For years now, designers and photographers, among others, have been expected to maintain online portfolios. They are a quick and easy way for interested employers to view and evaluate the previous work of applicants. Back in June 2008, Gen J committee member Sonya Smith, in her post Resumes for the new journalism world, shared a quick tutorial on how to apply for jobs and collect clips. In her overview, she wrote about joining sites such as LinkedIn and WordPress. Now, though, an online resume or blog might not be enough.

Instead, the trend is combining everything as one site. For example, John Cropper’s site, www.johncropper.net. John graduated from the Ohio State University’s journalism school last year, and is currently an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer at Grow Food, Grow Hope in Wilmington, Ohio, where he works as the public relations coordinator. He started with a WordPress theme, then tweaked it to meet his needs. Now, he has one site that showcases his blog, clips, resume, and photographs.

Find some other great examples at 10,000 Words, the blog of print journalist Mark S. Luckie, in his posts 15 Journalists’ outstanding personal portfolios and 7 Journalists’ well-designed portfolios.

So, Gen Jers, what do you think of online portfolios? Have you created one, or do you plan to? Do you have any tips for other Gen Jers tackling their online portfolios?

University of Kansas professor Scott Reinardy, who helped Generation J with a burnout session at SPJ convention in the fall, is moderating a live online discussion on THURSDAY, Jan. 21, dealing with issues of women and newsroom burnout.

Check it out here http://aejmc.org/topics/newsroom/chat/ from 12 to 12:45 p.m. EST. The title of the session is “Women in the Newsroom: Burned out and Fed Up.”

Some of the participants are of the Generation J set, and as we learned at convention, burnout can frequently affect younger journalists.
I hope a lot of people can watch on their lunch hour (if they aren’t too busy getting burned out by work) and discuss here in the comments.

I recently came across a column by Marjorie Cortez from the The Desert News in Salt Lake City, Utah called “Newspapers must follow basics of journalism to survive,” which discussed a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that the number one source for reporting the news was—drum roll, please—newspapers. While that finding alone filled me with joy, Cortez also discussed how in-depth and investigative reporting is thrown out the window in order to make faster online updates. The need for speed opens the window for a lack of information and writing a reliable story should be the priority. The more people throw the meat of the information to the wind in order to break a story first, the more newspapers have to stand in the realm of credibility.

Last week, Gawker put out its guide to a career in journalism. Honestly, my first thought was “this is hilarious.” But then I thought about all of the people who have been laid off and bought out in the last two years, and it made me feel really sad for journalism newbies (i.e. college students) and some of our younger Gen Jers. The rules of the game have changed. How are they going to hold on when the earth continues to shift under their feet? Their struggles to get enough solid experience to land jobs is different from that of mid-career and veteran journalists, many of whom have the managerial experience to change career paths with less trouble. At least that’s my assumption. Am I correct?

Over at The Independent Journalist, SPJ’s blog for freelancers, committee chair Amy Green urges journalists to not work for free. “If you write as a hobby then perhaps the pleasure of seeing your work in print is payment enough, and I understand that,” she says. “I don’t mean to discourage anyone from the fundamental activity of writing, which bears significant value by itself. But if you are a seasoned journalist, then please do not write for free.” The operative word in that sentence is “seasoned.” What if you’re a newbie to the freelance game? Let’s say you’ve been out of school for a year or two, you haven’t found a full-time job, and all you’re working with is clips you have from your college days. Or maybe you’re in your first job, but you don’t have a lot of opportunities to write for your publication, so your clips are few and far between. How do you break into freelancing with these kinds of backgrounds?