As the Huffington Post goes live with its UK site today, ahead of the official launch event this evening, many journalists feel the site is wrong to recruit 300 unpaid bloggers.

Dave Lee, freelance journalist at the BBC, thinks that the Huffington Post causes damage to journalism.

While Manchester-based freelance journalist Louise Bolotin criticised Arianna Huffington for her policy.

However, not all reaction has been negative. Kat Brown has written a piece for Huffington Post’s lifestyle section titled Writing for Free Doesn’t Have to Mean Betrayal.

Writing for free is a grey area. Despite the ubiquity (and importance) of blogs and that many high profile sites trade content for prestige only, it’s often looked down upon if it makes up part of your career. When, as a newly-hatched post-grad, I joined one journalism forum, the stance was: “Don’t write unless you’re paid. It undermines you and it undermines journalism.”

So why write for free?

Free is why people write fanzines, update blogs and tweet. It’s pressure off, it’s the opportunity to practise something you enjoy and share it with people immediately. And particularly online, there’s a limited supply of people who will pay. My pitching skills are sufficiently atrocious that, if I were only to write for money outside my main job, I would probably forget how to hold a pencil within a year. I don’t want that, because I love writing and I need to do it.

Take a look at the full article here.

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Having a job in mainstream media before the age of 25 is fanciful thinking for many aspiring journalists, but having a blog could help turn those dreams into a reality.

Just ask young journalists Josh Halliday of the Guardian, Dave Lee of the BBC and Conrad Quilty-Harper of the Telegraph, all of whom credit their blogs as being fundamental to their success.

Speaking at an event at City University London last night, Halliday, a technology and media reporter and Sunderland University graduate, said: “The most important thing I did at university, including my degree, was to blog and get online. That’s what got me the job.”

Lee, who also started blogging while doing his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University, echoed Halliday saying: “I credit everything I’ve got to my blog at university.

“There is no possible way that I would have been able to go into the BBC newsroom on the basis of my degree, or the basis of my freelance cuttings or the basis of my student newspaper. ”

While Quilty-Harper, a data mapping journalist, said having a good blog and presence on Twitter, which he could readily show to potential employers, was what got him his job after he finished his postgraduate degree at City University London.

The three online trailblazers yesterday revealed their experiences of how to “blog your way into a job”:

Build a brand

Using your blog to promote yourself correctly is essential. Halliday stressed the importance of “being yourself” and marketing yourself in a way that is “likable”. While Lee highlighted that you never know what part of your branding will be the most fruitful, so you must do it all.

Conversing, linking and networking
Linked to the above is the idea that you must be in active dialogue with as many people as possible to build a dedicated following. Part of this involves linking to people who are blogging about similar topics to you, to create a mutually beneficial relationship. However, do not forget that, as Halliday highlighted, it’s a “two-way street”. So don’t just push yourself, relationships – especially ones with journalists already in the industry – should develop organically. Use the net’s networks  appropriately.

Be patient

You won’t go from 20 to 5,000 twitter followers overnight. Cultivating a twitter following and developing a community takes time, so don’t get too caught up on this. Make content the driving force behind your website or blog and the community will come.

Find a niche
With an increasing amount of people entering the blogosphere standing out is harder than ever before, but what could really help is finding a topic that nobody else or very few people are writing about. Lee blogged about his experiences of being a student in the developing online media using himself as a “case study”; Halliday created a hyperlocal blog about Sunderland; and Quilty-Harper had a blog about gadgets and technology. All three were unanimously behind blogs having a niche, as Halliday highlighted “journalists are paid to cover a single beat, so just do that”.

Advertising
Increasing traffic to your site is one of the most difficult elements of blogging, but all three panellists deplored the idea of buying advertising space to this end declaring it a waste of money. Instead they advocated networking and conversing with the right people as the means by which to increase your popularity.

Rajvir Rai is a postgraduate journalism student at City University London. He can found on Twitter @R_Rai.Similar Posts:

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If you’re reading this as a final year journalism student, you’ve probably just finished your course. It’s a good feeling. After a few years of practicing, preparing and, indeed, pretending, you’re now free to be a real journalist in the real world.

If you’ve done it right, you’re being described by your peers as one to watch for the future: A real prospect – the prodigy that’s heading places. Everyone wants to work with you.

And then you graduate.

Overnight, you turn from a young up-and-comer to an inexperienced, untested and – if you’re not careful – unemployable journalist.

Why the change? Well, firstly, you now cost money. No longer can you put on a big smile and throw yourself into your work in exchange for little more than a satisfying “well done” from the news desk. Secondly, all those already in the jobs you want have been on the very same journey. They were all described as “budding journalists” once. They’re you, but older, better, and more experienced.

Frightening, isn’t it? But don’t worry. You have something up your sleeve: momentum. Keeping that momentum until you land the elusive first job is the key to short and long term success.

Remember that editor you did some great work for over the Easter holidays? He probably remembers you. He would probably recognise you in the street. But he won’t next year when another sprightly young journalist turns up on his doorstep offering free work. So strike while the iron’s hot.

Think of all the people you have ever worked or drank with. Check in with your tutors – many know what the local industry landscape is like through social connections – and make everyone you know on earth fully aware that you are a journalist looking for work.

Keep track of your coursemates. Without sounding cruel, their struggle will spur you on further. Or, on the other hand, some of them might strike it lucky and get a quick job themselves. All it takes is one friend within a publisher or broadcaster to spot a vacancy, pass on your CV and you’re one step closer to a done deal.

Cash in all those editors you met along the way that invited you to keep in touch, or gave you their card. Most of them will have just been acting polite – but you’re bound to have stuck in the minds of at least a few of them. Even if you didn’t, being at the right place at the right time can be all it takes to get a set of shifts on a newsdesk.

While it’s easy to be dazzled by your big companies – your BBCs and Guardians – it’s well worth remembering that you may make a better name for yourself working for a tiny publication where they’ll be relying on you to innovate and experiment. That’s where you can really make your mark. Keep in mind that this stage it’s about the job, not the publication. If you’re really lucky, both will be great.

These approaches could see you in a job within a month. Or three. Or a year. Perhaps two. Truth be told, none of these methods are a surefire way of getting a job, and a big part of getting that first job in journalism is about preparing to be unemployed. Maybe for a very long time.

It’s a horrible feeling. On the worst days it feels like you’ll never even have a job, let alone one remotely related to journalism. But that’s where an unexpected luxury of journalism comes into play: you don’t need work in order to be working. Unlike, say, an out-of-work plumber who needs a customer’s pipes to ply his trade, the dole-friendly journo can do so many things.

Fill your days with productive activity. There’s only so much time per day you can devote to job-searching – so apply yourself during your down time to equip yourself with even more knowledge. You’ve really got no excuse not to start a blog. Hyperlocal is all the rage – and forever will be, let’s not forget – so set something up for where you live and get started.

If you’re really good, you may even discover that through the process of unemployment you will end up employing yourself.

Or, after all that hard work, you’ll finally get that phone call or email that heralds the beginning of your career.

Until then, though, prepare to feel useless, depressed and deflated. It’s an unrelenting test of your resolve, and many around you won’t make it. But consider it a quality control mechanism. When you do eventually get that job, you’ll want everyone around you to be as determined as you are.Similar Posts:

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We recently reported on an innovative departure from normal BBC broadcasting practice: a six hour live translation experiment called SuperPower Nation.

Various BBC International News channels broadcast from the event on 18 March 2010, where speakers of different languages tried to communicate without relying solely on English. It involved music and theatre, as well as face-to-face and online discussion.

While the SuperPower Nation ‘hub’ was in London, participants also gathered in cafes and centres around the world  – or took part from their own homes.

A live message board simultaneously translated the conversations into Arabic, Chinese, English, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese and Spanish using Google translation software.

A breakdown of some of the conversations can be found at this link.

Now the BBC reports on how it did: it received 11,711 messages, from 2,078 locations around the world.

English, unsurprisingly, still led as the dominant language, with 5626 messages, followed by 2767 in Spanish and 1781 in Portugese.

Less popular were Arabic (208); Persian (146); Chinese (simplified) (126) and Indonesian: (31).

BBC World reporter Dave Lee, says that the event was “perhaps the toughest scrutiny” of Google’s translation software to date. He reported:

“This is the largest translation project I’ve ever worked with,” said Chewy Trewhella, new business development manager for Google.

(…)

The translations were far from perfect in places, but Mr Trewhella added: “It’s about trying to get the message across… [users] are happy with 80-90 per cent effectiveness.”

More information and links can be found here.Similar Posts:

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#FollowJourn: Dave Lee

Who? Broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service. Former co-editor of the BBC Internet Blog.

What? Online journalism advocate who can be found on a variety of blogging and social media platforms.

Where? @davelee/http://daveleejblog.com/

Contact? Send him a tweet or get in touch via his contact page.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.Similar Posts:

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This list is doing the rounds ‘100 Best Blogs for Journalism Students – Learn-gasm‘… and we’re not on it. Nope, not even a smidgeon of link-love for poor old Journalism.co.uk there.

The BachelorsDegreeOnline site appears to be part of e-Learners.com, but it’s not clear who put the list together. Despite their omission of our content and their rather odd descriptions (e.g: Adrian Monck: ‘Adrian Monck writes this blog about how we inform ourselves and why we do it’), we admit it is a pretty comprehensive list; excellent people and organisations we feature on the site, our blog roll and Best of Blogs mix – including many UK-based ones. There were also ones we hadn’t come across before.

In true web 2.0 self-promotional style, here are our own links which any future list-compilers might like to consider as helpful links for journalism students:

• Journalism.co.uk for industry news, events and developments

• Journalism.co.uk Editor’s Blog for the titbits, tips, trade tools, recommendations and daily editors’ picks.

• TNTJ blog: Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists

• Insite: an advanced internet research skills.news blog by Journalism.co.uk’s consulting editor and trainer, Colin Meek.

• Journalism.co.uk training section and forums.

And here are some blogs/sites also left off the list which immediately spring to mind as important reading for any (particularly UK-based) journalism students:

Organisations

• Global Voices Online – essential for anyone interested in press freedom issues (Co-founder, Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, is here)

• The Frontline Club blog, as above.

• European Centre for Journalism (EJC)

• WEF Editors’ Weblog and SFN blog.

• Crikey.com: news from down under that’s not Murdoch, or Fairfax produced.

• Press Review Blog (a Media Standards Trust project) – it’s a newbie, but already in the favourites.

• Centre for Journalism from the University of Kent

• The UK National Union of Journalists news site and its president, Jeremy Dear’s, blog

• AllMediaScotland.com

• The Independent’s Media section

• NY Times’ media section

• FT.com media section

• Press Gazette’s Peter Kirwan/The Wire

• BBC Editors’ Blog

• BroadcastNow.co.uk

• StinkyJournalism: it’s passionate and has produced many high-profile stories

• Wired Journalists

• Index on Censorship

• Demotix blog

• Reporters Without Borders

• Committee to Protect Journalists

• International Federation of Journalists (though we’ve had problems accessing their site or feeds lately)

• British Journalism Review (now in its 20th year)

Individuals

• Craig Silverman’s Regret the Error

• MST director, Martin Moore’s blog

• Clay Shirky

• CurryBet – Martin Belam’s links are canny, and provocative and break down the division between tech and journalism.

• Malcolm Coles – for SEO tips and off-the-beaten track spottings.

• Dave Lee – facilitating conversations journalists could never have had in the days before blogs.

• Joanna Geary – as above

• Marc Vallee – photography freedom issues from the protest frontline.

• FleetStreetBlues: an anonymous industry insider with jobs, witty titbits and a healthy dose of online cynicism.

• Alison Gow for a view from the regionals

• Sarah Hartley previously as above, now with more online strategy thrown in.

• The e-Grommet for links.

• Charles Arthur – for lively debate on PR strategy, among other things

• Shane Richmond’s blog at the Telegraph.

• MarkMedia (view from Scandinavia)

• Kristine Lowe (as above)

• Media Culpa (as above)

• Richard Sambrook, BBC big cheese and excellent blogger

• Justin Williams,  Telegraph assistant editor

• Matthew Buckland, media views from South Africa

• Steve Buttry

• Craig McGill – bridging journalism and PR.

Writing this has only brought home further the realisation that omissions are par for the course with list-compilation, but it does inspire us to do our own 101 essential links for global online journalists – trainees or otherwise. We’d also like to make our list inclusive of material that is useful for, but not necessarily about, journalists: MySociety for example.

Add suggestions below, via @journalismnews or drop judith at journalism.co.uk an email.Similar Posts:

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We bid farewell to our fellow media reporters at Press Gazette, unless, as Roy Greenslade hopes, a buyer comes forward (again).

We haven’t produced our own coverage, as there has been more than plenty – with insider perspective – elsewhere. We would, however, like to wish the editorial team at Press Gazette the very best of luck in the future with whatever they go onto do. We’ve enjoyed meeting Press Gazette team – past and present – at events, and being kept on our toes when we’re covering the same stories.

Here’s a round-up of the coverage in links:

• Comments on original Wilmington announcement over at Press Gazette.

• Roy Greenslade’s news announcement on MediaGuardian

• Jon Slattery: ‘Old Bell tolls for Press Gazette’

• Patrick Smith, paidContent:UK: ‘Press Gazette Insider’s View: Why journalism’s trade bible failed’

• Alison Gow:’Goodbye Press Gazette’

• Kristine Lowe: ‘The depressing but inevitable demise of Press Gazette’ [headline attributed to Dave Lee, see below]

• Neil Thackray: ‘Press Gazette RIP’

• Dave Lee: ‘The depressing but inevitable demise of Press Gazette’

Please do add any others of note in the comments below.

Newly added:

• Adam Tinworth: ‘Why I wont miss Press Gazette’

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Dave Lee on why he won’t be joining the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) any time soon.

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Some juvenile humour on the BBC Nottingham webcam, just to lighten the mood.

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Journalism.co.uk and journalism blogger Dave Lee are proud to introduce a new forum for young journalists.

The Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists blogging ring (or TNTJ between you and me) is a place for young journalists from across the globe to share their experiences/anxieties/ideas/random thoughts…

To take part there are just a couple of criteria:

1) you must be under 30-years-old
2) you must blog about journalism (for more details on what this entails read Dave’s introduction)

Each month a topic/question will be put up for discussion. Interested parties can register and contribute their thoughts in a blog post, which will then be published on the TNTJ site. Feel free to post away on your own blog too.

You can log in and post your entry for about a week or so after the first post – though there’ll be no time limit on leaving comments.

We’re kicking off with the following: “The biggest challenge facing a young journalist in today’s media is…”

So far we’ve had some great responses, so why not have a read, young journos, or better still post your own.

You can follow updates to TNTJ through Journalism.co.uk’s journalismnews Twitter feed.

For more info or queries contact Dave Lee at davelee.mail@gmail.com or email laura@journalism.co.uk.Similar Posts:

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  Hitwise figures suggest the search engine accounted for 69.17 per cent of searches in the US in June.
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Dave Lee offers tips on how to make the most of simple Google apps – calendar, email and documents – to organize operations at a student newspaper.

Simple steps, which more importantly can be implemented for free.Similar Posts:

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Journalism students: read the blogs of journalism tutors, trainers and students. Mindy McAdams, Dave Lee and Paul Bradshaw are good starting points. You will get tips from other pros and can put them into practice in your own training. Tipster: Laura Oliver

Got a tip? Submit it here – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

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News of an earthquake that struck the UK in the early hours of Wednesday morning caused a surge in traffic to Sky.com/news with more page impressions recorded on the site at 1am than 9am, the site’s executive producer Julian March writes on the Editors’ Blog.

A similar effect was experienced by the Nottingham Evening Post’s site, HoldtheFrontPage reports, after it posted news of the quake within 30 minutes.

The site saw 1,821 readers visit between 1am and 2am – increasing this to 6,000 by 9am, 20,000 page views and 60 comments on the story – though it’s a shame they appear to have only opened this feature from 6am.

Both great examples of why it’s crucial to break news online – whether a local or national title – and get ‘ownership’ of the story to keep drawing those viewers back.

The BBC’s online and radio coverage was hot on the heels of the incident, though the video below – courtesy of student journalism blogger Dave Lee – suggests their TV news had to play catch up.

(I like the idea of competitive news watching between channels)

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The launch of a new blog to help journalists find case studies has been questioned by student journalist and blogger Dave Lee, who says such projects provide case studies representing too narrow a field.

While not directly attacking the Getting Ink Requests blog, Lee is concerned that such groups are set-up and perpetuated by journalists, and as such will only provide case studies representing a narrow section of society.

Lee goes on to criticise what he describes as the ‘”think of story, find case study” process’ saying it leads to ‘[F]eatures to order… There will always be an element of “you’ll do” about it.’

But as Lee offers no practical alternatives for journalists (as one commenter puts it) who are told to find ‘three case studies in 24 hours’ his post has met with some critical reactions.

Lee adds that his gripe is not with the individual journo under pressure, but with the introspective nature of the process, e.g. using personal contacts, particularly those within the industry, to find case studies.

Fair enough, but this is what journalists have always done and that’s not going to change. Regardless of who sets them up, using social networks and blogs to make case study requests will inevitably give journalists access to new sources, increase participation and ultimately give a wider representation of society.Similar Posts:

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