How To: Land a Job in the News Business

Are you tired of filling out applications for jobs and internships again and again without results?

According to Mashable's Jennifer Van Grove, clever applicants have now been applying and landing jobs via social networking sites.

Van Grove's first tip on how to interest potential employers through social media is to take a risk.

"Put yourself out there," she said. Employers will never know you are interested if you don't let them know.

Van Grove's second tip is a little trickier. She suggests tailoring your online application style to meet the needs of the business, according to their networking profile.

If a company is looking to hire an employee responsible for its Twitter updates, Van Grove suggests being creative and sending in an application 'Twitter style.'

Her third tip involves a little luck. Van Grove suggests keeping your eyes open for additional opportunities to come up even directly after others have failed. Sometimes you may not land the job you were hoping for. However, networks met through failed attempts can lead to an even better job.

Van Grove's last tip is on how to be the best candidate for a position. The trick is to really show a company what you can offer. This may mean intensely following potential employers on social network sites to determine their values and needs in an employee.

Then, with your new knowledge about the company, you can tailor your application to appeal to the employer's wants, needs, and even general interests learned from their social profiles.

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Youtube Worth $1.1 Billion

Because Google discloses almost no information about YouTube's financial performance, the best anyone can guess is to make just that, an educated guess. Youtube, the world's biggest video site, will generate over $1.1 billion in revenue by 2011. Google will keep about $700 million of that.

According to Mark Mahaney from Citigroup's, who estimated the revenue of Youtube noted that the site is continually growing and that it is rapidly placing more ads on more videos.

To explain the outrageous figures that YouTube is supposedly taking in Mahaney explains the logic. He takes Myspace's revenue-to-page view ratio and applies it to YouTube, shown in the table to the right.

If you want to play analyst, you can tweak Mahaney's math based on your own assumptions. If you think Google (GOOG) is doing a better or worse job at selling ads than News Corp.'s (NWS) site, you might want to adjust the estimates accordingly.

If you believe YouTube generates much more traffic than comScore (SCOR) counts- which Youtube's people like to hint at even though they will never come out and say it- you could tweak it again.

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Do we need another news forum site?

Does the web need another site dedicated to the mass media? A site where the news comes from everywhere else excet those who actually run the site? Well the answer should be no but it apparently is going to be yes. Mediagazer, the newest of these sites to launch will be dedicated solely to the purpose of posting media from outside sources.

So what does this mean for the news industry? Well, because people get thier news from places like this they no longer need to subscribe to traditional forms of media such as newspapers. As the newspapers begin to lose subscribers they lose money. The news is a business and websites such as this steal money from people who are trying to make living for themselves.

So what would some options be for the news industry? First they need to get websites such as these shut down. The creators of these sites are using materials that are not thiers. Even if they give credit for an article to the proper author they are still stealing any monetary gain that author may have made from the article. Until there is a way to regulate and keep these types of websites out of business the news industry will lose money.

On the other side of this argument people would say that websites where news is gathered from all different sources and put in one place is just an evolutionary aspect of the news industry. In order for the media remain they need to embrace websites such as these.

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Conan O'Brien Will Change Your World... Whoever You Are

Conan O'Brien, the ousted host of the Tonight Show, made waves on March 5 when he began following one person on Twitter.

Until that moment, O'Brien was not following anyone on the popular social networking site. He announced his decision to change one woman's life in a tweet to his 579,338 followers.

This woman, Sarah Killen, lives in Michigan and likes gummy dinosaurs and cantaloupe. Initially, she only had three followers, but just hours after O'Brien's post, they increased to 3,750. That was only two days ago, and now Killen's follower count is 16,419.

Killen is taking advantage of her newfound fame. Her tweets have increased exponentially, and she is endorsing people and products that she likes. Killen posted a link to a 3-day for the cure website, and between 9:46 p.m. and 11:58 p.m. on March 5, $970 was donated by her followers. At press time, Killen has raised $2,580 for breast cancer research.

In our age of social media and instant access to information, fame is available to everyone.
One person with a modicum amount of fame is able to bequeath a small portion of his fame to another. This person, previously unknown, suddenly has power and influence. Climbing the social ladder is amazingly simple in the digital age.

We used to discuss a person's "fifteen minutes of fame," but with the availability of information, fame can last infinitely longer.

A YouTube video called Shoes was released in 2007. It became a pop culture staple at our college, referenced by everyone and recognized by everyone. A few weeks ago, my 15 year old little sister told me that there was a new YouTube video I just HAD to see. She and her friends were circulating the exact same video I'd seen years before, but to them, it was new and exciting.

Killen's time in the limelight may fade and never be unearthed again, but there is another possibility. What Killen does with her fifteen minutes now will influence whether she impacts the future. O'Brien changed her world; now, let's see if she changes ours.

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Curating the Web

One of the best practices for journalists is creating significance for readers by curating the web. Curating the web means to find stories of importance to readers and directing them to those stories. Writer Scott Karp outlined six of the best practices in doing so.

1. Make it a collaborative effort - it is much easier to have multiple people contributing than a single person trying to do it alone.

2. Let the readers know why the link is important - New York Times deputy technology editor Vindu Goel said, "readers should know why you are recommending a certain item so they can decide whether it's worth their time to check out."

3. Attribute, attribute, attribute - most people click on links based on the person who recommended it to them. Attributing stories helps journalists build their personal brands by sharing what they are reading.

4. Share links on Twitter - journalists for New York Times' technology blog, Bits, automatically publsih what they are reading to their Twitter feed. Sharing links to interesting stories is one of the easiest ways for an organization to enhance their Twitter feed - and boost its number of followers.

5. Integrate into existing workflow - due to the auto-post option for links, the only change to workflow is that all stories are shared with readers. Previously, some interesting stories would not be run due to lack of space, but by curating, every story can be published.

6. Complement original reporting - posting links to the original source of information (such as the column on the right of this blog) makes it easy to inform readers.

All of these points are very important in creating value for readers. These tips are also helpful for journalists and those wishing to pursue a career in journalism. Not only can it help build your reputation, but doing things such as attributing original sources can help establish your credibility.

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Fallout Due to Authoritarian Action

In November of 2009, Kurt Greenbaum, an editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tracked down an anonymous commenter on the newspaper's Web site, who posted a vulgar response dealing with the female anatomy to the "Talk of the Day" feature. Greenbaum then informed the commenter's employer of the vulgar response, who subsequently fired the employee. Lastly, Greenbaum documented this story in his blog and on Twitter.

At the time, Greenbaum could not have expect the type of negative reaction his actions would cause. However, in the four months since, Greenbaum has faced widespread criticism, especially on the Web. Thursday, in an article for the Columbia Journalism Review, writer Justin Peters examined the fallout from the incident and its implications for the future of journalism.

As Peters pointed out, most of the overall anger directed towards Greenbaum stems from question, what led him to believe he had the authority to censor the Web site? This question points to the shifting nature of journalism. No longer, do newspapers have the authority to control readers' attitudes the way they could in the past. In the past, newspapers established authority by sifting through news and deciding what stories to publish. In turn, they set a standard for the appropriateness of certain topics among the paper's community. Readers had little access to other news resources, which forced them to adhere to the standard.

Over the past several years, however, and with the development of the Web and forces such as social media, readers have found new mediums of news consumption. In addition, they have become better equipped to participate in a more democratic format of media. With this new format, those who participate now expect greater power to set standards for conversation, making Greenbaum's actions, in which one person/entity controls and censors the conversation seem to authoritarian. Also, readers and community members have become more empowered to form their own "news organizations," in this case a Web site dedicated to criticizing Greenbaum.

Currently, I'm rather split on this issue. On one hand, I understand Greenbaum's actions and that preserving the integrity of organization's Web site may have necessitated the removal of the comment. However, in the end, I agree that on an ethical level, Greenbaum was wrong to go above the democratic process to censor material he disagreed with. His actions set a precedent that this kind of behavior is acceptable for news organizations and in the future, the public will have to be responsible to hold organizations accountable in similar circumstances.

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How to Get Noticed

Here is something that will interest a lot journalism students, especially those who are attending smaller, lesser known journalism schools. How to get noticed by big newspapers.

PoynterOnline's segment Ask the Recruiter points out that the biggest problem, that students of smaller journalism schools have is visibility. Bigger schools have very little trouble getting noticed by recruiters. The easiest thing you can do to be noticed is build a network.

Big schools already have their own networks that are made up of the thousands of alumni established in the working world. This makes finding the right people to talk to a lot easier for students that attend the larger schools.

You can do three things to start building up your network. First, participate in journalism associations that can get you connected to people in the newsrooms you want to work in. Second, attend workshops to meet potential contacts. Finally, request informational interviews at the newsrooms you desire.

Doing these things are not a guaranteed in to your dream job, but they are a step in the right direction.

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How Reliable Is Twitter?

Twitter is increasingly used by average citizens to share breaking news and information before typical journalists, but how reliable is this method of shared intelligence?

In a piece by The Root's Natalie Hopkinson, the author discussed the availability of immediate news updates and the ability to hear one person's voice quickly and succinctly. However, Hopkinson pointed out some major flaws with Twitter's reliability as a news source.

Though one can receive immediate information from others on Twitter, the reliability of said information is questionable. Anyone and everyone can say exactly what they want, and it is up to readers to decipher what is accurate or relevant.

But how is this different from all the other media we encounter? To exist in a society where we are innundated with information on everything under the sun, we need to be capable of critically examining what concepts and ideas we embrace.

We have developed different ways to hone in on the information that is relevant and valuable. For instance, we are used to examining sources when considering information: every student has been warned away from using Wikipedia because of its communal but largely unsubstantiated knowledge. However, with a medium like Twitter this becomes difficult to do.

Twitter offers its users a sentence and a photo to identify themselves. Unless if a user is linked to a source who is already considered reputable in our minds (ex. a name brand or news organization we recognized before Twitter), the opinions or statements of that user are considered unreliable.

Hopkinson cites the incident when someone yelled, "You lie!" during Obama's speech to Congress last September. In moments, Twitter users had identified the man as Rep. Joe Wilson, gave his phone number and listed his Web site. Another link was produced giving readers the opportunity to donate funds to his political oponent.

Hopkinson reflects on this scenario and wonders what might have happened if Wilson hadn't been the culprit. If Wilson was identified, even wrongly, the same immediate consequences would result. Twitter users are not subject to any official censorship if the information they report happens to be incorrect. With mediums like Twitter and Wikipedia, the only fact-checkers are other citizens. Is this enough?

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Yahoo Puts its Comment Feature Back Up

After three years, Yahoo News has decided to reinstate the comment feature to its stories.

In an article by Joseph Tartakoff, Yahoo says that the decision to pull comment boards off the site was made in 2006 because of "poor quality of discussion". The company has added filters this time to try and keep quality comments at the top and control offensive ones.

But why did Yahoo News make the decision to put comment boards back up in the first place? Mark Walker, head of Yahoo News in North America, said users basically demanded it.

“We sort of looked at our customer satisfaction research and some of the feedback from the audience was that the right to comment was sort of an extension of their first amendment rights,” he says.

People are already using this right to its full extent on the site, with one story having more than 2,200 comments on it.

This is just more proof that news consumers have a lot of say in what the future of the media will look like.

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Politics Cymru

Three former Welsh journalism students are changing the way that political endeavors are being reported online. Cemlyn Davies, Steffan Powell, and Glyn Tansley were assigned as students to cover a beat on the Welsh Assembly.

The three were frustrated by their inability to get into the council because they were just student journalists. Out of this frustration Davies, Powell, and Tansley created the blog sight Politics Cymru.

Since creating the sight the three have had better reception and cooperation from the Welsh Government.

"The Assembly press office came round to the idea that we were here to stay." said Tansley.

The sights specialism and approach to political reporting has won it many loyal followers. Tansley accredits this gain in readers to the lack of political reporting that goes on in the Welsh Assembly.

The sight was named one of Total Politics magazine's top political blogs and the three creators have ridden the success of this website to greater heights.

Davies has landed a job at the BBC while the other two creators, Powell and Tansley, who continue to run the sight are involved in changing the structure of local news programming.

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Newspapers Pro or Con: Citizen Journalism Networks

Many newspapers have now joined citizen journalism networks. The main concern about this is whether there are more positive things that can happen compared to the negative. One of the largest concerns seems to be the actual indepth perception. While these networks simply post breaking and critical stories, they do not always add detailed information that comes out later. the main concern is to inform of the current and seem to be careless about the past.

A positive aspect of this idea is that you will be able to gain income from the many advertisers that are already set up with citizen journalism network. The choice is what you want: profits or well developed stories.

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Social Media Almost Top Media Platform for Readers

How do you get your daily news?

According to Mashable's Stan Schroeder, social media is changing the way users get their news. In a study by Pew Internet, 75 percent of 2,259 polled adults admit to getting their news by emails or posts on social networking sites.

However, the high percentage was to be expected. What's shocking is the 59 percent of those surveyed that get their daily news through a combination of online and offline media.

With numerous ways to get news via online sites, it's interesting to wonder how a somewhat large number of readers still get news from offline media, when print media is supposedly dying.

Still, the study also shows that only 7 percent of those polled get their news through a single platform, while a whopping 46 percent get their news from four to six media platforms each day.

Some other ways they got news were through radio, local newspapers, national newspapers, and from applications available for cell phones.

The lowest percentage was in regards to how many people still got news from national newspapers like the New York Times or USA Today. Only 17 percent of those polled admitted to reading news in national publications.

78 percent of those polled are said to get their news from a local TV station, making it the top media platform according to the survey. Still. social media sites still provide the second largest percentage of those polled with their daily news.

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"News Grazers" and Finding News Sources

For American consumers online news sites are third on the list for most popular sources of news behind local and national television news according to a new report from PEW Research Center's Internet and American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Statistics show that around six in 10 American adults get their news online on an ordinary day and around 71 percent of adults receive their news online occasionally. However, national and local print newspapers and radio all fall behind online news.

But the most staggering statistic showed that over 92 percent of Americans receive their daily news from multiple sources. On the other hand only seven percent of Americans get their daily news from a single media source, usually either Internet or local television news.

The term 'News Grazers' refers to the 92 percent of American Adults who find their news from multiple sources. To help along this growing trend Web sites such as Google News, AOL, and Topix have now become the most commonly used online news sources. Others include CNN, BBC and local or national newspapers.

Also pushing this trend along is the growing usage of mobile technology. Now news has become more portable, personalized and participatory. 33 percent of smart phone owners now access news on their cellphones and 28 percent have customized their home pages to include news from multiple sources that interest them.

Along with grazing news outlets, American news consumers are contributing to the creation of news, commenting, or disseminating it through postings on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. According to the study over 37 percent of users have become more interactive news consumers.

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Newspapers Dying in East

China Daily has a strategy to boost its presence at home and abroad. To increase the number of readers METRO Beijing is reprinting itself with more pages and reporting.

To this point the newspaper business in China has been flourishing while it is dying in the West. Beijing only has a foreign population of about 110,00 people but they are publishing half a dozen English newspapers and magazines.

The dying of the newspaper in the West is attributed to internet access, but with China seeming to flourish in print media will it be unaffected in the East? That does not seem to be the belief in China.

Their capital that used to be a battleground for many Chinese newspaper journalists. Now the entirety of the metropolitan media market is dominated by about four newspapers.

To make things worse for the print media their online foes are able to take and reprint their news online for little to no cost to the readers. Because of this the METRO Beijing is trying to improve its website to make it more accessible to the reader.

Many predict that by the year 2025 print media in the metropolitan area of China will be almost extinct and on "quality" newspapers will survive.

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Twitter Saves the Day

A women was able to track down her missing sister-in-law though the help of Twitter and a helpful stranger.

After the Chile Earthquake many people were missing family members and loved ones. Because power and phone lines were down in many areas around Santiago, Sheryl Brueker, a sister-in-law to a Chilean earthquake survivor, attempted to call, text, and e-mail Maria Alica Moya.

"Any info on Maria Alica Moya, please update http://tinyurl.com/yfjtzed or contact @kencamp or @sherylbreuker ASAP #chile #quake," was one of her frantic tweets to find her lost sister.

She was contacted several hours later by a stranger who lived in that area. Through Twitter correspondence the man went to the address that Brueker had given him for her sister-in-laws place of residence. The man went to look for the lost wife and sister-n-law.

"found her she is OK... she told me to tell Twinkie to stay cool, she is fine," within two hours Brueker received a Direct Message on Twitter from the man.

"I am so thankful for social media, grateful to the power of networking and beyond ecstatic my sister-in-law was safe and her home intact." wrote Breuker. This amazing story really illustrates the power of social networks in crisis situation. They can provide communication when other modes of communication can not.

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Afghanistan News That Isn't So Bad

Afghanistan isn't just a trending topic among the news. It dominates our media almost as much as Tiger Woods does.

We've all heard the bad. In fact we've heard what's beyond bad. The ugly, the horrifying, and the downright disturbing.

Whether it is about a fallen soldier, suicide bombs, or kidnapping, ever since he 2001 US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban regime the media hasn't stopped with the nightmarish stories that are all too close to reality.

It is beyond rare to hear about something good about Afghanistan, and an Afghan immigrant is trying to change that.

Abdullah Qazi, after moving to America, got tired of seeing his country in such a negative light on the news. Knowing that the news would continue to show Afghanistan in an unfavorable way, he decided to set up a website, goodafghannews.com, that would focus on good things going on in his home country.

The site focuses on pretty much anything positive in Afghanistan. Whether it has to do with sports or transportation impovements, Qazi makes sure the article is uplifting. When it comes to unsavory topics, Qazi still makes them favorable and pleasing.

In the few months since Qazi launched Good Afghan News with the slogan "Afghan News That Will Make You Happy," he has registered thousands of hits from Afghans all over.

He may not have changed the way our nation's media portrays his country, but he is slowly trying to make America see that Afghanistan is just another country trying to make its way in the world. Reading about the positive things in this torn-up country is just a click away.

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Using Social Media to Listen

Any journalist knows that they must constantly be listening to what is going on. Listening to the members of their community, officials and even the competition is key to discovering news. Now, social media can be added to the list.

Robert Quigley, social media editor for the Stateman, gives three tips to use social media to listen.

• Read story comments - Stateman Business Editor Kathy Warbelow said, "[People's] comments have given up tipoffs on things like local layoffs...stores or restaurants opening or closing, the sudden stop of work on big construction projects and sometimes about companies we had not known about."



• Besides tweeting, use Twitter just to listen - Follow users such as politicians, athletes, sports commentators, companies and other media outlets. These people and groups are reliable and informative.



• Listen to your Facebook friends - Become friends with local people who can give information on what's going on within the community.
  

Social media is a good tool in discovering news. Several people use social sites to get their information, and if used well, it can be helpful in generating new story ideas.

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AOL Change: Good or Bad?

AOL plans to build an online news format similar to that of Toronto-based start-up, Thoora, in attempts to return to it's former glory. Using Web-analytic software, AOL plans to create what Marty Moe, AOL senior vice-president, calls the "newsroom of the future." This software will help AOL to determine what news readers think is important and that it should write about.

Another component of the "newsroom of the future" includes hiring 500 full-time journalists and procuring stories form more than 3,000 freelance contributors. This allows AOL to produce original, prime content, and the better the content the more advertisers will pay for ad space.

However, content being based on what readers are doing, searching, and clicking on the Internet. Some journalists are afraid that readers influence on what they write will turn journalism's focus away from important, hard-hitting news to fluff. Fluff being celebrity gossip and what is trending in Hollywood.

Which is an excellent point. News isn't news until someone writes, blogs, or broadcasts it. How will people know what is going on in the world, if all that is being written about is someone's latest search on Google?

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YouTube for College Application

Tufts University integrated YouTube videos into the application process for incoming freshmen, spawning discussion regarding technology's effect on future applicants at colleges nationwide.

Tufts University in Medford, Mass. paved new ground when administrators began accepting original one-minute YouTube videos as part of the college's application process for incoming freshmen. According to Anne Driscoll of Tonic, of Tufts's 15,436 applicants, six percent chose to create videos.

These videos ranged from the silly to the serious and gave students a new medium to show themselves to administrators. One girl performed "Math Dances," one boy made a stop-motion video, and another made a flying elephant helicopter.

The use of videos in the application process is only one of the unorthodox methods used by Tufts in its application process. Incoming freshmen are required to complete three short essay questions dealing with why they chose Tufts, the influence of their environments on who they are today and "what voice (they) will add to the class of 2014." These are typical admissions questions and might be asked at any other college. Tufts goes a step further and gives students the option of completing another task.

With Tufts's "Optional Essay," applicants really are given options. A student can complete an essay of 250-400 words on a given topic, a seemingly conventional assignment. However, the given topics are rather unconventional: "Imagine history without the United States as we know it"; "Are we alone?"; Was Kermit the Frog right when he said, 'It's not easy being green,'?; etc.

Students are given additional opportunities in this "Optional Essay" component. Given a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper, a student gets the chance to "create something." The website invites applicants to "draw a cartoon strip, design a costume... compose a score or do something entirely different."

In the next section, applicants can write a short story using one of five given titles, and in the following section, an applicant writes about an incident when he took a stand for something he felt was important.

Though the use of videos in the application process is getting the most publicity, the other aspects of Tufts's application process are just as noteworthy. When applying to colleges, most students only consider which three people they'd like to meet, what classic novel affected them the most, or who they want to be in ten years. Tufts recognizes that every student is different and that different people express themselves in different ways and through different mediums.

We've all heard, "A picture is worth a thousand words." I hate that quote. How many pictures is a word worth? The word "picture," for instance. We all envision something different when we hear the word picture, but by showing me your idea of a picture, you hinder my creativity in envisioning the picture for myself. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a word can spawn at least as many pictures.

How many words is a video worth? What Tufts has done with its video/essay/short story/"create something" component is give applicants the chance to use their own words and their own pictures in their own way. And that, my friend, is priceless.

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New Platform for Real-Time News

Kommons - Trustworthy news in real-time from Vadim Lavrusik on Vimeo.

Cody Brown, a senior at New York University and founder of NYU Local, is at it again. He's come up with a new idea for social media called Kommons.

Brown is still putting together the finished product, but it seems to be similar to Twitter with a twist of Wikipedia.

The idea is that instead of having a few major voices in Twitter giving you news, you can belong to a specific community on Kommons where the news pertains to you. You can also edit and add to certain posts like a Wikipedia page. Instead of using hash tags like Twitter, the @ symbol will be used to create these Wiki-like pages.

Brown plans on making the first community within Kommons for students and faculty at NYU.

A big part Brown's idea is to make sure people aren't anonymous on Kommons like they can be on Twitter. In an article posted by Vadim Lavrusik on his blog, Brown says that "if news reporting in real-time is to improve, genuine identity must be established."

It really seems like this idea may catch on. Just imagine a Twitter-like feed with the editing capabilities of Wikipedia for the Des Moines area. Reporters could even use it to find great stories. My only question is how long until the public gets to try it out?

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