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

Andrew Donohue is executive editor of voiceofsandiego.org, a nonprofit, independent online newspaper focused on issues impacting the San Diego region. According to the organization's funding description, the publication is the only professionally staffed, nonprofit online news site in the state focused on local news and issues. Donohue oversees news coverage and reports on local politics. He also won the 2006 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Online Investigative Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists. Donohue's examination of an affordable housing program in San Diego abused by participants and contractors showed "the value of cultivating sources and displaying integrity," according to contest judges quoted by SPJ. "Goes beyond just good reporting in dimension, documentation and results."



Bobbi Bowman is diversity director for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, one of the most active professional journalism organizations in North America. Recent printed works include articles on immigration and diversity issues for the San Francisco Chronicle and The Poynter Institute.

Labels: diversity, editors, education, gljjif2007, media, multimedia, newspapers, online, video, young journalists

(Not to be confused with ask the recruiter)

Here's the most up-to-date (as of mid-June, 2007) list of employers whose registrations have been processed for GLJJIF 2007. Read it fully: Some singularly listed employers are actually groups of publications that could include a paper you've been looking to contact. If you're an employer who has been left out of this list, please e-mail us at bgsuspj@gmail.com. Here's the list, organized first by frequency, then alphabetically:

— DAILY NEWSPAPERS —

Ashland Times-Gazette
Ashland, Ohio
Circulation: 12,500
Ownership: Dix Communications
Representative: Ted Daniels, editor
Interested in: interns and full-time reporters, copy editors, designers, photographers, and Web
About: The T-G is a community newspaper with an emphasis on local-local. Just because we focus intensely on local news, that doesn't mean that we don't continually strive for excellence. We are consistently among the top award-winners for newspapers our size in Ohio.
Requirements: A year's experience or at least one good internship and experience at a college newspaper or Web site.
www.times-gazette.com


Chicago Tribune
Chicago, Illinois
Circulation: 576,000 daily, 937,000 Sundays
Ownership: Tribune Co.
Representative: Sheila Solomon, senior editor for recruitment
Interested in: reporter, copy editor, designer, photographer interns
Requirements: Minimum of one internship at a professional — not college — daily newspaper. Must be college junior, senior, very recent graduate or grad student.
www.chicagotribune.com


Dayton Daily News
Dayton, Ohio
Circulation: 160,000
Ownership: Cox Ohio Publishing
Representatives: Ron Rollins, Jana Collier
Interested in: interns, part and full-time reporters, copy editors, designers, photographers, Web
About: Major metropolitan newspaper in Dayton. Cox Ohio Publishing owns 9 dailies and weeklies combined as well as their Web sites.
www.daytondailynews.com


Newspaper Network of Central Ohio
Newark, Ohio
Circulation: n/a
Ownership: Gannett
Representatives: Shannon Waters, HR rep, and two editors.
www.centralohio.com


The Advertiser-Tribune
Tiffin, Ohio
Circulation: 11,600 daily, 12,600 Sundays
Ownership: Ogden Newspapers Inc.
Representatives: Rob Weaver, editor, Ryan Good
Interested in: interns and full-time
About: The Advertiser-Tribune is a morning daily. The news staff is ambitious yet the newsroom atmosphere is relaxed.
www.advertiser-tribune.com


— NON-DAILY NEWSPAPERS —

Great Lakes Publishing Co.
Cleveland, Ohio
Circulation: n/a
Ownership: Great Lakes Publishing Co.
Representative: Shannon Gilfillan, director of human resources
Interested in: interns, full-time copy editors, designers, advertising/sales, marketing, Web
About: Great Lakes Publishing publishes: Cincy Business, Cleveland Magazine, Custom Publishing, Elegant Wedding, Feast!, Home Decor, Inside Business, LongWeekends, Ohio Magazine, Web Development and West Shore
www.glpublishing.com


La Prensa
Toledo, Ohio
Circulation: 12,000 bilingual weekly print, 11,000 online
Ownership: Culturas Publications Inc.
Representative: Rico Neller, editor
Interested in: interns, full and part-time reporters, copy editors, photographers, advertising/sales, marketing, and Web
www.laprensa1.com

Labels: gljjif2007, job search, newspapers, recruiters

Have you ever had your heart set on something, arranged things so they'll turn out well and then had circumstance and poor planning just blow your plans to smithereens?

Yeah, that happened to me yesterday.

I pitched a story about the practice of putting smashed cars on high school lawns for prom season a few weeks back. My goal was to have it run on June 1, the day of my high school's prom and just before graduation season began.

But when I walked into the office on Wednesday, my boss told me that we needed my story for the centerpiece today.

Oh Crap.

I still needed to talk to an official, go to the school, see the car and interview kids. I'd planned to do all that today, but take some time to write it and give it some of my trademark detail and spunk.

Somehow, through the day, I got ahold of my town official (a feat in and of itself), and then trekked down to the high school, where I spent many minutes in the sun trying to pull quotes out of nonchalant teenagers. Then, I went to the SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) meeting and talked to some kids there.

By the time I got back to my office, it was 3 p.m.

I sat down and began organizing my story. I had some statistics and an interview from our local MADD (mothers against drunk driving) chapter so I began writing in chunks. Then, I pulled in the stuff from the interviews from earlier yesterday and did a clip search to find some teens who'd died in drunk driving accidents recently.

It was approaching 5:30 and I still didn't have my lede.

Normally, I wouldn't have been stressing. However, yesterday, my paper hosted a graduation day for all of the state valedictorians. They all came to our offices, got their picture taken and were available for us to interview. I was told I needed to be there.

The picture started at 6 p.m. I could get there at 6:30 at the latest.

So I hustled. I called some journo friends -- most of whom didn't answer. I needed to talk this story out. I IM'd my lede to a friend and got her opinion, and then finally got a hold of another friend to talk things through. I struggled through the lede, spell checked and CQ'd my names and sent it to the copy desk.

6:32 p.m.

Then, I rushed upstairs and found my valedictorian. We talked and I found out that in addition to wanting to be a brain surgeon, he was also a talented fire juggler and ping pong player. Who knew? By the time I finished my interview, I was so exhausted, I just left the office after stopping in to check with the desk.

All night I stewed.

I tried not to, honest. I know I did the best I could under the circumstances, but this was MY story. And I wanted it to be great. Now, the best it could be was good. I tried to shrug it off and instead told myself that I had another opportunity to get it right tomorrow. That is the beauty of my profession I said. But inside, I knew that I was hurt.

This morning, I got up and went to an assignment. When I came into the office, a co-worker pulled me aside and asked me why my story didn't go all editions -- it was that good.

I shrugged, told her that I was disappointed in the story and that I didn't even broach the possibility of having it go all eds to my editor. I sat down and as I placed my story for tomorrow's paper on the budget, my boss came over to me.

"I think your story came out good," she said. "Are you happy with it?"

I wanted to stop the words as they came out of my mouth but I couldn't.

"Not really," I said, looking at my keyboard.

"Why," she asked. "What wasn't in there that you would have wanted in there?"

"Nothing," I said, glancing up to face my boss. "But I don't feel I had the time I needed to finesse the story the way I wanted to. It turned out fine, but I'm not happy with it."

She stared for a moment and then walked away.

I turned back to my computer and continued typing.

Labels: newspapers, story_planning

BRAVO USA Today! I still have faith in you.

Labels: journalism, newspapers, online

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

As some of you are aware, since graduating I have been applying solely to papers in Florida. The Sunshine State provides both an excellent climate and market for a budding journalist and has great opporutunities for my girlfriend's career as well -- music education.

It also, however, has a very competitive job marketplace. I just got off the phone with the state's "#1 ranked weekly," the High Springs Herald. Unfortunately, this is about the 20th job in the past two months that I have not been hired for.

Mr. Ronald Dupont, Jr., who has previously worked with the New York Times and other large papers, had some very interesting things to say. I bought all of them and I would like to share them with you.

The first thing I asked after hearing they had gone with somebody else is, of course, "why?" And he replied to me with wisdom beyond what I have heard from all others.

"Well, Matt, one of the things that stuck out to me was that you provided some color clips, which was rare for the applicants," he said, referring to the 70 applications he received from all over the country.

But what he didn't like was how I presented those clips and how many I sent. In his long job description posted to JournalismJobs.com, he insisted that applicants send at least 10 clips, but that he preferred 20. This is highly unusual, and is certainly the first time I have heard of an editor requesting so many. What he told me, though, was that all editors want that many, but they just don't know it.

Who knows where the idea of sending only five or 10 clips came from, but that idea is wrong. I know this now, after talking with Mr. Dupont. And, even though some of you may have received jobs or internships with that many, I would still argue that a different approach will result in more bites. Especially when you are competing with 70 applicants that have as much as 30 years experience.

He said, "now, Matt I noticed you have just sort of paper-clipped these together, and that certainly did not stick out."

Why, on earth, would someone paper-clip a cover letter, resume and 10 clips together? Do they really think this is what an editor wants to do is fumble through 13 pages of clips for each of the 70 applications they receive? No!

If it's not in a three ring binder, it nearly gets thrown away from the start. And with the use of a three ring binder, you can use sections that divide all of your clips into features, news, columns, etc. The editor can just kick back in his chair, put his feet up and read YOU Magazine. Only interested in features? Well just tab over my friend. You don't have to read every headline to find one, you just read one tab.

And now back to the five clip rule. Job description says only send five clips? Send 20! Or 50! Or as many good examples of your work that you can find. There is absolutely no reason to listen to an editor that says only send five clips. This is not failing to meet an expectation, this is exceeding it.

Why would an editor be displeased with 20 well-organized and presented clips? It's not like they will have to hunt for what they want. If they want an example of a community feature, they just tab over and read a couple of features. No matter what type of clip they want, they can get it instantaneously. TRY doing that with five clips paper-clipped together!

With 30 clips all the work you have done is represented. The editor will not be overwhelmed, they will be pleased. They will think they made a mistake in only requesting five clips. You will have changed their mind.

So, from now on, I am sending a spiral bound book with a table of contents, tabs, a few color clips, and at least 20 clips that represent all the flavors of writing I have done. I am going to send it to the editors that only request five clips, and they are going to set mine aside to read after they have been through all the "others" who just send a simple envelope with loose sheets of paper inside.

Sure, I'll spend $5 to $10 more per application, but that's not as bad as the more than $100 I have already wasted.

Mr. Dupont shared multiple stories with me of times when he walked into offices where 50 applications had been stacked and his was on top. He also told me of a presentation given by a Miami Herald editor who gave everyone in the presentation an applicant's envelope. He told them to tear them open, and then toss aside any with less than a half-page cover letter or 10 clips. At the end there was only one left.

Talk about separating yourself from the rest of the pack.

I'll keep you posted on the results of this new tactic.

Labels: applications, applying, career_advise, clips, editors, job hunt, job postings, job search, job_posting, newspapers, portfolio, resumes

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

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

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