by: Becca Langford

Reed Strength has accomplished what many mass communication students dream of doing – from interning at Paste Magazine and interviewing famous musicians to copywriting for a billion dollar company, he is a UM success story. 

Graduating in 2016 with a concentration in multimedia journalism, Strength said his time at UM was complicated. Due to faculty changes, he felt as though he didn’t have adequate support in some areas, and credits student-run publication, The Alabamian for much of his success. 

During his time at UM, Strength served as staff writer his freshman year, managing editor his sophomore year and editor in chief his junior and senior year. 

“That just taught me a lot, it was sort of my gym, and writing was like working out for me,” said Strength. “I had to write something every week for The Alabamian, and just that sense of repetition really, really helped me and made me the strong writer I am today.”

Strength has worked for Shipt as a copywriter since September 2018.

When applying for the copywriting position, he didn’t have a ton of direct marketing or copywriting experience, but what got him the job was how large his portfolio was, in major part due to The Alabamian.

“I was like whatever you need written, I can do it. I don’t have perfect experience but I’ve got the skills to get there” said Strength. 

He said he was surprised how “different but the same” copywriting is from journalism. As a journalist you are focusing on clarity and conciseness, and you want a wide range of people to be able to understand what you are writing – you want what you are reporting on to be direct and clear. 

Copywriting is similar because you are often trying to craft a message, or an email subject line, or a social post that entices someone to click and is also understandable by a large swath of people. 

“I think that’s what I’ve really enjoyed about it. It’s using skills that I’ve learned as a news writer at The Alabamian in kind of a different way where I’m not reporting news but using those principles of clarity and concision to craft these different messages that Shipt needs,” said Strength. 

He says unless you are in the know, you wouldn’t know the full breadth of things a copywriter is responsible for. 

Strength does everything from write emails for promotions and sales, social copy for all channels and sometimes social media, scripts for videos, blogs, and even hosts a food fact web show. 

“It is really super diverse as far as different writing styles and formats you can get your hands on go,” said Strength, “I never get bored, there’s always something new to learn,” 

Strength, however, warns that it isn’t always the easiest job in the world. 

In copywriting, you have editing in the same way you do journalism, but instead of it being one editor who serves as a filter for things, you are dealing with stakeholders who do not necessarily have experience with writing. 

“Sometimes they will give you feedback that’s not grammatically correct or is just not something you deal with as an editor,” said Strength. “It doesn’t totally suck, but you have to take feedback well and have to learn how to have a backbone for your work, but also know when you’re wrong and it isn’t your piece of writing to lord over. You sometimes have to give them concessions or decide if you want to die on this hill or not.”

Strength says the work is boring at times; it ebbs and flows. It reminds him of when he first came to write for The Alabamian and wanted to do music writing and the editor told him they would give him space to do that, but he had to write news articles first. 

With every couple of boring projects, he gets to do one fun one. 

When discussing Strength’s career, a huge part of that starts with his love for music. 

In 2005, Strength heard Oakland, CA pop-punk band Green Day’s seventh studio album, American Idiot and it blew his mind. He had never experienced a piece of media that made him feel the way it did. He felt it was an outlet for all of the things he wished he could be – loud, brash, big. He was so enamored he had to find out everything about it – reading everything he could and watching every interview of the band he could find.

As he started to listen to more music, he continued that cycle. “It became an equal thing, I would listen to the music as much as I read about the music,” said Strength. “It was very parallel for me.”

This naturally got him into music journalism. He wanted to try his hand at being the one to write about the music he loved. 

It started out simple. He would go on Facebook, when they used to have the notes feature, and write his own album reviews. From there, he created his own blog where he had an essay series called “Bands I Thought I Hated” where he would take a band he thought he hated and give them an in-depth, critical listen to decide if he actually hated them and would write about the experience. 

By the time he got to UM, he befriended an upperclassmen who had read his blog, who then invited him to do music writing for an underground newspaper he formed called The Falcon. It was right after this when he joined The Alabamian. 

He started by doing music reviews in The Alabamian and would also cover bands who would come through the now closed Eclipse Books and Coffee, doing live reviews and sometimes interviews. Basically, anywhere he could put some thoughts or written word around music, he did. 

Strength says his big break happened when he messaged Jack Rabid, founder of indie punk rock magazine The Big Takeover, on Facebook.

“I guess I was feeling really brave,” joked Strength. “I was like ‘hey man, I’m a student journalist, I read the big takeover, and I think it’s really cool what you do. Do you guys have a website, and if so, could I ever copyedit anything or could I review anything?’ Basically, I was like if there’s any opportunity you can give me, if there’s any bone you throw me, please throw that bone.”

To his surprise, Rabid messaged back and said yes and that they always need help copyediting so if he would do that, he would give him a spot for three or four reviews if he wanted to. 

“I was gonna be in print – I was, like, are you serious?” said Strength. 

He did that, unpaid, for several years until he got access to The Big Takeover website and started doing reviews there. The biggest project being when he got to interview one of his favorite songwriters, Damien Jurado. He was coming out with an album, so Strength pitched and asked to interview him. 

“I still have the piece and I’m still proud of it. I did it my senior year.”

Strength used all of that plus all the other clips he gathered throughout college to land an unpaid summer internship with Paste Magazine in Decatur, GA, turning down a paid staff writer position at the Shelby County Reporter for it. 

He did it for the summer and got a lot of great contacts, but does have a piece of advice about working unpaid. 

There was an editor working at Paste during his internship who was hired on to cover the Rio Olympics. He reached out to the internship coordinator and requested one of his interns to write four articles for him a week about the olympics. 

Strength volunteered, seeing it as a good networking opportunity. 

The editor asked him how much he was being paid, and Strength told him he wasn’t. 

“He was like, okay, number one, my advice for you is to never write for free. If you can stand it,never ever write for free. Always put your value out there, always ask, always try to insist. If you don’t do it, no ones going to,” said Strength. He said if he was going to write for him, he was going to get paid. 

“Publications aren’t going to look out for you, you’ve got to look out for you.” says Strength. 

Later on, when pitching for another music magazine, he included his rate. They responded saying they don’t pay for reviews so he politely declined saying he didn’t write for free. 

The emailed back and said they totally understood, but would actually pay for this one review because the original writer was unable to. However, he continued to write for them and was paid for every story. “I always think, had I not put this out there that this is my standard and you have to meet that, I don’t know if they would have.”

As far as general advice goes, Strength says to ensure your resume is concise, spelled correctly, and fun to read. It is really important as a mass communication major, no matter your concentration, that you have examples of your work that you can show potential employers. 

“Ours is such a creative skill, and in any job you’re in, you’re going to be expected to do that skill all day every day to a pretty high standard and I think it’s important that if you are going to talk the talk, you can show that you walk the walk,” said Strength. 

He says it doesn’t have to be something published, it can just be your own blog. If you don’t have experience in, say, copywriting, but want to apply for a copywriting job, reinterpret ads you’ve seen and include those in your portfolio to show you have the skills to do it. 

Strength also recommends following editors and people you want to work for on twitter. He has seen many job postings and updated pitch guidelines by doing that. 

His final piece of advice is to know how to use social media. It’s more important than professional profiles. 

“Learn TikTok,” Strength laughs. “I know it sounds silly, but it is the most important thing currently. Learn TikTok.”