Stephen Gutowski

Conservatives first took notice of Stephen Gutowski in 2008 during the Sarah Palin email hacking scandal when he theorized on his blog The College Politico that David Kernell could be confirmed as hacker “Rubico” based on screenshots the hacker sent out of his crime.

A close look at the tabs open in Rubico’s screen show that, Kernell, who was later convicted for the crime, was viewing an article about the Palins on the conservative site Newsbusters at the time of the screenshot.

Although Newsbusters was unable to determine if Kernell was the hacker through Gutowski’s method, it did land him an internship there and eventually job with the news site’s parent company the Media Research Center.

“You’re never gonna make it big if you don’t try,” Gutowski said. “It might seem like a scary idea to go out and start your own blog, but it’s not as hard as you think.”

Gutowski, 25, says he met many of the conservative heavy hitters, like Michelle Malkin, at conferences like the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). His friendship with her helped land him a spot as one of the founding editors of Malkin’s hit news site Twitchy.

His advice to young people interested in landing jobs as paid, conservative bloggers or journalists (which he said there is obviously a need for) is to attend conventions like CPAC and to try different types of writing to figure out which style they are best at.

“If you have ideas, share them. If they are good, people will pick them up.”