Sure, the Times has a reputation for tending to offer jobs to young writers with the right pedigree, but the paper's NFL writer Karen Crouse proves that a reporting job at the highfalutin' paper can still be earned the hard way. Crouse said that, prior to a surprise call from the Times in 2005, she felt "as if I was flying so far under the radar I was practically invisible. I've never been a shouter or a self-promoter, and in a profession rife with both, I thought that being conscientious and doing good work would only get me so far, that to ascend any higher required politicking or some secret handshake or both." Crazytalk! Here's the list of all but one Crouse's nine different newspaper gigs over the course of nearly 20 years, cribbed from a very good interview with the writer on the Big Lead:

  • Through 1988: "part-time job... at an afternoon paper in northern California"
  • 1988: Hired over the phone to a paper in Florida, but job disappears in the two and a half days in which Crouse is driving out from California. "I'll never forget the subsequent meeting I had with this editor and his boss, who said it was my problem that I drove all the way to Florida 'in the hopes' of being offered a job." (Count this as one of the nine gigs, though it's not clear if Crouse included it in her own tally.)
  • Crouse is unemployed for four months. The journalism dean at USC gives her career advice: "He told me my 'problem' was that I had 'wasted' all my summers in college swimming when I could have been doing internships."
  • Crouse applies to work as a Club Med swim instructor. Seriously considers taking the job over an offer from the...
  • Riverside Press-Enterprise, part-time sports reporting, 1988.
  • Summer 1988: Full-time high school sports reporting for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Paper stops publishing in 1989.
  • Within a month, takes job at Orange Country Register covering "the UCLA beat, the Mighty Ducks and the Olympics."
  • 1997: Columnist for LA Daily News. When she gets an offer from another paper, her editor tells her she should stay at the Daily News because of the "'LA market'... he might have said because I was valued at the paper or had connected with the readers."
  • 2001: Palm Beach Post, which "restored my love of journalism by returning it in kind."
  • 2005: New York Times Jets beat. "When I interviewed at the Times, it didn't even matter if I got the job. It felt like a huge victory just to be in the mix – like the wallflower getting asked to the prom by the most popular boy in school."

Big Lead: The Coles Story and a Drive to Florida: An Interview with New York Times NFL Writer Karen Crouse