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

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

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