Ten things every journalism student should know

If you are about to start a journalism course, here are 10 things you should know to give you the best chance of succeeding and getting a job in journalism.

Yes, you may only have had A-level results in your hand for a matter of hours, but you’re not going to make it as a journalist if you simply rely on attending classes and getting good grades.

Some of the tips we’ve come up with, most are from other journalists after we asked those who follow @journalismnews on Twitter for advice.

The suggestions are in no particular order and all are of equal importance.

1. You need to do much more than just attend classes. Start a blog, podcast and tweet get yourself known by building up a presence online (more on each of these below).

2. Get as much work experience as you can. Sometimes this will turn into paid work, often it won’t. Checkout internship opportunities listed on Journalism.co.uk and other sites.

And if you’re reading this and wondering whether or not to take a course, here’s a thought.

3. Contacts, contacts, contacts. And that doesn’t mean just having a contact book. Connect with people via Twitter, engage online and get your name known within the subject area you’re interested in. It’s never been easier to do this so take advantage of social networking.

4. Question everything. Develop an analytical brain. Learn how to spot a hoax press release, question figures and consider all the angles.

5. Be versatile. Learn to shoot video, be able to turn your hand to editing audio, get to grips with data journalism, make sure you get 100wpm shorthand, know your way round Photoshop. Journalism is not just about a notebook and pen but tools such as apps and your smartphone, Dipity, Storify and Audioboo, to name but a few.

6. Write, write, blog. If you’re an aspiring broadcast journalist learn how to podcast but anyone starting out should create a blog. If you don’t have a particular area of journalism you want to go into, pick a subject you are interested in and write about that. Follow others writing about that subject (see next point).

7. Hone your research skills and build up sources. Work on creating a network of contacts in Delicious, set up RSS feeds to follow subject areas that interest you, keep an eye on LinkedIn company pages. For example, if you are interested in fashion journalism, keep an eye on who is leaving and joining fashion houses listed on LinkedIn. Set up alerts to receive the accounts of these firms from Companies House. Publish the stories on your blog and pitch them to newsdesks.

8. Get published. When you find a really strong, original story pitch it to a newsdesk ask get a byline and negotiate a fee.

9. Build your brand. Your name is your brand so consider a Facebook page and create an online portfolio. If you’re thinking “I’m not the kind of person who says look at me”, get over that. You have to get your name out there.

10. Don’t give up at the first hurdle. You’re not going to have a great voice for broadcast or get your first pitch accepted by a magazine or national newspaper. When someone knocks you down, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep trying.

Here are five tips for aspiring journalists from Rob Mansfield.

Find out how some journalists got their big break in Journalism.co.uk’s Industy Insight video series.

Key blogs

Apart from Journalism.co.uk which has useful ‘how to‘ guides, info on handy tools and technology, daily tips for journalists and industry news here are some useful blogs to follow:

• Wannabe Hacks, a blogging collective of aspiring journalists which is essential reading for any student journalist. Last years wannabes are now fully fledged journalists with great jobs and they’re about to hand over the reins to this year’s cohort;
• Paul Bradshaw, head of online journalism at Birmingham City University, has a must-read Online Journalism Blog;
• Andy Bull, multimedia tutor who has a really useful blog with lots of ‘how to’ guides.

Got other tips for aspiring hacks? Leave a comment below.

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#followjourn: @Nath_Rowden – Nathan Rowden/journalist

Who? Nathan Rowden

Where? Nathan is a journalist for Powys County Times. He writes a blot at newsmaverick.wordpress.com

Twitter? @Nath_Rowden

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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• #followjourn: @johnplunkett149 – John Plunkett/Journalist
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• #followjourn: @niallpaterson – Niall Paterson/journalist
• #followjourn: @JonathanHaynes – Jonathan Haynes/journalist

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Seven steps for building an online community

Poynter has a seven step guide for building an effective community management plan. Community managers are recommended to:

1. Define goals (10,000 Words also has some tips to help you establish social media metrics);
2. Profile your target community. Satirical website the Onion has detailed its audience here. Poynter’s seven steps post recommends brainstorming ideas of who your target community will be;
3. Identify influencers and key people with a large social media following;
4. Create social media-friendly content. Poynter gives the example of linking to other sites than your own so you become a trusted source;
5. Optimise content for sharing. The post discusses share buttons and encourages you to think about headline writing;
6. Create interaction guidelines. Poynter recommends giving some thought to this and keeping a note of issues as they arise;
7. Monitor the community, then improve. The post suggests tools such as Tweetdeck and learning on the job.

The full post is at this link.

Tipster: Sarah Marshall

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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App of the week for journalists – Flud, an RSS and news reader

App of the week: Flud

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) and just released on Android

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Any journalist who uses RSS feeds to keep a track of news will know their worth. But if you’ve tried to use an RSS reader on your phone you will no doubt have found the small screen to be annoyingly limiting.

Flud is a good alternative, as it allows you to add RSS feeds from Google Reader and search for other feeds from news sites and blogs. You can organise your content by dragging feeds around and you are presented with stories in a visual, picture-led way. This is probably what earned it the title of Fast Company’s “Best UI of 2010″, as stated on iTunes.

After organising your feeds you can then bookmark and share stories by Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

Reviews: It gets three stars in Apple’s App Store and in the Android Market.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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Facebook study finds Independent’s content was shared and liked 136,000 times in one month

Facebook has published a report on the way the Independent uses the social network to share content. The study has found people liked or shared content from the Independent 136,000 during a “recent” month.

These actions were then seen 68,845,050 times on Facebook, with a click-through rate of 0.53 per cent.

The study also found “each action through a social plugin”, such as the recommend button, has driven an average of 2.67 referrals back to the Independent. It also found Facebook referrals result in readers spending an average of seven seconds longer on a destination page.

The Independent’s success in engaging with readers using Facebook and traffic referrals form the social media site increasing by 430 per cent last year has been well documented by Journalism.co.uk. Jack Riley, the Independent’s head of digital audience and content development explained in this post and this podcast, how the Independent has created specific Facebook pages for football teams and columnists such as Robert Fisk, whose page has accumulated more than 24,000 fans.

The first stage of the implementation of the Independent’s Facebook strategy involved adding the recommend plugin at the top and bottom of the article; the second involved the creation of open graph pages for columnists and sports teams.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – toolkits for journalists

The blog network of the Society of Professional Journalists has produced a list of 20 online toolkits aimed at journalists, offering an excellent resource of tools, tutorials and tips. See the list here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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#followjourn: @stevenowottny – Steve Nowottny/journalist

Who? Steve Nowottny

Where? Steve is a political and medical journalist and deputy editor of Pulse

Twitter? @stevenowottny

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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Nieman: Blogs, SEO chief and Facebook comments result in traffic increase for LA Times

The Los Angeles Times is experiencing an increasing amount of traffic, which Nieman Journalism Lab is attributing to engaging with its audience using its blogs.

In March the site had more than 160 million pageviews; in May it was 189 million, bucking the downward trend of many other major US sites. The Nieman report states:

That doesn’t mean the LA Times is going to lap the New York Times or the Huffington Post when it comes to reader counts. But the numbers are still impressive, and more so when you consider the secret sauce at the heart of it all: a full embrace of blogging that adds voice in some corners, emphasises timeliness in others, and has opened new doors for reader engagement. On latimes.com, news is getting the blog treatment and blogs are getting the news treatment. “Most of our blogs are reported stories,” said Jimmy Orr, managing editor/online for the Times. “What we’re seeing is big increases in our blogs, and that’s where a lot of the breaking news is.

The post goes on to explain some other changes at the LA Times, too. The site has recently added an SEO chief, “who works on the copy desk to optimise headlines” resulting in a “65 per cent rise in traffic from search and a 41 per cent jump in traffic from Google as compared to this time last year”.

Another move by the LA Times is to make the site more social by adding Facebook comments to around 50 per cent of articles, a move that has resulted in a 450 per cent increase in referrals from Facebook, according to Nieman’s post.

It also plans to expand its use of Facebook as a commenting system because of encouraging results it’s seen so far. The goal is a virtuous circle: A bigger community leads to more traffic leads to more impact for the Times’ journalism.

It is worth reading the full post on the LA Times’ traffic report which lists examples of the LA Times blogs, including LA Now, “which looks like a blog, but is actually a driver for breaking news”.

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Journalisted Weekly: Riots, Premier League kick-off, and continuing debt crises

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

for the week ending Sunday 14 August

• This week’s undisputed lead story was the rioting across England
• New Premier League season, US and Eurozone debt crises, and Syrian fighting covered lots
• New Tibetan PM, alleged Zimbabwean ‘torture’ camp and Brazilian corruption covered little

Covered lots

• Riots and their aftermath, starting in Tottenham and spreading across London before hitting Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Gloucester, Leicester, Wolverhampton and elsewhere, 2,097 articles
• In football, the Premier League season kicked off, 1,236 articles
• International debt crises continued, in the US, 723 articles, and in the Eurozone, 487 articles
• Protests and fighting in Syria, 160 articles
• The race for the Republican nomination for the US presidential election gathers pace, 81 articles

Covered little

• New Tibetan Prime Minister sworn in, 9 articles
• An investigation by BBC Panorama exposes an alleged Zimbabwean torture camp, 2 articles
• Brazil’s deputy tourism minister is arrested, the third senior official caught up in corruption allegations since President Rousseff took office in January, 2 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

• David Cameron: 762 articles (+127% on previous week)
• Theresa May: 276 articles (+557% on previous week)
• George Osborne: 200 articles (-13% on previous week)
• Nick Clegg: 161 articles (+109% on previous week)
• Ed Miliband: 143 articles (+83% on previous week)
• Tony Blair: 60 articles (-18% on previous week)
• Alex Salmond: 56 articles (+65% on previous week)
• Gordon Brown: 54 articles (-33% on previous week)
• Michael Gove: 54 articles (+238% on previous week)
• Harriet Harman: 54 articles (+80% on previous week)

Celebrity vs serious

• Jeremy Irons’ comments, that ‘If a man puts his hand on a woman’s bottom, any woman worth her salt can deal with it’, 18 articles vs. Mormon leader Warren Jeffs is jailed for life for child sexual assault offences, 17 articles
• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt visit Richmond, 7 articles vs. Bali bomb suspect extradited for trial, 6 articles
• Gordon Ramsay is dropped as face of gin, 3 articles vs. Pfizer begins paying out to Nigerian meningitis drug trial victims, 3 articles

Arab spring (countries & current leaders)

• Syria and President Assad: 69 articles (-48% on previous week)
• Libya and Colonel Gaddafi: 66 articles (-3% on previous week)
• Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah: 41 articles (+156% on previous week)
• Turkey and Prime Minster Erdogan: 23 articles (+5% on previous week)
• Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu: 18 articles (-22% on previous week)
• Yemen and President Saleh: 11 articles (+83% on previous week)
• Bahrain and King Al Khalifa: 8 articles (-20% on previous week)
• Iran and President Ahmadinejad: 7 articles (+40% on previous week)
• Kuwait and Emir Al Sabah: 7 articles (from 0 articles previous week)
• Gaza and Hamas: 5 articles (-29% on previous week)
• Jordan and King Abdullah: 5 articles (+67% on previous week)
• West Bank and President Abbas: 2 articles (-71% on previous week)
• Egypt’s Military council: 2 articles (-95% on previous week)

Who wrote a lot about… looting during the riots

• Sandra Laville – 12 articles (The Guardian)
• Paul Lewis – 12 articles (The Guardian)
• Matthew Taylor – 8 articles (The Guardian)
• Andrew Hough – 8 articles (The Daily Telegraph)
• Matt Wells – 7 articles (The Guardian)
• Chris Greenwood – 7 articles (Daily Mail)
• Nicholas Watt – 7 articles (The Guardian)
• Jim Pickard – 7 articles (Financial Times)

Long form journalism

• 4,529 words: ‘Roger Ailes and the rise of Fox News’ – Tim Dickinson, The Guardian, 10 August 2011
• 4,217 words: ‘British patients are flocking to take part in ‘sex addiction’ recovery programmes’ – Clare Dwyer Hogg, The Independent, 13 August 2011
• 4,016 words: ‘My Premier League 2011-12 predictions’ – Phil McNulty, BBC News, 9th August 2011

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – data journalism checklist

Data Miner UK, aka Nicola Hughes, has compiled a very useful list on her site which can be used as a checklist by those interested in developing their work within forms of data journalism. They include legal boundaries to be aware of, resources of data stores and understanding the stories to be found behind statistics.

You can find her full list here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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