On Tuesday we talked about becoming a blogger and sneaking into the journalism profession through the back door, but today we’re going to talk about the “legit route.” The Associated Press is world’s largest and oldest news-gathering organization, and for that reason it’s probably one of the most respected names in journalism.

Technically, the AP is a not-for-profit cooperative. So, you might be saying, “stick these guys with the other non-profits on the weekends!” Since the cooperative is owned by the contributing newspapers, radio stations, and television stations, we think we’ve put the AP and its entry-level jobs in the right place.

Basically, the AP is the news. Go pick up a newspaper and see how many times they get the byline. So if you want to get into any type of journalism, there is no better place that the Associated Press. Wikipedia does a much better job of telling the AP’s history, so we’ll send you there for that and get right down to jobs.

We love-love-love the way the Associated Press’ jobs landing page (before you get on their careers site) breaks down their opportunities. For Students… For Word People… For Picture People… For Graphics People… For Radio People… For Television People… For Online People… For Technology People… For Sales People… For Administrative People… Each has a description about the opportunities for the specified types of people. It manages to be extremely inviting to all job seekers, while at the same time delivering a tailored message to 10 different audiences (but seriously, who considers himself administrative?). The one unfortunate thing is that these descriptions don’t have a link to a page with specific opportunities for each. That would be an absolutely killer implementation. AP are you listening?

From the landing page, we headed to the AP’s main careers site, which struck fear in our hearts. After such a welcoming intro, we were faced with the ugliness of having to register to search their job opportunities… or so we thought. We actually found a tiny little link that will allow you to search jobs – there’s no need to register unless you want to apply. From there you can show all jobs and be on your merry way…

Or you can just go straight to the entry-level friendly jobs that we hand picked for our wonderful, soon to be college graduate readers. If you’re into Technology, take a look at the openings for Business Product Analyst, Order Processing Specialist, Taxonomy Developer, and Tier 1 Product Support Specialist. For techies with great communications skills, there’s a job as the Intranet Manager. And the future journalists in the group will be happy to see jobs such as APTN Newsperson, Online Video Network Product Specialist, and Medical/Science Writer. These jobs are in a variety of big city locations, but the majority are in New York City.

We have a feeling that many of the more news-y jobs at the Associated Press are actually at the local bureaus. So, if you’ve figured out where you want to live after graduation, you can use the AP contact page to inquire about job opportunities at any of the local bureaus. If you can’t figure out where you want to live, why not try contacting them all? Report back in the comments section about which bureaus have entry-level openings and help your fellow job searchers.

Note: On April 23rd we revisited entry-level jobs at the Associated Press.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• The Associated Press Home Page
• The AP’s Jobs Landing Page
• The AP Careers Site
• About the AP
• The AP FAQ
• Wikipedia on the AP

What do you think is the better way into journalism? A first job at the Associated Press? Blogging on your own? Or a combination of the two?

We've identified Associated Press as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• journalism
• New York
• newspaper
• photography
• radio
• television

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