By: Lynn Walsh

Join us this in New York City for the 2011 College Media Advisers spring convention!

I, Lynn Walsh, will be representing the SPJ Generation J committee throughout the convention this week and early next week. Stop by and say hello and gain more information about how Generation J can help you as you transition from a college journalists to the real world.

Information about how to connect with us and participate in our programming will be available. I also will be critiquing resume with other volunteers throughout the conference. Be sure to sign-up early because space is limited.

You can contact me in NYC on Twitter @LWalsh or @SPJGenerationJ. Get in touch with me at any time to hear more about what SPJ and Generation J can do for you. I hope to see you there!

By: Mike Brannen

Once upon a time, newsrooms focused on providing content solely for the medium it operated in. Today, news outlets, regardless of the medium, must all compete online…especially through social media networks. People are increasingly monitoring their social networks through advanced mobile phones, shortening the amount of time it takes them to access information and communicate.

News organizations hoping to build a loyal following must have an active presence on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. The more information the news outlet sends, the greater the numbers of followers it can accumulate. However, delivering a steady stream of updates and new information presents a challenging dilemma.

I work as a morning TV producer, and our overnight crew will come across the occasional car crash or crime. We might be the only news outlet to know about it, and it might happen hours before we go on air. If we tweet the information we have, our audience (though probably asleep) will know what we know. Yet, now our competitors know about this breaking news, and have time to jump on the story and get it ready for air.

The advantage we would have had on air of being the only news team covering that story would be lost because we sent out a tweet. We no longer had the broadcast advantage.

This may be the sacrifice TV stations, and newsrooms, have to accept. The world now operates on a need-to-know now basis. People can’t wait for a newscast or for the paper to come out tomorrow. We have lost the ability to own a story on our own time.

Granted, there are exceptions, such as investigative pieces that aren’t under the gun to print or air ASAP. But for the most part, timely stories in our future will be told first through social media, then through older media forms.

Mike Brannen is a morning newscast producer for KIRO7, the CBS affiliate in Seattle. He recently received a Master’s Degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and completed his thesis, Motivational Use of Twitter. He previously worked multiple positions at KOMU-TV in Columbia, Missouri during the past four years.

As of earlier this month, I’m no longer the chair of the Generation J committee. What can I say? It’s been an interesting experience. I’ve been on the Gen J committee for three years and I’ve seen the industry change quite a bit in that time. I’m stepping aside to let someone else take the reins. Join me in welcoming your new chair, Lynn Walsh.

Lynn is an investigative video journalist for Texas Watchdog, a non-profit online journalism organization in Houston, Texas. She’s a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism with television, online, and print journalism experience. Lynn began her career as a reporter for The Government Channel in Athens, Ohio, where she covered city and county issues for the citizens and students living in Athens County. She also served as a general assignment reporter for www.thepalestra.net, focusing on anything from sporting events to the 2008 general election.

With her passion for and experience in digital journalism, Lynn will help take the Generation J committee in a new direction. Welcome, Lynn!

Can you imagine an America with no newspaper-type journalism…a Washington, D.C. that goes unchecked for the most part? That’s a scary thought and it’s why we have to do something.

I am of the belief, and maybe it’s naive, that good journalism won’t die even if it’s traditional medium does. I think there are a large number of people out there who care about good journalism…they just don’t want to pay for it. That’s what happens when you can get something for free for a long time…no one wants to pay for the thing anymore.

Can you imagine city halls and county commissions across this land, from sea to shining sea, without local journalists inside holding politicians feet to the fire?

I don’t know what the answer is. I wish I did. But I do know that if we young journalists, from every facet and every walk of life, from every state and every region, put our heads together, we can figure this thing out.

This week’s Good Work Wednesday post is dedicated to April Dudash.

Dudash is currently working as the Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern doing the bidding of SPJ Headquarters.

Her main focus is FOI issues, writing articles for the FOI edition of Quill magazine, spearheading efforts to revamp and update the FOI portion of the SPJ Web site. She also helps update the FOI FYI blog, the SPJ Works blog and around the office, she helps with communications, writing news releases and helping with 2010 Convention marketing, as well as updating the membership rosters.

“One of my favorite things about working here is getting to talk with SPJ members from around the country,” Dudash said.

She recently participated in the Ted Scripps Leadership Institute and got talk with student chapter presidents and recently Skyped with Richard Roth, who’s starting up an international student chapter in Qatar, to see how those efforts are going.

“I really like helping people with chapter programming and membership recruitment ideas,” she said. Dudash recently graduated from the University of Florida, and was chapter president for two years.

Young journalists are faced with a lot of obstacles and situations. I thought it would be a good idea to talk about situations that we might face on a daily basis in the newsroom. While some situations are only things I’ve been warned about by college professors, I’d like to start posting a situation and discussing the best ways to handle it. Together we can survive, one newsroom at a time.

Today’s situation is called “Who’s the boss?” Has anyone experienced a power struggle in the newsroom? The old reporter at the corner desk who barks out orders like they’re the editor? I once thought it was usually just the reporter who’d been at the office the longest, but I don’t think that’s always the case. If you’ve experienced this, how did you handle it?  Did you listen to your fellow reporter? What do you think is the best way to handle it? Do you think it has something to do with age or time in the business?  Sound off!

Have a great Memorial Day weekend! Stay safe! J

I’ve been on LinkedIn for two years now and in that time, I’ve gotten quite a few requests for endorsements—from former interns, current interns, freelancers, former co-workers, etc. Some of them I’ve endorsed. Others? They go straight to the archive, shelved to never be heard from again. Some of these requests don’t make sense. If I’ve never edited or fact checked your work, or we’ve never shared a work space, what do you expect me to say about you? (Some people say you shouldn’t endorse someone unless they endorse you first; I don’t know if I agree with this, but whatever floats your boat, right?) To me, an endorsement is the same as a reference or recommendation; if I can’t truly say why you’re a good worker/person, I don’t want to spend any time trying to think up a reason that probably won’t ring true. Gen Jers: How do you feel about endorsements? Do you think they’re helpful? In the long run, do they really mean anything?

I stumbled across this website: http://www.stuffjournalistslike.com.

I experienced a lot of “That’s so true!” moments. It may be something every one has already read, but sometimes I’m just the last to know about trivial things.

This one was one of my favorites:

http://www.stuffjournalistslike.com/2010/03/giant-novelty-checks-and-scissors.html

What are some of the stories or events you’ve had to cover where you might have completely rethought your career path? What about those that reminded you of why you went into journalism in the first place?

Lane Wallace offers up a fresh take on biased journalism in The Bias of Veteran Journalists on the Atlantic. Not conventional bias, but a new strain that plagues veteran journalists everywhere. Wallace points out that most veteran reporters are experts of their beats and have mastered their subjects. Unfortunately, this means they often form angles before collecting the facts. Interviews only fill data gaps. Fundamental questions are overlooked.

That’s where we come in. Young journalists like us aren’t experts. Not yet, at least. Wallace writes:

A friend of mine who’s an editor at the New York Times said those results don’t surprise him at all. “If you watch a White House press conference,” he said, “you can tell who the new reporters are. They’re often the ones who ask the best questions.” I must have looked a little surprised. “Seriously,” he said. “I actually think we should rotate reporters’ beats every two years, so nobody ever thinks they’re too much of an expert at anything.”

Our minds may be young, but they are curious. In this competitive market, we strive to be thorough and precise, just like j-school taught us to be. Even experts need to ask the obvious questions, which often address the subtleties. Basic, yet essential, details. We ask all the questions, because we aren’t experts. And, this time, that’s to our advantage.

What do you think, Gen Jers? Can the veterans learn something from our hard work? Do we bring a fresh perspective?

A recent post on Reflections of a Newsosaur, Are hyper-local programs fair to j-students?, addresses collaboration between mammoth media companies and college journalism programs, and what these partnerships mean for students. Are they good or bad? Blogger Allan D. Mutter provides both sides of the argument, then offers his own analysis. Ultimately, Mutter believes these partnerships are mutually beneficial, saying”while these arrangements distinctly benefit media companies (which rightfully ought to compensate student contributors with something more tangible than ‘exposure’), the programs on balance represent a fair bargain for journalism students, who will need every advantage in launching their careers at a time most traditional news organizations are chopping staffs instead of expanding them.” In the end, journalism students need all the exposure they can get before they’re released into the field, and big media companies provide an opportunity to do just that.

One example of such collaboration is the New York Times “East Village Local” publication. On February 22, the Times announced that NYU students would staff the new publication. The site will launch in the fall, after it’s developed by faculty and students.  The class “The Hyperlocal Newsroom,” will provide continuous content, as students report and write for the site as part of their coursework. Summer classes will be opened to other university students, too.

But a post on The Awl doesn’t find much merit in these programs, or at least not as much as Mutter does, arguing “I can totally understand the argument that creating these publications and staffing them as such is the best way for the kids to learn. And sure, I’d rather j-schools have students go out and report for a publication than have them sit in class and talk about Twitter and whatever. But this kind of working for free isn’t just the situation of their school days; this is most likely how it’s going to be after they graduate too. Training them to accept these conditions is just a way to prepare them for the non-job market.”

So Gen-Jers, what do you think? Is it a smart pairing? Do students really benefit? Or does it just make working for free seem acceptable?