I know it's a competitive market for career growth in this field, but our generation needs to take the lead in teaching younger students -- even now, while we're still technically competing for entry-level jobs ourselves.

That's why I find this offer from the Winston-Salem Journal to be very encouraging. If you're working or interning at a media outlet, see if your editor has a similar program. If not, think about starting one.

Labels: clips, college_media, editors, education, internships, journalism, portfolio, skills, teens, young journalists

This, by far, is the most addicting thing ever.

It brings up an interesting topic, though. Do you guys at BGSU consider this type of work journalism? At Ohio University, they put the students who aspire to do this type of work in the in the school of telecommunications or in visual communications, which in no way has any affiliation with our J-school. I think it's bull.

If you watch a good one, let us know by posting it in comments.

Labels: college_media, flash, journalism, media, multimedia, online, video

We're finally getting soundslides down here at my mid-sized paper. If you don't have it, you most likely will within six months: It's cheap and handy.

Since we're getting it, I figured this was a good time to put a bit of a public service message out there to anyone going into newspapers: You'll likely be using this product, so spend a few minutes to use it correctly.

I've been looking at soundslides presentations since The State News at MSU started doing their own groundbreaking, home-grown versions, and one thing has disturbed me a ton: Most papers leave captions turned off. For example: This or this. They're nice, but they lack default access to a layer of information that would be easy to provide.

I had always thought that this was a flaw of the soundslides software until I saw this. In the first two (and most other examples available), captions are hidden behind a button, if they're available at all. In the third, captions are automatically turned on.

Now I know that we have a choice (which, incidentally, is what convinced us to finally purchase the product).

We can try to be TV stations (we'll fail), or we can be the next step in what was formerly known as print media, with a blend of images, sounds, text to provide information and links to even more information. Newspapers' strength has always been their ability to provide exactly as much context as a reader wants, whether he or she is browsing the headlines or reading a 48-inch story all the way through, complete with breakout boxes. Now it's up to us in the next generation to keep that context available instead of letting it wither.

Do you think we're up to the task?

Labels: career_advise, college_media, education, flash, journalism, maestro, media, multimedia, news, newspapers, online, story_planning, student_press, video

For photographers and page designers, there are quite a few Web sites on the Internet where you can build your own online portfolio.

Doing this will help your internship hunt tremendously. It's a low-cost way to organize and present your work. When you get an editor's attention, they can quickly see your work online instead of waiting for the mail, and losing focus of you in the meantime.

It's also an easy way to show off your work to family and friends who don't get to regularly see the print versions.

The most popular page design site is News Page Designer, this is where all the professional designers have their portfolios.
One very nice up-and-comer is College Front Page. There both photographers and designers can build their own CFP Personals Page, which shows off your work in a very nice revolving slideshow, complete with detailed captions you can type explaining your thoughts for each piece.
CFP Personals also is a bit more fun, it's sort of like the Facebook of journalism portfolio sites.
Photobucket is one of the more popular free sites for amateur photographers.

Regardless of where you build an online portfolio, you'll need to make your pages into much smaller jpg or pdf images. News Page Designer has a tip sheet on how to do this.

Labels: applications, applying, career_advise, clips, college_media, editors, flash, internships, job hunt, media, multimedia, newspapers, online, portfolio, resumes, skills, snd

For most student journalists, the dreamy goal that drew us into this major was writing or broadcasting for some big, extravagant city newspaper or television station. But at the end of 2006, those were the media outlets going through more financial pains than any other in the U.S.

And so it makes a late January piece by the Poynter Institute, titled "Tighter Budgets Slashing Internships," all the more logical. Big metro papers especially are reporting cuts to their internship programs for 2007, unlike any in recent memory. Metro tv news stations aren't making the same slashes, primarily because broadcast journalism students have been willing to work unpaid internships for much longer than print students have (click the title link above to read the complete story, in all its grueling, interesting detail).

We could debate why it's foolish for these papers to cut intern slots -- they're basically failing to train us youngsters properly, and we're the people who may feasibly bring new ideas that could save their sorry butts. But let's focus on what we can control: Pursuing the internships that are available, and learning how to separate ourselves from the pack, in an ever-growing crowd of competition.

Since the mid-1990's, the number of students who've majored in journalism nationwide has increased every single year, through today in 2006-07. That's odd don't ya think? It directly contrasts the dwindling job openings, as this profession goes through a big transition. Most of these students come in dreaming of being the next Anderson Cooper, but will later embrace a public relations opening, or non-profit work (both growing job sectors). But right now, a majority are in the same competitive internship race that you may be in.

So how do you stand out? By starting earlier in college, and realizing the big prize won't be handed to you. Those small community dailies and weeklies are a great place for a freshman or sophomore to work at during the summer. Develop a strategy where you target the papers around your home, or in the cities where relatives live (those you could stand to crash with for the summer, anyways). The days of a sophomore or junior being accepted at a big metro paper after one, or zero previous internships will be gone soon. You will be at a great disadvantage if you wait until junior year to get serious about internships.

Also, print students who do start early should realize a lot of these small papers may not be able to pay much, if at all. That's ok, work there anyways. Broadcast students have been working unpaid for more than a decade. Nobody likes this, even some editors in the Poynter article say hell will freeze over before they don't pay an intern. But it's the reality of working your way up in life.

The Poynter article also says that online and multimedia skills are considered gold by the editors when they choose an intern. That's not really a news flash. Our generation is supposed to be the pioneers of these "new media" efforts. If your journalism program isn't aggressively trying to train you in online, multimedia and convergence efforts, then they are stealing your money. Stand up and demand this training, and go work at the student newspaper and try to figure it out yourself in the meantime while the professors get their acts together.

This week, the beginning of February, is the hottest time for internship application deadlines. If you read this article and feel like you need to get your act together, there's still time. Go to a veteran editor at the student newspaper, or a professor you trust, for advice on how to develop an internship hunting strategy immediately.
Or feel free to e-mail me at bobmoser333@yahoo.com. I'm eager to stay up late into the night to help you polish a resume, craft a killer cover letter, and blow your competition out of the water.

-- Bob Moser
Business Reporter, The Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, La.)
Bowling Green State University journalism grad, May 2006

Labels: college_media, internships, job hunt, resumes, skills, young journalists

After seeing the latest development in the Zach Fox saga unfold, I have to wonder how this will affect Fox's career. I'm sure he meant to stir things up, but probably not to the point of getting negative national attention. It brings a few questions:

-How revolutionary can college journalists be if they're worried about their future careers?

-Does this scare true revolutionaries away from even trying for journalism and journalism-related degrees?

-Am I reading too much into this? Most likely. I'm guessing most college writers and editors don't really worry about this type of thing.

Finally, would this specific event have happened if the USC paper was financially independent? I must admit, I was a bit surprised to see a school-dependent student paper in a media market as large as the one surrounding USC. Even Toledo's student paper has taken a decent stab at going it alone financially; why not USC's?

Labels: campus, college_media, financially_independent, fox, newspapers, student_press, usc