Tomorrow's News, Tomorrow's Journalists

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Hello! It gives me great pleasure to kick off the ‘Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists’ blog ring.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been rounding up some of the world’s best young blogging journalists. Our goal: to create an open forum for young journalists to debate issues important to them.

And as tomorrow’s journalists, our issues should be important to everyone in the media industry.

Since suggesting the idea (via Twitter, of course), interest in the ring has exploded. Barely a day goes by without an email arriving with suggestions.

So together I hope we can really get stuck in. And boy, we sure do have a lot to talk about. What is it like being a young journalist in the year 2008?

Let’s get started.

1. Register

To sign up, please click ‘Register’ in the sidebar. Or click here. ANYBODY can register, so long as you:

1) Are younger than 30-years-old and,
2) You blog about journalism.
(Find out more about this criteria here)

Enter your details, and soon we’ll activate your account so you can post your entry. Bear with us while we do that — it’s not an automated process, but we’ll be quick as we can.

While you wait, get writing! The topic is at the bottom of this entry. I suggest you post both on your own blog and on this blog at the same time, being sure you put the full entry on each site. This way you’ll be able to keep your own readers happy, as well as making sure this blog has all the content from the TNTJ network in one, easy to read place.

And finally, let’s get chatting. There are no limits as to what our group can do. Set the community of Twitter alight. Send your posts to your Facebook friends. Everything. Sure, the ring is only open to journalists under 30, but we want to involve everyone in the debate. I hope we can get some of the big players in the media — folks like Jeff Jarvis and Roy Greenslade — interested in what we are doing.

2. Here’s how the TNTJ ring will operate

Each month, a set topic will be put up for discussion. Everyone can have their say on what this topic should be — not just the contributors. If you want to suggest a topic, please email me. Contributors that have signed up to the ring will receive an email with details of the topic, and it will be posted here too.

For a week (or so, let’s not get too strict on conversation!), contributors can add their entries by logging in and posting. During this time, I hope comments will be flowing between everyone. I’ll be keeping tabs on all the entries and updating a summary post which will be ’stickied’ at the top of the blog (I need someone to help with this bit, so if you’re interested, get in touch).

When a topic has finished, contributors can still post whatever they fancy on the ring if they think it will be of use to the community.

3. Post!

The TNTJ topic for August 2008 is: The biggest challenge facing a young journalist in today’s media is…

Plenty to talk about, eh? I can’t wait to read all your responses. As it’ll be the first time we all post, I suggest we all add a one-paragraph biography at the start of each post. If you’re feeling particularly pretty, a nice picture would be good too.

Have fun!

Dave