New Year’s resolution: Get networked
Journalists everywhere need to quit whining and go into action. Howard Owens has issued a challenge for all your non-networked friends — you know, the ones who never read any blogs except Romenesko or Shop Talk. The ones who don’t know how to work their digital cameras — or worse, don’t even own one. Yeah, you know who these people are. They’re all over your newsroom.
Do all of your non-networked journalist friends a gigantic favor and send them this challenge from Howard: He will give a $100 Amazon gift certificate to one journalist who completes all 10 objectives listed in his post. (Print it out for them if you have to!)
The 10 objectives are not busywork — they could save your friend’s career. They could open new doors. They could make your friends love journalism again, the way they used to. Even if your non-networked colleagues don’t feel up to the $100 challenge, they should nonetheless begin a serious program to meet at least a few of the 10 objectives.
The one I least agree with: No. 5, messing around with Facebook and MySpace. I know why Howard’s recommending this, and I don’t totally reject the idea, but I don’t find either one of those sites useful.
The top two objectives: No. 1 and No. 7. Blogs and RSS feeds and my Google Reader are essential components of my daily work. I am continually shocked when I meet journalists who say they don’t read blogs. It’s inconceivable.
[...] Teaching Online Journalism » New Year’s resolution: Get networked “Howard Owens has issued a challenge for all your non-networked friends — you know, the ones who never read any blogs except Romenesko or Shop Talk. The ones who don’t know how to work their digital cameras.They’re all over your newsroom.” (tags: journalism social+media change learning awards tidbits+fodder) [...]
December 28, 2007 at 11:23 amThanks for the post and link, Mindy. Good post.
I included social networking because I think it’s important for journalistic careers to migrate identity online and get some leverage out of networking. I favored MySpace, not because it’s a great site, but because it allows you to do more DIY with your profile page than other sites … I think just messing around with the HTML and stuff has some value.
December 28, 2007 at 2:42 pmi am continually shocked to learn how few people use or even know of RSS. last semester, out of my 70 or so mostly first year students in intro to media studies, 4-5 knew about and used RSS. i was amazed. i immediately assigned them RSS in plain english which allowed them to get it, but whether they will continue to use it is another story.
December 28, 2007 at 4:57 pmNumber 9, learn to Twitter can be a big one. Coming into it, I really thought Twitter was stupid, but after only a couple of weeks, I’ve found it’s a great way to network. It allows you to connect and hear from like-minded people you would otherwise never hear from and lets you get a feel for what people are thinking.
December 28, 2007 at 7:31 pm[...] Januari is halverwege. Nu de traditionele goede voornemens weer zijn vergeten en iedereen terug is van Gran Canaria is het tijd voor verbeterplannen van serieuzere signatuur. In 2008 transformeert u, een journalist van de oude stempel (waarbij ‘oud’ zeker niet slaat op leeftijd), tot een heuse web2.0-minded nieuwemediareporter. En verzekert u zich in één moeite door van een arbeidzaam bestaan in 2009 - ook niet verkeerd. De Nieuwe Reporter schenkt zelfs een waardebon van 100 euro, vrij te besteden bij Bol.com, aan de vlugge vogel die zich dit jaar als eerste van de deelnemers weet te bekwamen in de webjournalistiek. Dan weet u niet alleen waar Bert van der Veer het over heeft als hij uitlegt hoe het incident met Joran van der Sloot en Peter R. de Vries via Twitter, Flickr en de blogosfeer in de openbaarheid kwam, maar kunt u dergelijke middelen zelf ook toepassen. Een terzijde: dit initiatief is dankbaar gejat van Howard Owens die een vergelijkbaar tienpuntenplan presenteerde. Zie eventueel de reacties daarop van Poynter, nog eens Poynter, Steve Outing, Alfred Hermida en Mincy McAdams. [...]
January 14, 2008 at 7:44 am