Lessons from a Conference Attendee

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday, I attended the training seminars for Region 5 of SPJ. I wanted to create a post sharing some of the lessons I took away from the conference. Enjoy!

1. Figure out the value of YOU. Anyone can report, that is, share images with the public. However, not everyone can be a journalist. Only we, as journalists, have the training to properly interpret and provide perspective on stories. Our lunch's keynote speaker Dave Lindquist of the Indianapolis Star said, "80% of success is being there." Eventually, someone is going to call you because he/she needs a journalist who is in your vicinity to report on events occurring around you. Make yourself indispensable to any employer. Also, figure out your niche expertise, so that you're the person an editor has to call on topic X or Y.

2. Use the Internet to your advantage. There are numerous sites to analyze your social media reach and to help you generate story ideas and sources. The Internet also offers great resources for compiling information so that you don't have to scour sites all day by yourself. It can effectively organize data for you and can even send you alerts before other people have jumped on a story. For some of the most helpful sites, check out the list compiled by Jeff Cutler, a social media specialist for SPJ who spoke at 2 of the sessions I attended. My short list: make sure you have a blog, your own domain and, if you're a photojournalist, a Flickr account.

3. Freelance. You'll want clips from publications beyond your school paper or primary news outlet. It's part of getting as much experience and exposure as possible. It's easy to take what you're really passionate about and find a niche publication that needs your expertise in that passion AND in good writing. You'll be able to present a future employer with different types of writing, as well as a network of several editors who can vouch for your work ethic. It can also be a great way to make some money on the side, whether you're between jobs or just want some extra income and want to prevent rustiness in your writing.

4. Get to know your followers. Figure out what your readers are interested and what will keep them coming back to your writing. Make sure they're following YOU, not your outlet. Also, figure out when you have the greatest reach. According to social media experts, 7-10 p.m. is a good time to post on social media. 2-6 p.m. (or 3-5 p.m., according to Jeopardy) sees a lot of Twitter traffic, so you may want to schedule your tweets then.

5. Write with the assumption that no one trusts you. If you depend on the reputation of your news outlet, your writing will get lazy, and YOU (as a brand) will blend into the background. You need to write in a way that no one can deny what you're saying. You're only responsible for what you say, not how people perceive you. Be sure people know your sources. Make social media a conversation where you ask questions and retweet criticisms or quotations publicly and respond to followers' comments.

I want to close with a paraphrase of Amy Bartner of the Indianapolis Star talking about journalists and the direction journalism is taking to merge personal and professional.

We're all humans. We all have personalities. We all have opinions. We can't just pretend we're robots that sit at computers and type our stories [and don't care].

Revoir- C'est maintenant (A Resurrection and Lesson in Branding)

Hello, blog world! I know it's been a long while. I must first apologize for that. I lost track of my account and just recently found the login information. Lucky for me, it was right after the Region 5 spring conference for the Society of Professional Journalists, something about which I wanted to blog.

There is much irony in this post. I wanted to blog about the biggest lesson I took away from the conference: YOU MUST BRAND YOURSELF.


Every session I attended talked about how best to sell yourself and how to use social media to most effectively create a following for yourself. Gone is the age of working for a brand, a masthead (a media outlet). Now, YOU are the brand.

I realized how true this has become for me. I am a self-proclaimed Joel Stein addict. If you don't know him, look up some of his writings. You'll know you've found him if it's sarcastic, ironic, Jewish and probably mentions either his wife Cassandra or his son Laszlo. Yes, Stein writes for Time magazine, one of my favorite weekly publications, but I don't read him because he writes for Time. I read him because he's funny; he's Stein. I'm subscribed to him on Facebook, and I follow him on Twitter. Even if he left Time or it went out of business (as often occurs in the media today), I'd still find him and read him.

I also realized how poor a job I've been doing of branding Rachel Manning. I met many students at the conference who had been producing radio newscasts or writing in-depth news series throughout college. One of the speakers said she had freelanced in college and had been published out of New York before even getting a diploma. I, on the other hand, barely have a YouTube presence after my Honors capstone and oversee a Twitter account with a measly 19 followers. It was after this epiphany that I knew I had to restart my blog.

I know it may be too little too late for me, but I titled this "Musings of a Young Journalist." It's perfect. I can still muse. My thoughts must have some value. I'm still young. I'm allowed to make mistakes. I'm still a journalist. I'll call it "doing story research...for several months." The SPJ Code of Ethics' first tenet is "Seek the truth and report it." I've been discovering many truths recently about the news industry, so I will continue to report them, and maybe, just maybe, someone even younger than myself can gain something from it. Maybe, just maybe I can save one amateur journalist from being as lost as I am and feeling as behind in the game of making a name and eventually making a career.

So, take a seat. Grab a pen and notebook (as if you didn't always carry those). And take note. Thank you.

Sitting Down with a Local Legend

I am putting off my theater and journalism theme yet again to write about something else I’ve been putting off. (No, not my taxes; I finally did those this past weekend.) Over spring break, I interviewed Local12’s Bob Herzog for an assignment in my interviewing class. However, due to the off-week, the blog audit and the extra credit post for the SPJ panel, I never got around to talking about this interview.

Herzog is Local12’s weekday morning traffic reporter and weekend anchor. (He was also once featured on Anderson Cooper's show for his "Dance Party Fridays.") He calls himself odd because he does not have a hardcore journalism background nor did he ever have to leave Cincinnati to find a job. Yet, here he is, working in news in the Queen City.

Through this interview, I learned many things about the news industry that I wanted to share with all of you:

1) News people are more approachable than you think. Before the interview, I got to sit in on the Saturday morning newscast. I was surprised by how friendly and unstressed everyone seemed. There was plenty of banter on commercial breaks and lots of laughter. I always assumed news people were busy, stressed and often Debbie Downers because the news is serious and often unhappy. But, literally, everyone was kind to me, and Herzog was very excited and willing to talk about his career and the industry.

2) You never know where your life is going to take you. Herzog started out pre-med at Xavier, but he realized in his organic chemistry class that he’d much rather be up and talking and telling stories, which translated into his Electronic Media degree. His college internship at one radio station turned into a news director position right out of college at its sister station. While at channel 64 as the weekend movie host, he made connections that eventually led to his “foot in the door” at 12. Moral of the story: figure out what you like and meet as many people as you can.

3) Make your market your home. Herzog said it probably helped that he grew up in the Westside because viewers could see him and recognize him as someone who was familiar with the Cincinnati neighborhoods and why some things were important to certain areas. So, get to know your viewers. Make connections. Find out what’s significant in each area and “earn the trust of the people who are watching you.”

4) Take advantage of your time in school while you can. Herzog said to really dig deep into your journalism courses. Understand the ethics behind reporting.

5) Realize journalism is a hard career. Herzog said to be prepared for weird hours and low pay. You’re not going to immediately get a job in a top market. Networking is really important, both for landing jobs and for creating a directory of sources, so make contacts whenever you can. With the digital revolution changing media every day, there are fewer jobs and more people fighting for them. Herzog said he was on the verge of quitting and going back to practice law when he got the call from 12.

Red Carpet Resurrects Musical Past

This week, I was trying to think of another musical in which the press plays a large part in the plot, but I didn’t like any of my options. Plus, I wanted to write about a topic with which more of you would be familiar.

Then, suddenly, I HAD IT! The biggest night in movies with the young hosts who were making a buzz. (That would be the Oscars with James Franco and Anne Hathaway, in case you live under a rock.)

For several weeks prior, the press was all over the story, speculating what this young duo might do. When the actual night came, it was the people who spoke…all over social network sites. 

Both were new to the gig, but the two made several allusions to Hathaway singing during Hugh Jackman’s opening a few years earlier. So, maybe musical theater was still in the bill? Hathaway and Franco did make a video parody of “Grease,” after all.

Some of the biggest hits, as it turned out, did relate to musicals.

 1) Auto-tuning popular movies. Franco and Hathaway introduced this montage 

 by saying the musical was still alive. And when this is what mainstream music has become, why not musicals, too? (But please, Hollywood, don’t get any ideas about a “ Twilight” musical!)

2) James Franco in a dress. After Hathaway appeared in a suit to sing a parody of “On My Own” (from the musical “Les Miserables” FYI), Franco said he figured he should reciprocate the action, apparently by cross-dressing as Marilyn Monroe from the movie musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” On a related side note, the other female star of that film, Jane Russell, died earlier that day.

3) “ Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Perhaps the most famous song from a movie musical (“The Wizard of Oz”), this number was sung by the students of Public School 22 from New York as a Cinderella story closing to the evening.  

In a night full of surprises, but also of expected wins, I never expected the musical to come up. None of the films up for Best Picture (or anything else, for that matter) were musicals. But the media and the musical have been intertwined for so long that it’s bound to crop up. Of course, actually seeing it in the media excited me, and to find out that other people (via Twitter) cared enough too to tweet about it made me simply giddy. Whereas, in the past, it was all about the professional critics from different publications, the media today is really about the common person. They have the Twitter accounts and the blogs. They have the big voice. The Oscars were a great indication of how the general populace now picks the trending topics and how everyone can be a journalist. So, get out there and get with it! Get musical!

Does Money REALLY Make the World Go ‘Round?

As I was struggling through another Broadcast Announcing class, trying to connect with the copy, our professor told us the most important thing to remember. Money. You may think a company’s cookies taste like vomit, but if they give you $500 to say you like them, then oh my, these cookies are the best in the world. Yes, we were talking about commercial copy, but I must ask, Is this true for news as well?

To explore the idea, I will be using the character of Mark Cohen from the musical “Rent.” Mark wants to make a meaningful documentary about the homeless and HIV-positive in New York City. His career takes off when he films a riot at a performance protesting the closing of a tent city and sells his footage to the local news.

Producer Alexi Darling sees his footage and offers him a deal (the woman starting at 0:19) to produce regular segments on her news show “ Buzzline.” Mark comments how sleazy “Buzzline” is but eventually “ sells his soul for three grand a segment.” 

Near the end of the musical, Mark examines his life (“What You Own”)  and ultimately takes a stand, quitting “Buzzline” to work on his documentary.

His story raises three questions for me:

1) Should money rule your life? Where is the line for journalists between compassion/ finding stories that matter and making ends meet by covering whatever story the boss wants? In the SPJ Code, journalists are told to act independently by not accepting money or favors from other organizations, but what if your own organization is paying you to produce sleaze to keep their high ratings?

2) What is the value of tabloid news? Before the start of “What You Own,” Mark introduces his next segment as “Vampire Welfare Queens Who Are Compulsive Bowlers.” As a veritable journalist, he cannot live with himself in this role. He wanted to be a filmmaker who made a difference, but ended up as corporate America’s lackey. When he, and so many others like him, could be covering stories that matter, why are they practically forced to work for organizations that make the ratings? Can this tabloid news style even be called news at all?

3) When should a journalist decide enough is enough? Obviously, it’s important to be able to pay the bills in any job. But where is the ethical line or the line to be true to oneself? Honestly, I don’t know if I have the guts Mark did to quit his day job and pursue his real interest.

Overall, Mark Cohen is a great examination of modern journalists, especially the rookies who still dream of making a difference. He is exploited by producers (Alexi) who want cheap talent. He is exploited by businessmen who want positive press (a former roommate Benny Coffin pays his rent in a charity stunt). He is exploited by performance artists who want publicity, period (his ex Maureen Johnson wants to stage a protest so that Mark can film it). Everyone around Mark realizes he is their ticket to getting on the nightly news, and he simply wants to improve conditions for everyone through his documentary of the homeless and the HIV-positive New Yorkers. The song "Halloween" covers his inner struggle with always being the observer in the group and trying to remain objective, although the stories he films are very emotional. How should he pick which stories are told? In "Goodbye Love," his roommate Roger accuses, "You pretend to create and observe when you really detach from feeling alive." The ultimate dilemma for Mark is: stand up for what I believe in or pay the Rent?

There's Always a First Time

Hello, readers!

I've decided to create this blog to share my musings with the larger world. The world wide web is truly a community now, so I figure I'll become a more active part of this community as part of my transition into the professional world.

I don't know what I'll write about. It may be the meme of the week or a thought after reading a friend's Facebook status. Most likely, though, I will be copying and pasting my posts from blogs I'm writing for my ethics and news writing classes so that a greater number of people can read them.

If there's anything you'd like to read about, just let me know! I'm always open to new ideas and new angles on old stories.