A Dream Realized

By Kelly Carr
April 9, 2009 06:00 PM

Sara Murray had her sights set on The Wall Street Journal, so in her freshman year at the University of Maryland she drove to a job fair hoping to score an interview with a recruiter.

Murray got her chance. But the interview didn’t go exactly as planned. In fact, the recruiter listed why she wasn’t cut out for an internship at The Wall Street Journal. Get more breaking news experience, a better understanding of business journalism terms and develop a habit of reading papers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times every single day, the recruiter said.

“I really wanted to work for The Wall Street Journal and the recruiter told me all the reasons I wasn’t qualified to work there,” Murray said. “She crushed my hopes.”

At this point, many aspiring journalists might have given up. They may have believed that the recruiter was right, that they in fact weren’t equipped for a job at their dream publication. Maybe some would opt for a new career path altogether. Not Murray.

Murray took the recruiter’s suggestions as a challenge and from that first interview she worked to be the kind of reporter that The Wall Street Journal would want on its staff. She set herself in motion so that in a few years, they would come looking for her.

“I knew the journal was sort of the place to be for business writing, the number one place you could end up,” Murray said.

She got moving, first snagging a gig at her hometown newspaper in Mount Pleasant, Mich. where she wrote business profiles. Then working on a health industry newsletter, which taught her how to navigate through unfamiliar terminology and subjects. She later got an internship through the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism on the business desk at The Arizona Republic and covered mortgage companies going under. And there was another internship at The Baltimore Sun.

“I started doing it (writing about business) because people were intimidated by it,” Murray said. “When I wrote those business profiles it was like a three part series and I thought it was the most awesome thing I ever wrote. The reason I got to do them was because no one else on the staff wanted to do it. I thought if no one else wants to do this then I’m competing against way less people.”

As Murray traveled around the country increasing her knowledge of business journalism, her goal of someday getting a job at The Wall Street Journal was still in the back of her mind. She sent e-mails periodically to the same recruiter she met as a freshman, letting her know about the skill set she was developing. She would hit jobs fairs to get face time with the recruiter, sharing her clips and detailing her internships. She continued to apply for internships at The Wall Street Journal, although she never landed one.

But in the winter 2007, Murray’s college career was coming to a close and she needed a full-time job. That’s when she ran into recruiter from The Wall Street Journal. She said the paper had an open news assistant position and they thought Murray was a perfect fit.

This was the day she’d waited for. But even though Murray had reached her goal, the decision to accept the job wasn’t automatic. In the end, she decided to once again work her way up the ladder.

“First, I started as a news assistant, doing research and it was risk because there was no guarantee that I would be able to produce my own content,” Murray said. “There is always a trade off being the little fish in the big sea, but ultimately it’s The Wall Street Journal. The bottom line is that you need a real good reason to not work at The Wall Street Journal if you want to work in business journalism and they come knocking “

Over the last year, Murray, 23, has begun to find her place among her peers at the paper. She covered the election, keeping a close eye on how the economic swing states voted. Now she’s working to tell the stories of the country’s employment woes, trying to find the human tales behind the numbers.

She admits it was “the coolest thing” to get her business cards, the final document that proves she’s an employee at The Wall Street Journal. There are other times too when she's reminded how far she’s come.

“Last week I was writing about people who are unemployed and I went to this job fair in rural Pennsylvania,” Murray said. “They thought it was so cool that a reporter from The Wall Street Journal was there. It kind of hits you again how cool it is to be working at The Wall Street Journal when you are this young.”

Want to read of Murray’s work? Check out these stories:

Unemployed Lose Fallback Options
Demand for Low-Wage Jobs Benefits Employers
New M.B.A. Job Search Leads Right to the Government's Door

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism