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How to start a career in journalism….

18th April 2008 by Helena 8 Comments  

In order to break into journalism in England I was forced to become a financial journalist on leaving university. This was not, as you can imagine, my natural environment. I worked for the gripping title ‘Trade Finance Magazine’ which shortly after I joined became ‘Project and Trade Finance Magazine’. You can imagine my relief. I am still unsure of the difference between the two.

Anyway, for ten years I struggled on, despite an inauspicious start. I got back from my first ever meeting to find my editor fielding a call from the person I had interviewed who had called to ask her why she had sent “this bimbo who knows less than nothing about trade finance” to interview him.

Finally I gave up journalism altogether, only to reinvent myself as the Sunday Times French Mistress and lifestyle journalist years later.

I have now broken into French journalism which is extremely exciting. Barring the obvious problem that I am unable to write French I think it will go swimmingly. I am a columnist (which is rather like going straight in at number one) for a magazine called Santé.

My first column is Me and my foot cream. I feel I have finally found my level….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008


Filed Under: France, Journalism, Style, blog --> Tagged With: career, journalism, start

8 thoughts on How to start a career in journalism....

  • linda says:
    18th April 2008 at 7:10 pm

    go for it helena! well done! will you have to write it in french? i’ve just finished to hell in high heels and found it really enjoyable and helpful(i am 59). but please will you write that book about italian women!i lived in rome for many years and i’m still trying to work out why i can never look as good as the women i saw in italy…even the older ones !

  • helena says:
    18th April 2008 at 9:18 pm

    Hi Linda
    I will write it in English and my lovely friend Jacques who translated Two Lipsticks and a Lover will translate it. I have been thinking about the Italian book (as has the publisher) but we will have to see how To Hell goes first. I’m so glad you enjoyed it. Meanwhile I am working on a novel.
    Hx

  • Bob says:
    19th April 2008 at 5:23 am

    Don’t be so hard on yourself: I well recall that seminal piece you wrote on the dutch flower market. “You have to get up early to visit the dutch flower market in Antwerp…” That was the intro. Can hardly be bettered!

  • jules ritter says:
    20th April 2008 at 11:22 am

    H,
    I have had a week of sending off pitches into the cyber-space dustbin but I did get a reply from Easyjet Magazine! Lovely Piers the Editor there decided that my excellent, funny piece (ok my words) on the Swiss and their recycling habits as seen from the frontlines of a Brit living in a Swiss village was too “observational” (er yes..funny that) and “chatty”.
    Do you think I should break it to him that he is working for Easyjet?

    See http://julesritter.com/?p=212 and please let me know whether Piers is right.

    I’d take a column on foot cream any day.

    Jules Ritter

  • Expatmum says:
    21st April 2008 at 5:53 pm

    I gave up sending query letters in a few years ago as the bloody letter and/or proposal was harder to write than the piece itself. Well done for persevering!

  • Irene says:
    5th May 2008 at 9:11 am

    Ah, felicitations, alors! Life is too long to be just one person!

  • Peggy says:
    4th June 2008 at 7:55 pm

    When I looked at the cover, I thought your inaugural piece might be “Je suis bipolaire”.
    Just kidding!

    Greetings from sunny (not) Seattle. I’m still doing that facial fitness routine.

  • helena says:
    4th June 2008 at 8:26 pm

    I see your point (pardon pun)…Glad you’re still doing the exercises.
    Hx

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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