Business journalism advice from someone older than his years

Zac Bissonnette currently writes for AOL Money & Finance sites WalletPOP.com, DailyFinance.com and BloggingStocks.com.

His first book, “Debt-Free U,” will be published later this year by Penguin. He’s also written for the Boston Globe.

Bissonnette is also a junior art history major at the University of Massachusetts.

On CollegeBizJournalism.org, Bissonnette offers some advice to those considering a career in business journalism, including e-mailing people whose work you admire.

Bissonnette writes, “Fifty years ago, this wouldn’t have worked: You would have had to send a letter, hope it didn’t get lost in the mail, and then hope a secretary would forward it on. Then you had to hope that the person you were looking to get in touch with read it and felt like typing/dictating a letter, addressing an envelope, and spending the cost of a stamp on you.

“Today, people get e-mails on their phones, and it takes less than two minutes to send a detailed response to someone who is young, eager and smart. You can’t be cynical about this and just get in touch with people as a compulsive networker. But if you really do admire someone’s work, e-mail them. You’ll be shocked at how often they’ll respond.

“Specialize early. The great thing about financial journalism is that, unlike most other fields, there is a financial component to every beat. The business of politics, the business of art, the business of reality TV, etc. etc. etc. Even if you don’t land your first job in a niche that is of particular interest to you, builiding up a file of clips that show strong knowledge of a narrow and interesting beat will impress prosective employers — and increase your odds of landing work in a field that really does interest you.”

Read more here.