gaperry59,
No, I have not written for a newspaper. By the time I started started making a good chunk of my living freelance writing for magazines in the late 1970s, newspapers didn't pay freelance writers enough to compete for my time.
Back then, I was writing about fishing as much as hunting--especially flyfishing. The local Missoula newspaper's outdoor editor offered me an assignment to flyfish a local steam of my choice for a day, while a staff photographer took pictures. Then I could write an article for the paper, which would take at least a day--and they'd pay me $75. Even back then the smallest magazines I wrote for paid better--and I was also selling (somewhat erratically, though several times a year) articles for $250 to over $1000.
