How networking helped land most of my jobs

This continues my series on professional networking.

I credit my skills and hard work for most of the success I’ve achieved professionally. But my professional network has helped tremendously, too.

In this post, I’m going to run through the jobs I’ve landed and explain how my network helped me get most (but not all) of the jobs in my career:

Because my mother read the newspaper …

Chuck Offenburger, right, gave me my first job in journalism back in 1971.

I was on a canoe trip in the summer of 1971, between my junior and senior years of high school, when my mother read a notice in the Evening Sentinel that Sports Editor Chuck Offenburger was looking for a sports writer. I didn’t know Chuck, and had no network connection to him. But Mom called the notice to my attention. I applied and I got the job (and Chuck and I remain friends).

But the network connection that mattered here was my mother. I’m not a fan of nepotism or family interference, which didn’t happen here. Mom didn’t even know Chuck. But she tipped me off to the first job of my journalism career. And Mimi has alerted two of our sons to opportunities that led to jobs for them. Listen to your mom.

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Iqbal Tamimi inspires me and her son surprises me

Iqbal Tamimi

I have never met Iqbal Tamimi, but she inspired me when I connected with her seven years ago.

We connected digitally then and I was amazed and delighted to get an update on her last week.

My first blog, from 2004 to 2008, was Training Tracks, published first on No Train, No Gain and later at the American Press Institute‘s website. It didn’t draw nearly the traffic or the comments that I get on this blog, but one comment stands out.

Iqbal commented on one of my posts (alas, the original post, with the comments, is not available online any more, but I wrote a subsequent post that recounted our exchange in the comments and subsequent emails). Here are some passages about Iqbal from the second blog post:

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A salute to the American Press Institute (and hope for a prosperous future)

I have been expecting some sort of change for the American Press Institute for more than a year. But today’s news that API is merging with the Newspaper Association of America Foundation still hit me with a wave of fondness and nostalgia.

I won’t speculate on the future, except to express my hope that the new organization serves the news business as well over the next 65 years as API has for the past 65. And to hope that it continues to employ my remaining API colleagues.

And I won’t dwell on the decline of API. It serves the newspaper industry, which has been in a freefall. I don’t know what could have been done to prevent the decline of an institute tied to an industry whose primary revenue source was declining. I have noted before that the industry did not do enough to follow the advice we presented in the Newspaper Next project. But I wish some newspapers would have tried everything we advocated. I think the business and API would be doing much better.

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