Laura Bergus

Today the controversial US News law school rankings dropped (well, ok, they’ve been leaked online for a few days…). I’m not going to comment on the ridiculousness of the rankings and how they distort what would otherwise be a competitive system. I’m just going to point out that there’s a picture of me in the current issue of US News. :) There’s also a rather awkwardly-worded quote at the end, about the importance of following and commenting on blogs (something I’ve been preaching for a while). In any case, I’ll take the publicity. After all, this is print, and it’s print that reaches thousands of men over the age of 50. Ooooh.

Several people have asked me how I happened to end up in a national magazine, so here’s the story:

In February I got an email and follow-up call from Jessica Rettig, US News reporter, who had found me online through Legal Geekery (go Josh!). She and I talked twice, at length, about how law students can use social media to connect with experts in their interest areas, present themselves as intelligent humans, and maybe even discover a meaningful career. Obviously that story won’t sell as many magazines as the “OMG law school is ’spensive and there are no jobs!!!!1″ story that I ended up being quoted in, but such is the media business.

In March US News flew a photographer out from Maryland. To my house. In Iowa. The photographer was Jeffrey MacMillan, a first-class news veteran (note the pictures of presidents, senators, etc. on his website…) who’s now focusing on helping colleges and universities visually promote themselves. (So, any law schools out there who might want alumni coverage in the DC area, drop him a line.) He spent the day with my daughter and me, taking pictures for about five hours. Being a good photojournalist, he’d done some research on me and had even watched some of the video I directed about homelessness in Iowa, and was impressed with the quality of my video work. That little tidbit made my day. He also had great stories of campaign coverage and politics in Washington. When we went to Iowa City’s famous Hamburg Inn for lunch, he pointed to Bill Clinton’s official presidential portrait on the wall and said, “I had lunch with the guy that took that just the other day.” Very cool.

This is a social media success story. (Thanks to my Twitter friend Omar Ha-Redeye for pointing that out, clichéd as it may be.) If nothing else, it’s evidence of the point that most journalists start with Google, and if you’ve made any kind of SEOed name for yourself in a particular field, they can, and will, find you online.