability to pad their work and make it entertaining, but most make it look exactly what it is - padding! There is one more piece of advice I would offer, and that is to read articles by a lot of different writers. You will come to appreciate the different styles and while it is a mistake to try and copy someone else's style, you will find that you can work along some lines better than others. From then on you begin to develop your own.

 

I guess there is one point I had forgotten, and that is that if you have been posting here and at other sites, you have already had the opportunity to see your work in "Print" and read it after you have despatched it. I don't know about Den, but when I first started writing I was perfectly happy with what I had written until I saw it in print, then I could immediately see where improvements could have been made. It was some time before I was as happy with it in print as I was when I had posted it!

 

[ 22. July 2003, 07:12 AM: Message edited by: chevin ]

[Peter Sharpe]

It is a great shame, but there are few outlets for creative writing in angling magazines these days. Most of the current mags seem content with reproducing identikit pieces that are in either the how-to-do-it format, or else blatant plugs for bait companies or tackle manufacturers.

 

I wrote a couple of articles of the type you are talking about for David Hall's Coarse Fisherman in the 1980's. At that time the magazine featured highly entertaining features from the likes of Chris Binyon, Mike Winney, Jim Gibbinson and Rod Hutchinson. Rod's articles at that time were often hilarious, but still managed to be informative. There were many other writers featured who all had one or two good stories in them, but sadly, many youngsters will never have had the chance to read anything written in that style. I suppose Waterlog is the only magazine to publish story tellers in recent years, although I haven't seen it in a newsagents for a couple of years now.