Tag Archives: Entertainment/Culture

Tricks and tips for journalism and editorial job hunting online – an update

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Journalism lecturer Andy Dickinson (@digidickinson) has now updated his recent SlideShare and blog post on how to find editorial jobs online, which we featured on this blog last week, to include a more detailed transcript of his talk.

His blog post this week contains lots of handy tips for the dedicated journalism jobseeker, so if you are in the market for a new job, check it out.

Meanwhile, here at Journalism.co.uk, we have produced a new page explaining how to get the most out of our own jobs board, including six step-by-step videos taking you through the jobseeker registration process and various alert systems. Here are the benefits, all of which are free:

  • ability to save jobs you have searched for and liked for later;
  • ability to upload and store your CV;
  • ability to apply online and save your applications for future re-use/modification;
  • ability to register a personal statement so that our can advertisers can find you using our CV match service;
  • ability to receive job opportunities by daily email;
  • ability to create customised RSS feeds based on your own search criteria.

I would urge you to take a few minutes to sign up, even if you are not necessarily looking to make a move now. You never know what opportunity might coming knocking on your door.

Finally, if you are on the other side of the fence and looking to recruit editorial staff, please read why you should advertise your vacancies on Journalism.co.uk here, and register to post your jobs here.

Recruitment advertising helps fund our free content, so if you like what we do this is one great way to support us!

Useful reading:

Job application tips

How to prepare a killer CV

How to prepare for that crucial interview

How to make the most out of work experience

Andy Dickinson: a guide to digital journalism job hunting

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Online journalism lecturer Andy Dickinson (@digidickinson) recently gave a lecture to his broadcast students advising on ways to find jobs online and promote themselves digitally.

His presentation appears in this slideshare:

Here’s another tip for creating a customised jobs feed using Journalism.co.uk’s jobs board search facility.

In the top left-hand column on most of the pages on Journalism.co.uk, you will see a panel headed “Job of the week”. About half-way down there is a dropdown menu that allows you to search by job type. For this example, select “editorial assistants and trainees” and click “go”.

On the subsequent search results page, you will see at the top of the central column an advanced search form. This allows you to make a more detailed search based on sectors, categories, salary and location. You will also see an option under format to “return search results as RSS feed”. Select that and also tick “editorial assistants and trainees” under the “categories” section.

Click the search button and, voila, you will be presented with a customised RSS feed containing only editorial assistant and trainee vacancies.

Slideshare: research tips for journalists from @colinmeek

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Journalism.co.uk consulting editor Colin Meek (@colinmeek) found himself stranded recently in Oslo, Norway but was rescued thanks to some nifty footwork by Kristine Lowe and an online project from Norwegian news site VG.no entitled Hitchhikers Central.

Colin was in Oslo to give, among other things, an evening presentation to the Norwegian Online News Association (NONA). Colin, when he’s not advising on Journalism.co.uk’s editorial board, is an investigative journalist and trainer in advanced online research skills (his next one-day, open course is in London Tuesday 15 June 2010). Here are some of the tips he shared with our Norwegian colleagues:

SuperPower Nation: how the BBC translation experiment fared

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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.

Election 2.0: ‘The internet is not national, it’s not local, it’s everywhere’ says Google’s DJ Collins

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As reported elsewhere on Journalism.co.uk, last night we supported City University London’s ‘Will 2010 be the first new media election?’ event, hosted by the Media Society and also supported by the Media Trust.

  • Listen to Evan Davis talking to Journalism.co.uk at this link: the BBC Radio 4 Today journalist posed, rather than answered the ‘how much influence will social media hold’ question, but said both new and media forms have their merits. “What might be quite interesting is the way they interact: the way old media results get amplified through the new media and the way the old media events are interpreted through new media.” Both these events will have more resonance together than they would on their own, he said.

Finally, here’s Rupa Huq, blogger, socialist, Labour supporter talking to City University student Heather Christie (@heatherchristie) about getting carried with the “brave new world of new media”:

Catch up with the other Journalism.co.uk coverage here:

Paywalls and entrepreneurship: Journalism.co.uk on BBC News Channel

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Journalism.co.uk featured on the BBC News Channel technology programme Click at the weekend. Our founder and publisher John Thompson (@johncthompson) was interviewed about our model for providing media industry news content – outside the paywall. The programme also featured Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and City University London newspaper journalism course director Jonathan Hewett, among others.

Here’s a link to the point at which Journalism.co.uk features:

A history of linked data at the BBC

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Martin Belam, information architect for the Guardian and CurryBet blogger, reports from today’s Linked Data meet-up in London, for Journalism.co.uk.

You can read the first report, ‘How media sites can use linked data’ at this link.

There are many challenges when using linked data to cover news and sport, Silver Oliver, information architect in the BBC’s journalism department, told delegates at today’s Linked Data meet-up session at ULU, part of a wider dev8d event for developers.

Initally newspapers saw the web as just another linear distribution channel, said Silver. That meant we ended up with lots and lots of individually published news stories online, that needed information architects to gather them up into useful piles.

He believes we’ve hit the boundaries of that approach, and something like the data-driven approach of the BBC’s Wildlife Finder is the future for news and sport.

But the challenge is to find models for sport, journalism and news

A linked data ecosystem is built out of a content repository, a structure for that content, and then the user experience that is laid over that content structure.

But how do you populate these datasets in departments and newsrooms that barely have the resource to manage small taxonomies or collections of external links, let alone populate a huge ‘ontology of news’, asked Silver.

Silver says the BBC has started with sport, because it is simpler. The events and the actors taking part in those events are known in advance. For example, even this far ahead you know the fixture list, venues, teams and probably the majority of the players who are going to take part in the 2010 World Cup.

News is much more complicated, because of the inevitable time lag in a breaking news event taking place, and there being canonical identifiers for it. Basic building blocks do exist, like Geonames or DBpedia, but there is no definitive database of ‘news events’.

Silver thinks that if all news organisations were using common IDs for a ‘story’, this would allow the BBC to link out more effectively and efficiently to external coverage of the same story.

Silver also presented at the recent news metadata summit, and has blogged about the talk he gave that day, which specifically addressed how the news industry might deal with some of these issues:

News Linked Data Summit – BBC News and Linked Data

View more presentations from silveroliver.

How did readers react to the Observer relaunch?

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It was goodbye to the horoscopes and hello to the New Review, but did the Observer readers like the newly relaunched and redesigned Sunday paper? You can see around 200 comments (at the time of writing) under editor John Mulholland’s introductory piece here. Guardian.co.uk editor Janine Gibson thanks users for feedback and assures them that all comments will be read. Stephen Pritchard, the readers’ editor also jumped straight in with some responses.

Here is some other Observer reaction as seen on Twitter:

“New observer is amazing – fashion, recipes, Chat articles, what polly vernon bought + a news section” (Robin Ince, comedian)

“It nearly achieved the impossible. selling a smaller product for same price. but very crowded esp review and the mag a mess..” (John Mair, Journalism lecturer)

“@nickcohen2 there’s no room for me! what’ll go in the pages that were full of AR this week btw? is it ≈ long columns by you?” (former Observer political editor, Gaby Hinsliff)

“The Observer have lost me as a reader, I have been buying this paper for as long as I can remember, but what they did yesterday was shameless” (LindaMarric, Labour supporter, student – and former reader)

“It’s interesting how the Observer‘s Brown story is snowballing when the relaunch seems designed to pave way for The New Review viewspaper” (Laura Slattery, journalist)

“The new Observer seemed to be almost entirely back to front. What were they thinking? Desperate Times indeed.” (Richard Cree, editor of Director Magazine)

I liked the new Observer – can they keep up the content though? (Andrew Howell)

First thing they teach you in editing school: mess with the horoscope at your peril. Do The Observer know something we don’t? (David Hepworth)

What did you think? Please leave your own thoughts below, or tweet to @journalismnews.

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – video on a digital SLR

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Thinking about shooting video on a digital SLR? Adam Westbrook showcases three films which have done just that – view them at this link. Tipster: Judith Townend.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

Melvyn Bragg to receive Media Society Award for 2010

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Author, journalist and media personality, Melvyn Bragg, will receive the Media Society Award for 2010 to recognise his long-standing contributions to the industry.

With 20 published novels, 32 years at the helm of The South Bank Show and his present post at BBC Radio 4’s program, Our Time, under his belt – the accolade is a timely nod to Bragg’s influence across the industry.

Annually bestowed upon an individual for outstanding contributions to the media, Bragg finds himself in good company, with those in previous receipt of the award including Sir David Frost, Jon Snow, Sir Michael Parkinson and last year’s winner, Jeremy Paxman.

“Bragg’s contribution is immeasurable; his formidable journalistic skills have engaged our intellect across the broad sweep of all forms of art and culture. He is our chronicler of arts – a cornerstone of cultural programming and thought,” says president of the Media Society, Geraldine Sharpe Newton, in an announcement.

Bragg will receive his award on 3 June.