Learning About Online Journalism

My first foray into first-person journalism is officially published at Associated Content. I don’t expect squat for page views, but am experiencing an inordinate amount of glee from seeing it.

With the idea in mind of continuing this exploration, I discovered the Online Journalism Review and a “wiki” entitled How to Report a News Story Online. The article includes a little section on finding story ideas, but is concluded by a somewhat garbled, first-draft section at the end.

The upshot seems to be one with which I agree: pay attention to the world around you and write about what you find interesting. The odds are good that others will, too.

The piece also makes an excellent point about not looking only for information that supports your point of view on a topic. If you’re going to be a journalist, you have to be even-handed. Writing about why you’re right is an opinion piece, not an article.

Writing about the points on both sides makes you look fair and open-minded (whether you are or not!) That’s a good way to start establishing trust with your readers. It’s can be difficult to do on a subject about which you feel deeply but it’s a good way to learn whether you’ve been mistaken about a particular topic. Doing impartial research educates you so that you can educate your readers.

legbamel: Live and on the Scene

I made my first foray into the “exciting” world of journalism yesterday. There was a minor event nearby. I found out about it, attended with a camera, took a picture, wrote a brief article, and submitted the package to Associated Content. For all that it was a 10-minute, nigh-unpublicized event, I was thrilled to be there as a reporter. Unofficially, of course. I was undercover as a mere interested bystander.

The problem came when I went to write the article. I had a little hook, a good quote from one of the participants, and nothing else. It took me more time researching on the web to get some background than the entire process of discovering and attending the event. I assume that this is a standard issue for journalists – that the events themselves are brief and not particularly interesting unless you are willing to explain why they happened and what they mean (if anything).

What particularly entertained me about the thing was that there was only one “real” reporter there. She was from a local television station and had her trusty camera operator with her. I see her around the area a lot and figure she must have the downtown, human interest beat. I could pretend that, as the only “print” journalist there, I was scooping the local paper. Heh, sometimes a little self-delusion is just what you need.

I'll have to see if AC will print the thing, though. It is strictly of local interest and obviously not much of that. If only sending it in to the local paper would not completely blow my secret identity on-line. Because of my job, I don't publish under my real name. I seriously doubt the paper is going to publish me under my pseudonym!

Of course, if it does get published, I'll link to it here.

Journalism Jobs and Writing Inspiration

Chris Bibey over at chrisblogging.com had a useful mini-review of journalismjobs.com the other day. I thought I’d check it out and see if I wanted to add it to my sidebar list of places to look for freelance jobs. There wasn’t a link in the above post, but if you want to look into it yourself, it’s right where you’d expect it.

The jobs that I looked at were out of my league, at least for the time being. I don’t have the experience or the time necessary. There are, however, a lot of jobs there. It’s motivating to think that someday I could apply for one, if I can ever get myself started. I don't think it quite fits into the sidebar list, though. Maybe in a few years.

In the mean time, I’ll keep writing and build up the expertise I'll need. That reminds me - I finally got an offer on my latest urban sprawl article at Associated Content. Of course I’ll post a link as soon as it’s live.

I’ve been having trouble coming up with good articles over the past month or so. I went looking for some help and found advice and tips all over the web. If you need some inspiration and guidance, take a look at Roy Jacobsen at Writing, Clear and Simple. He had some great advice on finding inspiration for articles and blog content. I need to start using some of these tricks. I tend to start writing in my head when I’m sitting at a stop light or standing in line at the bank. Maybe I should try remembering that my mp3 player and my cell phone have voice recorders!

Ai - I forgot to mention that I am submitting my blog to Blogging Fusion. It's yet another blog listing, but it provides a lot of information so that you can really specify what you blog is about. Hopefully that means that I can then find more blogs to read!

Links for Writing Better News On-line

In my browsing today, I ran across Paul Bradshaw’s post about the future of magazines, which made me think of Associated Content as a sort of out-of-control magazine trying to be everything to everyone.

The problem with that is that things are spread so broadly that it’s hard to find anything specific. Having enough sub-categories to make things findable will only make the submission process harder. Then again, not having specific enough categories makes browsing an exercise in frustration or boredom, wading through 700 articles that do not interest you to find three that do. I think everyone knows that people are not that patient in reading on-line.

And following a trail of breadcrumbs from Mr. Bradshaw's post, I found this post from Danny Sanchez filled with resources for learning about journalism on-line, many of which are free. I know I’ll be checking some of these out. I don’t do well with third-person writing and I could use some pointers on story composition. From who better to learn than the pros? I dugg this one and couldn’t believe that no one ever had before.

I’ve submitted this blog to two places, already. There’s
and . I've also submitted both of my blogs to Blog Listings and .

I may tackle a few more from this submission site list later. I have my older blog on these two as well so I already had accounts set up.

While I’m tiptoeing forward, I’ll be checking out AdSense here on Google as well as finding more freelance and on-line journalism blogs to help expand my knowledge base. And of course, I’ll be posting my findings and experiences here.