One of the ways to get yourself known to an editor is to think about your professional area of expertise and to link this with the diving world, to produce something no-one has come up with yet. Or maybe they did a few years ago, and this time you can do a better job. Some ideas:
As a pharmacist - you could put together an article about things you must pack in your diving first aid kit.
If you are gardener, you could compare the layout of coral gardens and how to best view them with land based gardens (David Domoney has just done this in this months DIVER magazine)
And if you have an educational background you could evaluate diving related training courses (this is my particular area of expertise, see my review of Maria Munn's photography course in March 2008's DIVER magazine).
In all of these cases, you are rightly portraying yourself as an expert to produce what one editor I know calls, "the stuff I didn't know I wanted."
So what next?
A previous attendee on one of my seminars has a background in hydrogeology, so after a recent exchange of e-mails, she is looking to take up my advice and put something together about rock formations.
Another attendee is an accountant, we spoke about an article looking at the financial pitfalls of making your hobby your career - "Run your own dive business? Ten pitfalls to avoid." Throw in a few case studies and you are bound to find an editor who will pick that one up.
The common denominator - you are selling yourself as an expert. Everyone in the media loves them, especially when there is a disaster. Following an earthquake there is always some obscure professor on the news or in the newspapers answering questions about why last night the earth really did move.
With all of this in mind, I'm still wondering what Bob, our very own expert rocket scientist from NASA will come up with?
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Brendan
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