My initial goal with this blog is to craft short tips and positive lessons for online journalists and publishers. So I will leave you with this thought for the weekend:
Ya gotta love what you do.
Passion animates writing. It compels you to make that extra phone call, browse deeper into a database, or find one more source to complete a story. It lures you into thinking about how various facts and events fit together, even as you try to fall asleep at night. And it has been passion – not business plans or committee meetings – that has prompted the development of so many communication innovations online, from blogs to wikis to video mash-ups.
How can you expect readers to care about your story, or your website, if you don’t? Readers will sense your indifference, and click away.
Secure your future in online journalism by focusing on what you love. What topics do you want to learn more about? What do you wish you could spend more time doing? Interviews? Coding? Databases? Discussions? Design work?
Rich Gordon is right. There’s no better time to be a journalist. And the Internet is the best medium yet for exploring niche topics using specialized techniques. Focus on what you want to do, and do it. If you work for a large organization, and your bosses won’t let you innovate on their dime, find a cheap Web host someplace and experiment with new tools, designs and topics on your own Web server. Then see if you can win their support with a developed project. And if you can’t, don’t forget that you can make money doing journalism on your own, too.
It’s the weekend – recess for grown-ups. Go play.
About Robert Niles
