It's been quiet for quite a while, so I just wanted to give a brief glimpse at a few of the resources I've discovered during the last several months:

- NextNewsroom (http://www.nextnewsroom.com/ -- not to be confused with the NewsroomNext project) - A college media group gets serious about modeling industry-wide change for others to emulate/adapt.

- News Videographer (http://newsvideographer.com/) - A good source of information for a new-to-video person like me.

- Shawn Smith's blog (http://www.newmediabytes.com/) - This fella is a producer at the news source for a good chunk of my old home state. Some of his ideas are intriguing.

- Wired Journalists (http://mediageeks.ning.com/) - If you have the google toolbar installed with Web Clips, this site's Yahoo-Pipes-based feed stream will get automatically installed, and it will keep you busy finding all sorts of new approaches to media. In fact, it's likely that if you watch this site's feed(s) for a bit, all three of the other sites will pop up.

Labels: journalism, media, multimedia, news, newspapers, newsrooms, organization, skills

Two of my friends are doing what a lot of people wish they could do if they only had the nerve.



They quit their jobs and travelled to a foreign country. They will live there for anywhere from 6 months until forever, telling the stories of the people they meet there.



No deadlines. No health insurance. No line counts. Just stories.



John Sutter, a former reporter at the Oklahoman, has set up shop in Madagascar.

Jessie Bonner, a former reporter at The Naples Daily News, calls Guatemala her home.



They are chronicling their travels at Post-A-Card, a Web site they've set up. The premise is based on a seminar we all attended a few years ago at Poynter. All the space you need to tell a good story can be found on the back of a post card.



These two are great journalists and it would be an understatement to say that I'm a little bit jealous of them.



Check out their work and submit some post cards of your own. I know I will.

After all, everyone has a story to tell.

Labels: journalism, young journalists

BRAVO USA Today! I still have faith in you.

Labels: journalism, newspapers, online

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 past weekend I attended the SPJ Region 4 conference in Detroit and bought my new favorite book, "The Dictionary of Concise Writing" by Robert Hartwell Fiske. I'm not usually the type to give free advertising but this book is wonderful.

I, like many young journalists, have a bad case of the wordiness. This dictionary is the solution. It allows you to look up more than 10,000 wordy phrases and find less cumbersome words to replace them. Some examples: "many" or "numerous" instead of "a lot of" and "disagree with" or "oppose" instead of "not in favor of." This book is my new best friend and I know I'll be passing it around the newsroom.

Labels: clips, education, journalism, skills, writing tips, 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

Former journalist Carl Sessions Step, who teaches at the University of Maryland and is senior editor of the American Journalism Review, wrote an interesting piece for this month's edition. The story focuses on the increasing frustration among young staffers at the Charlotte Observer about their paper's slow evolution. The Observer's under-30 workers seem scared about their futures in journalism. They wonder, will they still have jobs in 20 years? The layoffs and lack of job security in the industry, coupled with their paper's "discouraging progress" (read: few A1 stories that attract younger readers, more talk than action and editors' apparent refusal to adapt at the reader's pace ), seem to be making these young journos question their industry despite their passion for it. Toward the end of the article, Step gets a little more positive by focusing on some of the staff's efforts to have more impact in newsroom decisions and become part of the solution, rather than dwelling on the problems but I was a bit sad after I read this.

What do you think about the article? Do you think young journos should be as scared as those at the Observer? I'd like to think if we focus on the future possibilities available on the Web in the form of video, flash presentations, etc., we won't need to stress as much as elder journos would tell us.

Labels: career_advise, editors, journalism, media, newspapers, organization, teens

Read this New York Times story, titled All the World's a Story, and start the debate in our "Comments" field below.

Is journalism, reporting and news organizations better off as a free agency model? No real newsroom, no full-time reporters, instead you outsource the story. A free agent reporter is picked up for an assignment pitched by readers, who contribute the initial facts and lead maybe. They're calling it "Wiki-journalism."

I dunno man. What do you think of the pro's and con's?

Labels: journalism, media, multimedia, news, newspapers, online, organization, story_planning

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

Actually, you'll look like a goober if you DON'T read this.

PEJ's 2007 State of the Media report

Labels: interviewing, journalism, multimedia

Read this very good story on Poynter.org about a bill moving through Washington's state legislature that would make students responsible for content in school-sponsored student publications in high schools and colleges.

Here's the gist: "The bill would make newspaper advisers responsible for teaching journalism, style and grammar, but even they would not be responsible for content. Nor could they be disciplined or fired for something that appeared in print. If problems arise, or if the journalism adviser lacks the training to help student editors make appropriate decisions, the principal could still exercise prior review -- just not censorship, Washington Rep. Dave Upthegrove, who sponsored the bill, said in a phone interview."

College papers aren't facing this pressure much -- yet. It's primarily high schools. But this is an incredibly progressive, and important, move in Washington that's gaining lots of support.

I remember in my high school newspaper class, our teacher/adviser never had to censor our work, she'd just often repeat "Be sure this can get across the principal's desk at the end of the month." As a total ignoramus about the importance of journalism, I just wrote fluff and didn't think twice, like all the other writers. Imagine what I could have learned if my teacher could focus on educating us about the importance of an aggressive, inquisitive student paper.

Please read this whole thing, and even check out the feedback comments at the end. Maybe you can add your own memories of a high school newspaper situation.

Labels: ethics, journalism, law, student_press

This is by far, the coolest job post I have ever seen. It looks as though the position is a little out of an entry-level job seeker's league, but it's exciting for anyone interested in the multimedia industry to know how much newsrooms are investing in these positions.

Click here and turn on your sound.

By the way, if you are a print reporter, you can easily become a self-proclaimed multimedia journalist. Utilize your school equipment that is available for rent, shoot some photos, video, or audio, and find a computer equipped with multimedia software and play around. If you need a little guidance what software to use with certain types of media, email me. I'm not sure if BGSU has an available multimedia lab, but if it doesn't, I can suggest some tried and true freeware to download to your own computers.

Beware, though. Once you start playing around with posting multimedia, it's hard to stop.

Labels: east_coast, flash, job_posting, journalism, multimedia, video, virginia

For better or for worse, most of our readers live in relative proximity to Cleveland. I urge you to check this event out:

In Their Words: Teens as Media Consumers and Predictors

It's also on the calendar at right.

You'll want the information this event provides. You might not want it now, but you'll want it when you're trying to argue with veteran newspaper reporters about why they need to adapt. You'll want it when you're interviewing for a job. You'll want it when you're trying to convince your editor to send you on that cool assignment. This stuff comes in handy.

Labels: cleveland, conference, journalism, media, spj, teens