Posts Tagged ‘students’

J-students must stick around and clear up the mess

May 6th, 2009

It’s May. And, tough as the journalism market is right now, it’s about to get tougher. Journalism schools around the UK are about to spit out their latest crop of hopefuls.

Last year, I was among them. This year, with an added year of experience and cynicism, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. And, no doubt, there will be many worried students out there, wondering if their three years (or more) of study were worth it.

Here’s my advice: stick around and clear up the mess.

In an interview for Journalism.co.uk recently, I described how the job market has changed in the past year. In 2008, we were well aware that competition was tough. Reporters jobs were extremely thin on the ground. One position I applied for — on a smallish London newspaper — had, the editor told me, nearly 1000 applicants.

But now there isn’t any competition. There isn’t anything to compete over. Newspapers are getting rid, chopping down and slicing up. The reporter that left last week isn’t being replaced.

So what do journalism students do? Give up? Get a job in PR? Get a job in Sainsbury’s?

Maybe — if that’s what it takes. But here’s the crucial tip: whatever you do, stay close to journalism.

So what if there aren’t any full-time reporting roles on newspapers. Are the pages empty? No! They’re still full of words, pictures, stories. All of which are — until Murdoch invents some sort of Churnobot — written by humans. You’ll struggle with local newspapers, they don’t have much of a budget, but you could have better luck elsewhere. On the web, in the nationals — they all need writers.

So if you need to work at Sainsbury’s — do it. Work lates. Get a job in a pub.

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.

5 comments »

Posted in Comment, Newspapers, Regional, Student Journalism, The Future

Tags:

Justice for exploited journalism students

December 4th, 2008

Today I was interviewed by Gemma Pritchard, the editor of the Inquirer — City University’s independent student paper.

She was preparing a piece of coursework about students being exploited in the journalism workplace. She’s been in touch with various people — including the NUJ — to discuss the issue.

We came to the conclusion that the problem is becoming very serious — and it’ll only get worse.

So I’m now in the process of putting together a site that will allow student journalists to submit their stories about work experience. I will collate the information on a page, just like on AngryJournalist.

The difference, though, will be that students will be able to tell the site where they were working. This will be kept secret — experiences will not publically linked to the places of work, and viewers of the site will not be able to see which publications/media organisations have been named and shamed.

In a few months time, I will publish my findings. Will we see some companies appearing many times? Will certain complaints be exposed as happening to many students? I’m interested to see which patterns emerge.

In the interest of fair play, students will also be able to submit good experiences. The top three publications will be announced as well.

Why am I doing this?

I’ve seen both sides of the coin. I’ve worked for places that have exploited my eagerness to get work and to get noticed. But I’ve also worked for people who have benefitted my career greatly — and in turn I’ve done some good work for them for free.

Both sets should be made public. Students have a right to be able to tell all when it comes to work experience. Let’s be clear — this has gone way beyond making cups of tea — none of us complain about that — it’s about doing work that is, by UK law, illegal.

Problem is, until now, there has been no way of finding out where the problem really lies. A recent NUJ survey found frightening results, but without specifics, how can anything be done? It’s impossible.

Students are too scared to voice their opinions. Upsetting people can cost you your career — no matter how valid your complaint. This has to change.

Watch this space. If you’d like to help, email me.

7 comments »

Posted in Ethics, My Work, Student Journalism, The Future

Tags:

Patience is key to online networking

November 20th, 2008

In the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching lots of people about online journalism.

First, a guest lecture at the University of Lincoln about blogging. Then, a six week stint in New Zealand where I taught at Whitireia Journalism School.

Even more recently, again at Lincoln, I lectured a group of first year students. I was hoping I’d be able to plant a few seeds for online.

Usually after such sessions, I’ll notice a flurry of students signing up to the likes of Twitter and Wordpress etc, announcing their existence with a nice big post or tweet. This excites me — it’s good to get started as soon as you can.

But too often these people give up. I’m pretty sure it’s because they don’t get an instant return on their investment.

“Does your blog get you work?” they’ll say.
“Yes,” I’ll reply.
“Great! I’ll start one tonight!”

Problem is, many of these people will just make that one post. And, if they’re not writing the lead for tomorrow’s New York Times, they’ll swiftly give up.

I’m busy preparing some materials for my book (more on that another time! Woohoo!), and in my section about social networking tools, I plan to make it very clear that it will take time for any of these services to bring any rewards. And, indeed, even when they do, you might not necessarily know it.

What’s important, though, is that you keep at it. Use Twitter for chit-chat with colleagues or potential colleagues. Don’t turn up with a direct message to your favourite editor with something like “HI! CAN I WORK FOR YOU? THANKS!”. It won’t work.

Likewise, don’t expect the world’s media to be knocking down your door once you’ve posted a nice long introduction post on blogspot. It won’t happen. I was just contacted by a student the University of Westminster who asked how to get people in the media to read his blog. Here’s my response:

Hi XXXXX,

Cheers for getting in touch … noticed lots of people finding my site via your lecturers blog!

There are lots of things you can do. Personally, I think most effective method is to find other bloggers that write about the same things you do. For example, if you write a sports blog, then find others who do the same — same sport or same team or same competition etc.

Then, leave comments on their blog linking back to yours. Almost all blogs allow you to add your blog address when you make a comment. Chances are the blog owner will click through to your blog out of curiosity. Also, other people reading the blog will see your comment too and can also click though… and so on.

Even more effective, is finding posts by other people and discussing them, making sure you link through. For example, I wrote a post recently (http://daveleejblog.com/2008/11/time-lapse-video-of-nytimes-election-night/) that just simply linked to something else I liked.

This is a quick way to get noticed. In time (and you need to be patient), they may start linking to you… and then you’ll be getting loads of readers.

Hope that helps mate, and good luck!

It’s obvious advice for some, but if you’re faced with stats that say “10 views” each day, you may feel at a loss.

So my advice to everyone is: Take your time. Keep plugging away. Treat your online relationships like your real life ones.

You don’t go up to random people and say “Hello there would you like to be my best friend?”, do you? No, you slowly meet people, get to know them better and then who knows, they might end up being your best mate ever. But not if you rush it.

No comments »

Posted in Blogs, My Work, New Zealand, Social Networking, Student Journalism, The Web

Tags:

Give me advice: How can this Google map involve the Wellington community?

June 5th, 2008


View of Hataitai, Wellington. Picture: Peter from Wellington (Flickr)

Howdy!

This, I hope, will be a very exciting project. Not only for Whitireia students, but also as a journalism experiment for everyone out there.

Small crimes, bigger problem

Let me explain. A few years ago, back in the UK, the local police introduced a Neighbourhood Watch map. It showed the local town, divided up into tiny segments. Each segment consisted of a few streets, and was labeled with the details of who we could contact if an incident occurred in each little section. One person whose sole goal was to represent the people living in that small area. Hyperlocal policing.

Of course, hyperlocal is a word we journalists should be getting used to. It is a goal we should be aiming for within our news websites. After all, every news story is hyperlocal… you just need to live in the right place.

The effect of the Neighbourhood Watch hyperlocal scheme was huge. Suddenly, local residents who were a victim of petty crime felt they had somewhere to go. By emailing their local rep, they felt like they were reporting the problem without bothering the ‘real’ police — the investigators and coppers in the town centre.

What they didn’t realise, of course, is that their little problems translated to a major problem in the bigger picture. If you get your car window smashed, is it a big issue? No, probably not. But if, by reporting it to your local rep, you found that people all over town were having their car windows smashed in the same way, all of a sudden there’s a big crime problem.

Small stories, bigger issue

How does this involve journalism? Simple: we’ll apply the same strategy to news gathering. At Whitireia, we’ve assigned each journalism student — there are 27 of them in total — to a very precise area of Wellington (plus some bigger patches for the surrounding areas). We are going to promote our ‘news map’ to local people, under the branding of ‘Who is YOUR journalist?’. Just like the Neighbourhood Watch, we need to give off the impression we want to hear everything that’s going on; no matter how small or insignificant it may be. There are thousands of stories sat out there, but the residents don’t think they’re important enough to bother the busy journos at the Dominion Post.

So, instead, they’ll come to our students.

Anyway, this news map will feature highly in the new news website I am developing for Whitireia. For this, I have added all the data we have — so far — to a Google map, below.


View Larger Map

By zooming in, you can see how each section of Wellington is divided up. Click on each slice, and you’ll find the name of the reporter in charge, and a telephone number to get in touch.

As I recently discovered, those bubbles allow me to put HTML code in, so that opens up a whole wealth of options for local news coverage.

Magical map of marvellous minisites

So the plan is thus: fill each segment with news relating its geographical position. Make each slice of map its own minisite. This won’t be a problem. An RSS feed will be generated by the main news site — powered by Wordpress — and fed directly into each bubble. And, er, that’s it. Simple coding, simple concept… but I think it’s a powerful one that all our local newspapers should adopt.

But that’s not all. In time I will be feeding reporter’s Twitter feeds into that bubble too, allowing visitors to see what they’re working on. One student here is doing a story about bicycle accidents in Hutt. If she was to Twitter the message “researching bike accidents in Hutt, any experiences?”, people could immediately get in touch.

And then…?

Well what next? Google Maps is a platform I’m only just learning about. In time, perhaps, all our news stories can be tagged to certain locations. So, for example, any stories about a school could appear as a bubble in that school’s location… perhaps. But then perhaps it should be kept as simple as possible — we don’t want to drive away the people who would be the source of stories.

Over to you, guys. I’m very interested to hear what you have to suggest. Is this a good idea? What else should we be trying? What can I add?

6 comments »

Posted in Blogs, Multimedia, My Work, New Zealand, Newspapers, Social Networking, The Web

Tags: