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Editor & Publisher (and everybody else)

© Daryl Lease

I recall my first encounter with Editor & Publisher magazine some years ago. I was an intern at a newspaper, and there was a copy lying around the office, so I picked it up and thumbed through the articles and the extensive listing of helped-wanted ads.

A good magazine for somebody starting out in the field, I thought, maybe I ought to subscribe.

So I flipped to the subscription information and -- yow-zah -- quickly determined I'd have to be an editor or a publisher to afford it. I don't remember what it was going for then, but it's now $75 for a year (half-price for students). I guess that's not a bad rate for a weekly publication, but I suspect it would take a huge bite out of what most journalists budget for magazine subscriptions each year.

You can always do what I did for years -- find that free copy of E&P lying around the office. Or, thanks to the Internet, you can look it up free online at http://www.editorandpublisher.com, and -- if you need a prompt, like I do -- even receive a free, weekly e-mail update of what's new at the Web site.

A few years ago, E&P posted only a small sampling of its articles online, but the selection has grown to a substantial portion of the print content. You'll find links to a dozen or so industry-related stories, plus links to other online articles of interest to journalists.

The magazine's columnists are also online and updated weekly. Dave Astor's Syndicate World makes for lively and informative reading, as does Steve Outing's Stop the Presses! The latter column is a must for journalists who make all or part of their living on the Web.

The site also features a well-designed section where you can look up newspapers and other publications around the world, along with journalism organizations and other sites of particular interested to the media.

And, of course, there's the classified section, where you can look for work. Unfortunately, there's no search function enabling you to zero in on location or type of job. (As far as I know, the best spot for that is still the American Journalism Review at http://ajr.newslink.org/joblink/ ).

I recently signed up for the free e-mail update from E&P, available in html or text formats. I suspect it will prove useful. I've subscribed to too many e-mail alerts in recent years, and I end up deleting some before I ever read them. From my brief exposure to E&P's weekly letter, though, the service looks like a keeper, if only as a reminder to check Outing's column or see what stories have been posted since I last looked.