Writing for New Media

Anthony Moor, associate managing editor/online at the Orlando Sentinel, and editor of OrlandoSentinel.com, thinks young journalists need to carefully consider working on the Web:

After a long freeze brought about by the dot-com crash and 9/11, Web editors are hiring and Web operations are expanding again. Safa Rashtchy, a senior research analyst at the securities firm Piper Jaffray, recently predicted that online advertising will reach its tipping point in mid-2006. That's prompting news organizations to realign their resources to focus more on Web journalism.

Moor lists several suggestions for success in landing a job in online journalism:

• Have good news judgment
  
• Be Internet literate
  
• Know of HTML
  
• Be able to think in multimedia
  
• Have experience writing a blog
  

Hmm, kinda sounds like MCOM 407 doesn't it?

Similar thoughts from the recent College Media Advisers conference in New York:

• This is a wonderful time, a golden time, a fantastic time for media careers.
  
• Single media journalists are a thing of the past.
  
• Two to three years in the on-line/multi-media world is a significant track record and gets you to places unimaginable in traditional media.
  
• Minimum skill set for top jobs: Writing; Reporting; Interviewing; Ability to collect audio, video, and photos; Ability to edit audio, video and photos; Ability to upload to web audio, video and photos
  

If you need to record a phone conversation as part of your research (or for a podcast), you can learn the basics from this article at the Online Journalism Review. The link to the Radio Shack recorder no longer works, but you can find several different types of phone recorders at Radio Shack; some work with cell phones as well as land lines.

Maryland law requires that ALL parties to consent to having telephone conversations recorded. Make sure you ask for permission to record!

Here are the criteria I used to grade your first project. This project is worth a maximum of 15 points on the 100-point scale for the entire semester. The breakdown:

9 points: Your main article. Here’s what I look for:

• Is it clearly focused with a strong central theme about your subject?
• Is it well organized?
• Is it at least 750 words long?
• Does it reflect good research (more than just talking with the profile subject—background research, other interviews, etc.)?
• Have you included at least a few useful links?
• Does it meet standards of AP style?
• Are there errors in grammar and spelling?

3 points: Your photos. Here’s what I look for:

• Are there at least two thumbnails (resized proportionately, not squashed out of shape), each with a caption?
• Does each thumbnail open a new html page with its own caption?
• Is the point of each photo clear?
• Are photos technically good?

3 points: Your audio clip. Here’s what I look for:

• Is the audio clear and easy to understand?
• Is the clip well edited with smooth start and end points and internal edits?
• Does the audio clip make a clear point?
• Does the audio complement rather than repeat what is in the article?
  

In a recent article titled "What You Say Online Could Haunt You," USA Today explores the growing incidence of students getting expelled, suspended, arrested, booted off teams and dropped from consideration for jobs because of their online profiles. Just one more reminder that the Web is indeed an open book.

A couple of interesting articles recently on the blogging phenomenon. First is "Twilight of the Blogs," which argues that the trend is already winding down. Second is "Far From a Twilight: Blog Hype Over — Business Has Just Begun," which sees blogs as a maturing medium and one with lots of promise. Which side are you on?