Tomorrow's News, Tomorrow's Journalists

TNTJ June: How to be a good news intern

Andrew Dunn is a journalism student at UNC-Chapel Hill and the editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel. This post also appears on his blog, dunnreporter.com.

Though I’ve been at my internship at The Charlotte Observer for five weeks now, most of the other interns just got started. We had an intern orientation last week, and Steve Gunn, a senior editor (who wears the “innovation editor” hat), gave a quick talk on how to be a good intern here. Back in the day, he was an intern at the Chicago Tribune and several other papers.

Here’s his main advice, in no particular order:

• Get something for your resume line. Likely it’s a set of good clips. But be sure you have that goal in mind, and work with editors. They want you to have a good experience.
• Work hard. Gunn said there’s a stigma on the current generation (as there has been on every generation since Socrates) that we feel we’re entitled to everything. You have to distinguish yourself as a bust-ass kind of person. Volunteer for the night shift. Volunteer for group projects. In general, take on as much work as you can possibly handle.
• Pitch an assignment every day. This not only shows initiative, but will keep you from doing crap “intern” assignments a lot of the time.
• Every story can be a front pager. No matter how many stories you pitch, you’re going to get assignments you’re not crazy about. But throw yourself into them. If it’s a silly event, find the good story. Make the extra calls it takes. Gunn told of a small cops brief he was assigned, but he got a hold of the people involved and turned it into a top-of-A1 strip.
• Always be working on something. Your editors just want you to be doing something, so you better not get caught with nothing to do. Researching stories, out finding them, etc. Have a list of stories you want to do, and when you get free time, work on them.
• Assume everyone knows more than you. Don’t be the hotshot intern who knows it all, even if you do honestly know more than half the folks in there. Approach every conversation with humility, and see what you can learn from them.
• Network. Find a mentor and have conversations with people who can help you when you’re looking for a job. The journalism industry is tight-knit, and while clips are important, “references are God,” Gunn said. I’ve invited the editor-in-chief to lunch every year, and that’s been great.
• Tell the truth. Don’t lie to get out of an assigment or if you’re late to work. Just explain yourself. Newsrooms are full of crazy people, so whatever you’re going through is not going to be a big deal.
• Be accurate. This applies to your stories. Be sure you get the details right, but also make your story tell the broader truth correctly.
• Read the paper. If you read the paper cover to cover, you’re going to be ahead of 95 percent of the newsroom. You’ll show you’re engaged in the paper and you’ll have the head start on story ideas for follow-ups.
• Do things you can tell stories about. What’s a summer without stories? Gunn told of a summer in St. Petersburg where he didn’t have a car. He rode his bike to work and to all assignments. He got made fun of, but what a story to tell interns decades later.

What do you think? What would you add?

TNTJ June: Share advice for successful summer endeavors

We had a nice crop of posts in response to last months topic about jobs, Yes we can! (But how…?). If you missed them, be sure to take a look:

• Being upbeat yet realistic by Kyle Christie
• Taking the non-journalism route, but keeping your hand in by Ed Walker
• Surviving the jobs drought by Ben Spencer
• You don’t have to be a journalist to be a journalist by Megan Taylor

But, as June begins, so too does the summer internship/job season. So, with that in mind, we’re asking:

What advice would you give to a student or recent graduate who has a summer/job internship?

More specifically, what tips or hints would you offer for a successful experience? And, let’s be honest, how can you impress?

Feel free to include links to other resources, but we’re really interesting in hearing your personal insights and tips.

You could make a list or tell us a story. Or you could write a book (wink).

Happy tipping!

TNTJ May: You don’t have to be a journalist to be a journalist

Megan Taylor is a freelance journalist, web developer and multimedia producer based in New York City.

My Story
One year ago I started the adventure they call life after college. I had the rest of my life (a.k.a. the next six months) planned out with confidence: a two-week photography class in Berlin, Germany was to be followed by an internship at The Miami Herald.

Things went swimmingly, until I realized that the end date of my internship was nearing and somehow I didn’t have anything else lined up. Job applications and interviews had gone nowhere, and I was done with being picky.

One thing led to another, and a fellow JWJ (Journalist Without a Job) and I decided that New York City would be the perfect place for two multi-talented news addicts to find work. You can read about that adventure in “Sink, Florida, Sink.”

Here I am, nine months later in New York. I’ve had two non-news internships, both terminated early due to the economic crisis. I started freelancing a few months ago, taking on any job I thought I could do: web design and development, video production, news writing.

Somehow, I’ve managed to keep my head above water.

Dave Lee recently wrote, in “J-students must stick around and clear up the mess:”

Just spend your day being a journalist. Get shifts, even if it’s one day a week. Apply for anything that’s remotely near to a newsroom. Work on the reception if you have to.
You need to make sure you’re in the industry when it’s back on the way up.

This is the motivation behind almost everything I’ve done since I moved to New York.

After cold-calling and e-mailing every publisher in the city failed to produce a bill-paying income, I took two unrelated internships and spent all my free time wriggling into every gap I could find.

I found the Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative through some searches on local news papers. I contacted the program leaders asking if I could help, in any way, shape or form. They asked me to help them with a website, which led to talking to students about online journalism, which led to freelancing for the Norwood News. Word is, I might also be asked to teach the newsroom some web skills.

PBS MediaShift blog host Mark Glaser asked me to write a series on innovative journalism projects. I can’t even count how many new contacts I made while researching and interviewing journalists all over the country. And while it hasn’t directly led to any new gigs yet, I follow every one of those people on Facebook and Twitter. They are a valuable addition to my network.

I’m barely keeping my toes immersed in the dwindling pool that is journalism. But I take every opportunity to mention to everyone I meet: I want to do journalism.

But you don’t really care about my story. You just want to know how to keep your own head up.

The Takeaway
Meet everyone you can. Go to every conference, search for every possible resource that could help you.

Read/watch these interviews, collected by David Cohn: Who I’ve Learned From – 107 Interviews.

Read these articles collected by Tracy Boyer: 85 Resources to Pass the Time During Your Next Furlough.

Do 18 Things For Journalism Students To Do With Their Summer.

Getting started is hard. How do you start pitching stories? How do you meet editors who can help you? How do you find out about opportunities?

Stay plugged in. Follow every journalist on Twitter and Facebook, pay attention to what they say. Follow the news, and just start e-mailing story ideas to editors. It’s hard, and it’s scary, but eventually it pays off.

Find a way to pay the bills, and then find a way to stay involved.

TNTJ May: Surviving the jobs drought

The Guardian’s Media supplement is getting thinner, Hold the Front Page is looking sparse, and yesterday’s daily Journalism.co.uk email had no trainee jobs at all. As the 1,888 journalists who are now on the dole will no doubt testify, this is crisis time.

At Sheffield University the journalism department has finally clued on to the fact that very few of its graduates this year will get reporting jobs. Professor Peter Cole (former Guardian deputy editor) told students recently: “It is not going to be an easy year, and it’s pointless to pretend otherwise. But there are plenty of things you can do and we need to be positive and upbeat as well as realistic.” Most of us have given up other careers, taken out massive loans and worked damned hard to go into journalism, and the prospect of doing “other things” is disheartening to say the least. But as I’ve discovered while working in news rooms in Sheffield and London in the last few weeks, people are being laid off all over the place, and there are only a handful of openings for trainees.

So what to do? The Sheffield department has put on two crisis talks for job seekers recently, trying to provide us with a Plan B. At the first talk tutors from the different journalism disciplines told students to consider any media job (such as PR) until the journalism industry resurfaces. See Kyle Christie’s report for more details of that discussion.

This week the department invited a number of local editors and industry notables for Part 2 of the lecture series. It was well attended, as everyone realised that the speakers were the kind of people who are reading our job applications.

And the advice was good. There were the usual offerings for those of us who are carpet bombing the idustry with applications: keep CVs brief, sell yourself but don’t go over the top, offer story ideas with your cover letters (Peter Genower, former IPC weeklies editor-in-chief); be super friendly and enthusiastic (Graham Moorby, BBC Look North news producer); be aware that you have 30 seconds to impress (Bob Cockroft, Barnsley Chronicle editor).

But there were also some encouraging, and less obvious, insights. Peter Genower told us that there is no such thing as a recruitment freeze. Even if a company is not recruiting, there are ways of worming your way in and making yourself indispensable. Graham Moorby stood by the time-established tactic of taking lots of unpaid work experience (although obviously you have to find a way of funding it).

Bob Cockroft advised that budding reporters should look at subbing jobs as ways in to the industry. As he pointed out, there are a lot more subbing jobs around at the moment than reporting jobs, and he argued that design and editing are a great addition to a reporter’s toolbox, rather than completely different jobs.

Interestingly, when I asked Cockroft how editors would view journalists who had taken a PR job (as we all, let’s admit it, are considering at the moment), he said that it would not be seen as a negative move. “Everyone knows there are no jobs around at the moment,” he said. “So if you take what you can get and then come back to reporting, I don’t thing anyone would look badly on it.”

As I’ve argued before on my blog, there are jobs out there, although admittedly not many of them. In the last few weeks, working in busy, understaffed newsrooms, I’ve realised that you just have to put yourself out there and impress, learn all the skills (design, web, video, damn good writing), and network (online and off) and opportunities will come up. And when the money runs out PR offers an acceptable port while the storm passes.

I’ll finish by going back to Ed Walker’s post, which I think offers advice most journalists training at the moment will be needing very soon:

“If you do find yourself in a ‘non-journalism’ job, just remember it’s not the end. You can still be a journalist, you just might have to do it as a hobby to start off with and then see when the break comes. When it comes, take it with both hands.”

This post was originally published at the Media Notes blog.

TNTJ May: Taking the non-journalism route, but keeping your hand in

It’s a tough market out there at the moment, not just in journalism but in any industry. As a legion of graduates prepare to scrap like never before for jobs with contracting companies, it must feel horrible to have started your studies in 2006 when the economy was stable, optimism was high and journalism was starting out on its adventure into a multimedia future.

Now it’s a different story. I read Kyle Christie’s post with interest, particularly about whether you should take a ‘non-journalism’ job to pay the rent or whether you should risk debt and starvation on a basic trainee salary.

There’s no easy answer. But I wouldn’t rail against anyone who took the non-journalism route, as that’s what I ended up doing.

My first job was actually a journalism job (and a few other things besides). It was running the student media at the University of Central Lancashire Students’ Union and I’d thoroughly recommend the opportunity to any students reading this. If you get the chance to stand for election, or apply for the position as it is in some places, do it. You learn a lot in a short space of time and you learn how to manage a team. You’re the editor, it’s on your head. It’s a great experience and it’s a real experience.

But, as I came to the end of my tenure as editor it was time find a job. I applied, citing my experience, showing my skills, pointing to my excellent degree. But nothing came of it, interviews came and went and I was staring unemployment in the eye. I landed a job where I had been working but on a short-term contract, it was a mix of different roles but ultimately a web-based role. It needed some journalism skills.

The advantage to doing a journalism degree is that you learn so many transferable skills. You learn how to tell stories, create content, edit, it’s not hard to make the jump into some other industries. You have to be organised, confident and a good communicator – and be able to work as part of a team. You’re ticking a lot of person spec boxes in many jobs that require less work/effort and command a better salary than those trainee positions.

But, as Kyle alluded to. You’ve got to keep your hand in. Once I had my reasonable salary and regular hours, I found I had some spare time. I set up a hyper-local blog for where I live. I wrote content, I blagged content from people. I got into my community, put on events, took pictures. Now I have 150 unique visitors a day, on average, and I might be able to apply for some funding.

So, if you do find yourself in a ‘non-journalism’ job, just remember it’s not the end. You can still be a journalist, you just might have to do it as a hobby to start off with and then see when the break comes. When it comes, take it with both hands.

———

Ed Walker is a 22-year-old ‘non-journalist’ by day and hyper-local blogger by every other waking hour with Preston Blog. He blogs at edwalker.net and twitters at @ed_walker86.

TNTJ May: Being upbeat yet realistic

Earlier this week, the postgraduates and final year undergraduates at my journalism department at the University of Sheffield had a ‘careers’ talk. Our tutors, those who have guided us throughout the year so far, each stood up and gave their consistently upbeat, but realistic, assessment of the industry.

So I’ll start by sharing some of my fellow students worries and questions that were expressed in the Q&A session at the end of the talk. Some were familiar: what sort of starting salary could we expect – apparently anywhere between £10-20 thousand. Is it better to send emails or letters when looking for experience – either was the answer, although letters have worked better for me. I think it gives a more personal touch, and we all know how easy emails can be to ignore.

One question in particular stuck with me. A fellow postgraduate asked what we should do, given the option between getting a non-journalism job of any sort to pay the rent, or persist with trying to break into journalism? One of the tutors gave an unexpectedly hesitant answer, in that their reaction was not the same as that of my friend next to me – ‘how is that an option? You’ve got to pay the rent!’

But it’s the wrong answer to the wrong question. As Dave Lee as mentioned on his blog, being employed in any other environment doesn’t mean leaving journalism. You can still freelance, still blog for yourself or other sites, still engage with the profession in numerous ways.

Even given this, however, I’m not without queries for the wider journalistic community. Does anyone have experience then, of taking on a non-journalistic job while retaining a place in the industry – do they still have the time, is it actually feasible? Would employers look down on it?

I now have work experience sorted for the summer, but how much should I expect to do before being seriously considered for jobs in such a competitive industry at such a difficult time? I know there’s no secret formula to a job in the media, but advice is always welcome.

Lastly, what online tools, beyond say Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, should soon-to-be graduate journalists be using to showcase their work, gain greater competency online and network?

My advice, much as it’s worth? There’s still a lot of journalism students with a minimal online presence, so maximise yours. But don’t forget that whatever tools you can use, web pages you can re-design or exam marks you can achieve, content is still king – keep writing.

In addition, continue to make as many contacts as you can: it’s one of the reasons I’m going along to the Media 140 conference on May 20.

Ill-qualified as I am to give advice to others graduating this year, the more we talk to each other, the better chance we have of navigating this scarce job market.

The department is laying on another talk for us this coming week. This time, actual employers – well that might be a bit presumptuous, so let’s call them media figures – will be giving us advice. Perhaps I’ll put some of the above questions to them as well.

Right now though, I’ve got NCTJ Public Admin exams to revise for, hence my constant devotion to James Morrison’s new book. So…any advice on them, or is it best not to remind you?

TNTJ May: Yes we can! (But how…?)

April was a good month for us, wasn’t it? A very interesting range of posts, from Luke Appleby’s “Look out world, here I come” post to Kyle Christie’s rather more reserved offering, it does seem like newly-grads are gearing themselves up for a tough, if not any less exciting, few months.

This month, the journalism job market — in the UK at least — will be flooded with new, eager journalists. It’s a nervous time for all. Many graduates from last year haven’t yet settled into journalism, and yet now they have to contend with a couple more thousand rivals.

Tips, knowledge and experience are essential — but how do you get them? Where do you look?

They say it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. So, let’s put that to use. Let’s get to know each other.

New graduates: What are your worries? Your questions? Your confusions? Put them to the other journalists in this ring — we may just have the perfect answer.

Other young journalists: You were here once. What did you do? How did you land that first important job? What got the ball rolling?

I think we can make this month’s topic a discussion of brilliant advice, practical ideas and, above all, encouragement for all. The message from young journalists to each other is that it can be done. (Do I dare shout “YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!”? Ah, I just did.)

Over to you.

TNTJ April: After graduation? Stay in school!

David Molloy is a Senior Sophister majoring in English at Trinity College Dublin. He is the editor-elect of the college newspaper, Trinity News, and has worked in the national press on placement.

I am staying in college without being a student.

That’s basically it right there. Job prospects are so dire, and freelancing at a level where I can earn a living so improbable, that I’ve elected to stay in the warm bosom of university. The fact that I graduate come autumn and haven’t enrolled in another course is a mere technicality.

The reason I have this luxury, of course, is that my university in its documents specifies that the editor of the college newspaper must be a student at the time of their election, which offers a beautiful loophole for me to stay on in a sabbatical-like position. This might seem like a bad thing to some: like I’m stranded, stuck in limbo, neither professional nor amateur. Well, that’s pretty much correct.

Which, right now, is perfect.

If you think about it, a well-run college newspaper is essentially identical to a local paper (the traditional training route for those who cannot secure employment in the national press straight out of university; i.e., most students). It serves a hyper-local community (excuse the buzzword, please) and is an excellent training ground.

More importantly, from an editor-in-chief’s perspective, it is staffed by a relatively small, nimble, and dedicated team, with the flexibility to experiment with their approach to print journalism. The next eighteen months are going to be incredibly interesting in the professional media: there are going to be a number of changes in the way in which things are done. Now, in my paper, the editor has virtually zero oversight, except in the financial area; we’re non-profit, so there’s little to be lost by experimentation.

Meanwhile, I’ll be running my local publication to a high standard, upskilling myself in the business side of media, improving my technological competence, and developing my ability to manage others. This is the reason why applications for journalism schools are up: there’s a hope that we can ride out the storm, increase our skills base, and come out the other side as better journalists. And it’s a good plan. Every little edge becomes increasingly more important in a competitive job market. Now, I’m a great believer in practical experience, but for those who think academic study is the right way to go about making yourself a more attractive candidate, at least you’re doing something.

TNTJ April: Pushing ahead despite the industry’s difficulties

My postgraduate course, a Master of Arts course in Web Journalism at the University of Sheffield, actually lasts until September – or more accurately, whenever I finish my dissertation which will take up much of the summer.

I’ve been pursuing work experience – one can never apply for enough – and gained three placements over the summer so far: a week at Wales Online, a week at Worcester News and a week at the Press Association in Howden.

One of my most recent applications was to the Press Gazette. Recent news leads me to doubt I’ll be hearing a reply, ever. I’m of course not giving up on more placements, be they before or after graduation.

My mentality has been that I must get some work experience under my belt before applying for jobs. Unlike many of my fellow students, I haven’t yet undertaken the placements that we all know are so necessary.

I’m under no illusions as to how difficult and how competitive it will be to find a job in journalism right now. Every day I read or hear of cutbacks, closures and even graduate schemes no longer going ahead. Whether we like it or not, many of those graduating from journalism courses this year will have to decide if continuing down their apparent career path is worth it, considering the difficulties in the industry.

This is all the more alarming given the 24% rise in applications for journalism courses this year.

Our department has a ran a series of guest lectures, including Darren Thwaites, the editor of the Teesside Evening Gazette, Ed Rousell of the Telegraph and David Randall. All of them have given a surprisingly upbeat assessment of the industry and our job prospects. But when you’ve got dozens of bright-eyed wannabe hacks staring at you, giving them some hope is merciful at least.

I adore journalism, but quite what comes under that definition for me may end up widening considerably. The wide communications/think-tank arena is looking just as attractive as the traditional role of a hack.

So, like Michael (whose experience I look at with envy), I can only state that journalism students should be doing all they can to make themselves as attractive as possible. It still astonishes me how many of my fellow postgraduates hardly blog, use Twitter or are on any social networks beyond the compulsory Facebook.

It would seem prudent now to apologise for the continued self-promotion throughout this post, but come on, I’m a journalism student trying to enter a dying/changing industry in the middle of a recession. What did you expect?

TNTJ April: Now I’m qualified. Watch out world.

This post originally appeared on Applebyline, Luke Appleby’s blog.

This month, Tomorrows New Tomorrow’s Journalists are talking post-grad plans and prospects, so here’s a brief outline of where I am right now:

I have just completed a National Diploma in Journalism (Multi-Media) at Whitireia Polytechnic in Wellington, New Zealand. Read my review of the course here. Our class was the first ever to graduate with the new (Multi-Media) unit standards in a New Zealand journalism course.

I like to call myself a multi-media journalist.

In terms of internships, I had a pretty good one. I went to the Hawkes Bay Today daily in Napier for two weeks. If you’re keen, check out the video higlights here which I made for that. It was kind of rushed, but I liked it.

Quite luckily, I have stumbled upon a sweet job and you’ll never guess how? Well, I was at the pub of course.

I now work for a small media company which updates news slide-shows in airport lounges and banks in Australia and New Zealand. It’s a fun little number: grabbing Getty and Reuters images, resizing, researching, captioning and uploading. Best of all, I do it from home.

I absolutely LOVE having access to Getty and Reuters – the images are great to browse through for photography ideas, a field which I am also planning on getting into.

I managed to take out the Canon Best Photographer Award during the Diploma, not to mention a fantastic Canon EOS 1000D DSLR camera. If you are interested in seeing some of my photos, check out my Images page here.

Freelance photography an interesting prospect and photography for a news room is also appealing.

In late May I expect to get work at Whitireia Polytechnic as some sort of multi-media production tutor for the journalism class, which will keep me pretty busy.

I expect the role to be hugely varied, containing elements of design, photography, web-media, video, sound recording, video and sound editing, format handling, updating www.newswire.co.nz and a whole bunch of other stuff.

What could be more fun, tell me?

During the Diploma, I sourced and installed the gear for a multi-media sound and video editing/recording suite on the campus, that was no problem, the big challenge is showing people how to use it all.

With an ever-growing news website, a mixing board, portable high-quality audio recorders, a 3CCD camcorder and a handful of good microphones, I think the next course is going to thrive.

Well, as I have mentioned in previous posts I’m not really one for deep and meaningful analysis. I’ll leave that to the academics.

I’m sure the effects will be widespread and numerous.

To be honest, I think that the New Zealand journalism industry will welcome graduates more versed in several different media with open arms.

When choosing the right way to cover a story, I think a lot of editors and chief reporters would be pretty keen to have more options. Sometimes print just doesn’t give as much emotion, or misses vital audio intonations. There are many situations where the obvious choice would be video. Basically, the key word here is options. More ways to tell a story will be better.

Ideally, a newsroom should be able to present news in any conceivable medium, but I feel that some newsrooms lack the fundamental technological skills to present them quickly and effectively.

Hopefully, the influx of these newly-trained journos will contribute to news being presented in the most effective medium.