Background: I sent an e-mail to the Poynter online news listserv a few weeks ago asking for advice from online veterans about how student journalists can prepare for the future, and how college media (and advisers) can help. The only response I have received so far was from Rob Curley. Curley is recently hired with the Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive after a successful career building Lawrence.com and moving to the Naples News in Florida (his full resume is here). I originally planned to post this tomorrow, but Curley scooped me on his own blog. So here is part 1 of our 2 part career day special - a day early.

Here’s what he wrote:

Know how to write. Know how to tell a story. Know how to conduct an interview. Know how to research your ass off.

Traditional journalism skills will *never* go out of vogue. I don’t care what the latest gizmo is, the foundation that everything will be built upon are those core journalism skills.

But also understand that things are changing rapidly in our industry. Look at this job posting for a Scripps newspaper in Florida and ask yourself if you are qualified for this job:

“We’re looking for an energetic, talented reporter who thrives on competition to work in a fast-growing community in South Florida for a 50,000-circulation daily consistently judged one of the state’s best newspapers. The successful applicant will be able to beat the competition online as well as in print and will embrace the opportunities and challenges inherent in our award-winning, constantly evolving Web site. A high tolerance for hurricanes probably would be a plus.”

Skillset is important. But mindset is most important.

When you combine strong traditional journalism skills with a great mindset, you’ve got a journalist who’s going to be fine regardless of what new things or technologies come our way.

Work with your news organization’s new media editors to post stories early. Know when a story could benefit from an audio interview, such as when a source has an interesting speaking style, is emotional, etc… Know when a story could benefit from extra photos, a steerable 360-degree panoramic photo to give your audience a better visual understanding of the story, or even a video clip.

Would it be interesting to have a live online chat with one or more of the sources in a story? Would a searchable database of public records help your readers better understand your story? Would an online forum or an interactive poll question on your newspaper’s site really add to the public dialogue that goes along with your story?

Be willing to learn and do new things.

That doesn’t mean that you need to learn how to edit video or audio, or know how to build something in Flash, or understand how to work with HTML (though none of those things would be bad to know). It just means you need to be open-minded about learning to do things you’ve never done before. I just can’t emphasize how important mindset will be in the “new” newsroom.

Newsrooms are getting smaller. My gut tells me that the journalists who are going to survive all of this recent goofiness will be the ones who are committed to the journalism, not the medium.

And my biggest advice would be to have at least one portfolio piece that shows you understand the importance of the things I’ve listed above. If you want to impress an editor who is hiring, show him/her that you aren’t just willing to do these sorts of things, but that you can’t wait to do these sorts of things.

All things being equal, who do you think gets the job: the person who hands over a bunch of photocopied newspaper clips, or someone who also sends a link to a well-done multimedia project? (emphasis added)

There’s lots to take from his comments. And I’m glad he chose to respond to my e-mail. I’ve got the promise of a full interview at a future date.

For advisers, there’s some wisdom to be gleaned as well. Are you fostering an environment that encourages innovation in the news organization you advise? When you critique the paper product, do you critique the online product as well? When you do, do you ask about Web “extras”? When you’re training your new reporters, do you train them from the beginning to think in terms of multiple platforms?

If you’re not, why not?

BTW, Ryan Sholin has some additional thoughts. His perspective should be equally worthwhile for aspiring journalists, as he’s just recently gotten a job in the market.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 4:36 pm and is filed under career talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.