Online Journalism Review» jobs

Al Jazeera America draws thousands of job applications

Michael Juliani — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 07:57:10 +0000

Al Jazeera logo. (Joi/Flickr Creative Commons)

Although Al Jazeera’s recruiters used to incite little interest from prospective job candidates, their impending U.S. launch has prompted 18,000 people to apply for 170 openings in the new bureau, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.

Ehab Alshihabi, executive director of international operations for Al Jazeera, told CJR that he advises candidates to pay close attention to how their qualifications adhere to the job they want. “We want people who have watched our content and are familiar with the product, the company, and the Al Jazeera brand of journalism.” The candidates, he said, have no commonality of age, ethnicity or journalism credentials, but they’re unified by their levels of experience, enthusiasm and passion for Al Jazeera’s type of content.

Alshihabi said that American journalists started to notice Al Jazeera during their coverage of the Arab Spring. He said they’ll have preliminary hires set by May 1 to prepare for their American launch, and they’ll continue to hire on a rolling basis. They’ll hire radio, print, online and TV journalists.

It's not your imagination, there are more journalism jobs

Robert Hernandez — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:59:40 +0000

Have you been noticing more posts and tweets for journalism jobs lately? Me too.

But to make sure it wasn’t the spiked eggnog that was making me feel more positive about the journalism industry’s financial state, I shot a quick email to the folks at JournalismJobs.com.

They immediately responded, confirming “jobs are up overall over the past 15-18 months.”

Well, not to sound cynical, but nearly EVERYTHING is up when you compare it to a year and a half ago.

“At our lowest point, we fell to 650 or so job listings in mid-2009,” added Dan Rohn, founder of the site, when I asked for more information. “We have a little more than 880 total listings now. That’s about a 25 percent increase over the past 15 months.”

He also said that at the site’s peak in 2007, they had about 1,200 job listings, not including include 150 internship posts.

Eric Wee, president of JournalismNext.com, also confirms an increase.

“We have been seeing an increase in postings in the last 6-8 months,” he said. “It seems to be pointing to some sort of recovery and even expansion (online) in the media world.”

Jobs listings are also up at Online News Association‘s Career Center as well, according to ONA Web Editor Sean Connolly.

The listings have doubled when you compare the first half of 2010 to the second. And, naturally, nearly doubled year over year.

Yes, there are still many of us looking for work. Yes, furloughs are still part of our realities. And, yes, we’re all still underpaid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… we’ve got a ways to go. But you can’t deny that this is a positive trend and potentially a sign of growth and rebuilding.

Let’s celebrate with some spiked eggnog, shall we?

Robert Hernandez is a Web Journalism professor at USC Annenberg and co-creator of #wjchat, a weekly chat for Web Journalists held on Twitter. You can contact him by e-mail (r.hernandez@usc.edu) or through Twitter (@webjournalist). Yes, he’s a tech/journo geek.

Wanted: Required Web journalism skills

Robert Hernandez — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:41:03 +0000

[Editor's note: OJR welcomes USC's Robert Hernandez, who will be writing for us on technology and journalism.

Also, a continuing reminder: We're taking applications for the 2010 News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. Please consider applying if you're looking for better training on how to make your online news publishing efforts an income-producing business.]

With our industry in such turmoil, the constant technological changes, the evolution of news consumers and the uncertainty of the future, the question on the minds of veteran and aspiring journalists alike is what skills do I need to stay relevant, employed and innovative.

That’s the number one question I have gotten over the years. (That and equipment recommendations.)

Everyone has an answer.

There have been pieces written recently saying journalists need to become programmers. Debates over how important Flash is to a reporter. I even remember speakers coming to my class when I was in college advising photographers to look for other careers because still photography, they incorrectly predicted, was dead.

Um, they are pretty much all wrong, in my humble-yet-cocky-sounding opinion.

“So, smart guy, what’s your genius answer,” you ask. Well, it’s the same one I gave some ten years ago.

Know journalism.

The top skills required for a Web journalist are solid news judgment, strong ethics, thrive under deadline, accuracy and a mastery of the AP Stylebook. Other skills I include are knowledge of HTML, experience with CMS, working understanding of SEO, being social in Social media and the willingness to try new technologies.

Plus, the ability to tell stories in all media: text, photos, audio, video and the combination. At the very least, know and respect each of these crafts and how they are used on the Web.

But again, the most important skill is journalism, not the latest technology.

While I’ve been preaching this for a while, some people don’t agree.

So, I did a test.

I took nearly two-dozen New Media job postings from journalismjobs.com and compiled a list of skills they were looking for… then I ran the list through Wordle to visualize the top requirements.

I’ll let the image speak for itself.

If you must know, here are the skills I collected:
HTML, Mac, PC, AP style, news judgment, copy editing, headline editing, organized, interact with online readers and newspaper staff, multitask on deadline, video and audio editing, improve site traffic trends, OAS, posting information, wire copy, photos, HTML, CSS, sports fan, Copy editing, headline writing, nights, holidays, weekends, accuracy, attention to detail, problem solving, Photoshop, deadlines, optimization, innovative editor, search engines, social networks, headline writing, Financial news editing experience, multimedia approach to Web content, video, graphics, photos, polls, social networking media, Four year college degree, TV/Web production, journalism, new media, Final Cut pro, Adobe Photoshop, Basic script and package writing skills, strong editorial judgment, strong time management skills, work independently, tight deadline, detail oriented, live and on-demand video production, think like a producer, editor, and writer, basic video editing, program production, edit raw video, headlines and descriptions, leadership, web based experience, multiple media, print headline writing and editing, grammar, spelling, punctuation, usage and style, multitasking, news judgment, accuracy, news on the Internet, news wires, coordinate assignment and development of stories, video and interactive, accuracy, timeliness, balance, comprehensiveness, multimedia, Traditional journalism skills, move beyond text to tell stories interactively, team player, design experience a plus, desktop computer applications, editorial content from television and print, accurate, collaborate with editors, write copy, create compelling headlines and captions, organize multimedia and make sound news judgments, strong news judgment, blogosphere, passion for sports, flexible, quick-thinking, energetic, efficient, and able to work independently under pressure, attention to detail, crafting clever headlines and tease copy, choosing and cropping appropriate images, packaging, editing, writing for the Web, headline writing, image selection, and content packaging skills, AP Stylebook and Chicago Manual of Style, work quickly, breaking news, deadline pressure, Basic HTML, Photoshop, online publishing tools, news judgment, blogosphere, flexible, quick-thinking, energetic, efficient, crafting clever headlines and tease copy, choosing and cropping appropriate images, packaging, editing, and writing for the Web, headline writing, image selection, and content packaging skills, AP Stylebook and Chicago Manual of Style, HTML, Photoshop, online publishing tools, technology experience and connections, IT reporting, editing experience, sharp writing, editing, write SEO-friendly content, tease text, HTML, write quickly, breaking news, technology reporting and editing, editing stories, news writing, interviewing, computers, word processing, news judgment, editorial, creative skills, journalistic ethics, libel laws, write clearly, AP writing style, TV camera operator, video editor, Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, news judgment, social media, Twitter, Facebook, aggressive, hard-working editor, multi-media reporting, social media, communication, organizational, multitask, multimedia production, editorial experience in print, online or broadcast, leadership, teamwork, interpersonal, under pressure, tight deadlines, problem solve, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, WordPress, content management systems, write, produce and post content, news editorial, AP style, Accuracy, Deadline-oriented, organized, multi-tasking, I-News, HTML, Adobe Photoshop, nonlinear editing, writing skills, editorial skills, attention to detail, writing and editing online copy, project management, social media, HTML, search-engine optimization, e-commerce, web analytics, basic programming, mobile, RSS, audio podcasts, video, writing, editing, and proofreading, Chicago Manual of Style, deadline pressure, Microsoft Office, writing, capturing visual content and editing stories, Videography, non-linear editing, Final Cut Pro, AP style, deadline, Lift up to 50 lbs.

As a bonus, I created a Wordle based on the titles:
Online Content Manager, Editor, Search Editor, Business/Financial News Editor, Associate Producer of Video, Health Producer, Senior Editor for News, Sports Programmer, Personal Finance Programmer, Business/Technology Web Editor, Reporter, Combat Sports Reporter, Home and Garden Article Writers, TV ‘shoot-edit’ & web videographer, News Social Media Editor, Editor, Enterprising Legal Reporter, Interactive Managing Editor, Website Content Producer, Web Content Producer, Digital-Media Director, Multi-Media Journalist

What skills do you think are the most important for Web journalists?

You can find more from Robert Hernandez at blog.webjournalist.org.

Confessions of an online journalism tool

Noah Barron — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:51:24 +0000

Journalist Noah Barron has been with OJR for two years now and, having completed his Masters’ degree, is ready to (re)join the real world. Guest writer W00tBloggyBlogg interviewed Noah about the secrets to success in online journalism that he learned at Annenberg and OJR as well as his plans for the future.

W00tBloggyBlogg: u graduated wtf are you gonna do now?

Noah Barron: Boy, I sure wish I knew. I’m looking for a job but it’s turning out to be really difficult, given the journalism market right now.

WBB: lol srs? u prolly suck at jourlsm amirite? or maybe they saw ur uggfase on fasebook hehehehe

Noah: I hope not. I think I bring a variety of skills to the table–writing, editing, Web design, video production, photography and graphics, but mostly I’m finding it’s well-nigh impossible to get any kind of response from employers I send applications to.

WBB: wtf is well-nigh? also dont end ur sentences w/ a preposition. so like u send apps in & the doods are like “rofl this fool sucks” or wut?

Noah: Honestly, I have no idea. I send out resumes to nearly every position on MediaBistro and other similar media job sites–dozens of applications total–and have never gotten a single return e-mail or call. Not one.

My only job leads are from internships I’ve done and personal contacts I’ve made. I guess I’m just surprised that in the age of digital journalism, a digital journalist’s digital job searches are so seemingly useless.

WBB: whatvr dood dont cry QQ y not start ur own blog and make bux on ads etc?

Noah: I mean, that’s definitely an option. I already have a site, but haven’t developed it properly. I just feel like I need health insurance and a steady income coming out of graduate school…is that too much to ask?

WBB: obvi!!!! u should post more lohan upskirts imo

Noah: See, that’s what I’m trying to avoid. If I’m going to be a DIY-blogger/journalist, I want to create meaningful, interesting content that is relevant enough to belong in a newspaper, but is tailored to an online audience.

WBB: o so like blah blah darfur blah blah global warming zzzzz yeah thatll get lots of hits. gg dood.

Noah: Come on Bloggy, don’t you think we can find a way to package socially-conscious, important news for the casual Web reader while also turning a profit?

WBB: ….

Noah: Well, what do you suggest?

WBB: durr y not offer something useful to ur readers instd of whining on the interwebz? that’s y most blogs r real boringzzzzz urs included :/

Noah: You’re right, Blogg. It’s not too late to turn this column around and offer helpful content. How about a toolbox filled with essential survival equipment for freshly-minted online journalists, resources I’ve gathered over the last two years?

WBB: rofl!!!! whatever dood too bad google ads doesnt pay u in foodstamps AYO!!!

You: Online

Presenting your body of work, identity and bona fides online is the first step in the right direction. That means you need webspace, a UI and a URL. My first day on the job at OJR, Robert Niles told me to register my own name. Best advice I was given at grad school. If you can’t get your name, you likely can find a variation that’s not already taken.

[WBB: lol unless ur given name is perezhilton or freepr0n...]

1. Get a free blog at Blogger or WordPress, or. if you’re a bit tech-savvy…
2. Put the WordPress platform on your site, for which you will need…
3. Webspace and your own domain. There are a million places to register a URL and buy hosting space…I use GoDaddy, but there’s probably one tailored exactly to your needs.
4. Or, just use GoogleAps and Google Page Creator to easily create a clean, simple site with 100 MB of free storage.

[WBB: ...o rly? i just use myspace for the journalism imo. and by journalism i mean spring break pix]

The right tool for the job

There are a multitude of free (or cheap), powerful tools available to the online journalist that approximate expensive software and make you look more professional than you are. Which is a good thing.

5. Slide and Picasa offer great free image hosting and cool slideshows for your multimedia journalism projects.
6. Picnik approximates Photoshop for refining and color-correcting those images.
7. OpenOffice is the free solution to not having the money to get the MS suite for your small business. It supports one-click PDF export from Word and text documents, too. Very handy.
8. VistaPrint is a great place to create business cards, stationery and other stuff for almost free (usually the cost of shipping) and smart perusal of RetailMeNot often yields coupons that make it even cheaper.
9. Submit your podcast audio (which is hosted on your server) to iTunes so everyone can find it.

Make money

More likely than not, a recent grad/DIY journalist with a just-launched blog can’t subsist purely on Google AdSense revenue and PayPal donations. Sooner or later you might have to find a part- or full-time gig. Here are some of the more obvious online J-job portals, such as they are.

[WBB: yeah worked real well for you lol ps i'd like extra ranch and no onions lolll]

10. JournalismJobs
11. MediaBistro
12. MediaPost
13. Ed (2010), for internships
14. New Assignment for open-source reporting jobs

There are thousands more tools, techniques, job sites and opportunities–so please contribute to this evolving list. After all, that collaborative process is what makes online journalism so exciting.

[WBB: thats what she said]

(Shoutout to Nick Sylvester, from whose explanation-of-why-he-was-fired-from-the-Village-Voice-blog I kinda lifted the gimmick for this article. Semi-NSFW?)

Go to the Web, young journalist!

Anthony Moor — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:33:14 +0000

Anthony Moor is Associate Managing Editor/Online at the Orlando Sentinel, and editor of OrlandoSentinel.com. He also serves on the board of directors of the Online News Association.

So ten years into the Internet revolution, you are beginning a career in journalism. Odds are that means you are looking for a job in either print or TV.

What’s wrong with this picture?

One major newspaper chain was just frog-marched to the auction block by grimfaced money managers. The others have watched their stock price slide for two solid years like a metro daily tossed onto a pitched roof.

Network television doesn’t even have all its anchor chairs filled — forget about a clear mission. The cable outlets have hired talk-show screamers and now follow car chases and kidnap mysteries “live.” Much of local TV long ago gave up the ghost.

Maybe it’s time to consider the Web.

After a long freeze brought about by the dot-com crash and 9/11, Web editors are hiring and Web operations are expanding again. Safa Rashtchy, a senior research analyst at the securities firm Piper Jaffray, recently predicted that online advertising will reach its tipping point in mid-2006. That’s prompting news organizations to realign their resources to focus more on Web journalism.

What’s more, for a discipline with decades of tradition and well-defined standards of practice, there is a sense of excitement and rejuvenation about journalism as it is being practiced on the Web today. The rules are still being written, so the practitioners, by and large, are following their own muse as they explore new ways to communicate news and information.

Innovations abound

We rolled out a blog at OrlandoSentinel.com for this year’s Winter Olympics, and our three columnists became diarists. They wrote about Big Macs, getting lost on the media bus and the fact that Florida’s top football draft pick had given up the gridiron for figure skating.

OK, the last one was a fabrication, but they did own up to it in their post. They wanted to know whether anyone was reading their blog and would comment. The readers did — heatedly.

We thought our bloggers would write about sports. But set loose with a new writing form in a two-way medium that allows readers to talk back, they invented something new.

“I enjoyed my first blog-o-rama,” veteran sports columnist David Whitley wrote to me when he returned from Italy. “If that’s part of the next generation of newspapers, I could have a lot of fun. Unless I get fired first, I guess.”

Our other online efforts are making newsroom staff happy as well. Sentinel photographer Ed Sackett practically crowed over the opportunity to capture the sound and movement of roosters at a county fair contest recently. Online producers Debra Minor and Kris Hey relish scooping TV, radio and the Associated Press with news called in from the field by Sentinel staff.

It is true that at the major news organizations, much of the Web work to date has focused on repurposing content from the legacy newsroom for a digital audience. But that is changing. In the same way that early television struggled to develop from radio-on-TV to something different, so is Web journalism.

Some are striking out in exceptionally creative directions. A young broadcaster in Britain melds magazine-style presentation with grainy, cinema-vérité video to create investigative productions of amazing depth and presence. A Chicago journalist-programmer melds public police data with Google maps to present an on-demand visual map of crime in your neighborhood. A pair of newspaper veterans dubs themselves “Baristas” and serves up a mix of community-contributed news and their own wry sense of humor to suburban New Jersey.

Preparing for the new job market

The privilege to innovate like this may come around only once in a lifetime. If you talk to those of us doing news on the Web, you’ll learn that we believe the Internet is finally beginning to deliver on its promise to transform journalism — but we’re also not sure what that transformation will bring. So this is your opportunity to shape the future.

Interestingly, the skills you need are just what you have been learning. A soon-to-be released study finds that online managers are primarily looking for detail-oriented collaborators capable of editing and copyediting, not technical producers. (The survey was prepared by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, in conjunction with the Online News Association, and will be published on the ONA website in the next few weeks.)

So what could you do right now at school to give you an edge with Web editors? When I examine resumes of recent graduates, I’m looking for the journalism skills first, specifically news judgment. Have you worked as an editor at your college newspaper? Do you have clips that demonstrate a clear hard-news focus, in the classic, inverted-pyramid writing style? I want journalists who want to be editors.

Next, are you Internet literate? No newspaper editor would hire an applicant who didn’t know the function of the A-section. No TV news director would hire someone who couldn’t pick out a sound bite or define the term “B-roll.” While we don’t need code monkeys, we do need people who understand the unique attributes of the Web as it pertains to journalism.

So, have you built a Web page as part of a student project or on your own? Do you know basic HTML? Do you work on the student newspaper website? Do you frequent Internet news sites? Do you use an RSS reader? Do you podcast? Did you ask to shadow the Web producers for a few days at your last internship? An affinity for our medium is essential.

I also need people who think in multimedia. So if you’re a broadcast major, take print courses, or visa versa. Do a Web project. Have you ever storyboarded a reporting effort for a Flash presentation? (In truth, we don’t do much Flash at our shop, and you’ll find that’s normal at news websites, so Flash skills are usually a bonus, not a requirement.) You have to know how to take anything that can be digitized and present it in a uniquely compelling way for the Web.

This is essential because you will be mentoring reporters from your legacy newsroom who need insight into how to present their work for a Web audience. You must be the one who knows that source documentation can make a deep, rich Web piece or database. You should know how to write a TV-style voiceover script to marry to photos for a narrated slide show. You must dream up the idea to take the sales tax data a reporter compiled and make an interface that lets individuals put in their own grocery bill to find out in which county they get the biggest break.

Do you keep a blog? Why not? There has never been an easier way to publish your journalism for an audience. So become a journalist online. Blog your hobby or your summer in Europe — like a reporter, not an opinion columnist. An understanding of how the blogosphere intersects with news is increasingly important as we tackle the two-way nature of the Internet today. (One caveat: Your MySpace musings may make you a blogging expert, but it doesn’t qualify as journalism. In fact, you can count on us finding that frat party confession and photo en déshabillé, so ask yourself whether that’s the image you wish to project when seeking a job.)

There never has been a better time to get into Web journalism. We are making money, we are hiring, and we are actively searching for new, innovative ideas. After ten years, there are no veterans in this field. This is your chance to be among the first.