I'm Old-Fashioned

I have no online portfolio.

When I worked as a reporter for newspapers and trade magazines I had clips, something physical to show for my labors. I could take the best articles, cut them neatly and put them within the pages of my portfolio to show prospective employers.

When I became a copy editor, however, that became more difficult.

I would look at copy jobs on LinkedIn and would start filling out applications until I got to the part where I was asked to give the URL of my portfolio.

URL of my portfolio?

There are many things I no longer understand about a lot of things but I couldn't fathom how you took something that is not physical and put it in a portfolio with a URL. I never completed those applications and I still know nothing about virtual portfolios, especially for work that doesn't have my name on it.

Nowadays everything is online. Putting your life's work on a website you can share with a prospective employer is surely more convenient than the large portfolio book I used to lug around. As you would expect, there are companies you can pay to create your online portfolio. Or you can do it yourself, if you are so inclined. I was not.

Call me old-fashioned.

When I  worked for an electronic news service as a copy editor some things I edited showed up in the newspaper that was owned by the parent company. So I clipped those articles, maybe remember writing the clever headline or the not-so-great dealings with the reporter. But my name was never on these printed articles and to my mind were not worth putting into my portfolio. They are now in recycling.

(Vecteezy.com)

The same is true for my time working on an Internet publication covering the cryptocurrency industry. Until nearly the end of my time there copy editor names were not published. When we were told to add them this was not so much to honor our hard work as to show readers who to blame when they called to complain. Crypto bros are not shy about making their opinions known. They were complaining to the reporters who, in time-honored tradition, would blame the copy editors. So the company put our names out there so we would get the blame directly.

I saved none of those articles either.

One of my former co-workers helped me get a job for a short time at a business network website. I wrote short pieces based on TV interviews with people who would get the website a lot of eyeballs, which websites need to draw advertisers and survive. So there were quite a few interviews with Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, and conservative Republican Ron Paul, especially when he was running for president - for the third time - and calling for the end of the Federal Reserve. There were also quite a few write-ups of Donald Trump, back when he was well-known mainly for "The Apprentice," a reality show broadcast on the website's parent network. Here's one example.

Most of these articles are short and probably not worth saving. Thanks to the Internet, my work at this particular job is archived, which is why I can provide links on this post. But at the time I was working there I printed out all of these articles because keeping paper clippings was what I knew best. 

Now they lay in a box like so many dead trees. I'll be going through that box next. 

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