St. Louis Post-Dispatch seeks social media intern

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is looking for an intern, but not just any intern. The position announcement calls for a "social media intern."

Kurt Greenbaum, director of social media at the Post-Dispatch, posted the position on his blog Wednesday, noting that the intern will work with the online team to use "social media to publish content, engage our audience and encourage reader-generated news, photos, videos and more."

"This person," Greenbaum writes, "will help update, promote and publicize our fledgling social networking site, MySTLtoday; help develop and participate in blogs; increase our profile on external social networks such as Digg, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube and more; help integrate reader-generated content into our primary site, STLtoday.com; and help develop training for newsroom colleagues on the power and function of social media."

The 13-week spring internship will run from late February to mid-May. The news organization is seeking applicants in their junior year of college or higher.

Qualifications?

"To apply, you’ll need to demonstrate first that you’re a solid journalist, with good writing skills and sound news judgment. Second, show us you’re engaged in social networks. Do you blog? Twitter? Post YouTube videos? Other sites? How have you used your presence in social networks to advance your life — personally or professionally?"

Submit a resume, a portfolio of your journalism and a 500-word essay describing why social media is a vital tool for journalists and ways they should embrace it. Applications must be postmarked by Dec. 12; send it to Kurt Greenbaum, c/o St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 900 N. Tucker Blvd., St. Louis, Mo., 63101 or email it to Greenbaum at kgreenbaum@post-dispatch.com.

Frankly, if I was 20-something and wanted to work in journalism this century, I'd grab at this opportunity. It sounds like a great chance to not only learn some cutting-edge tools but to contribute to a newsroom that's looking for new ideas. This sounds like the kind of internship a sharp, media-savvy student could parley into a full-time job, either at the Post-Dispatch or elsewhere.

A lousy week for journalists -- and j-students

KANSAS CITY - What a week to be at the ACP/CMA National College Media Convention! Here I am with all these eager young college students, many of whom harbor dreams of entering the field of journalism in the next year or two, and there’s nothing but carnage in the industry.

As David Carr writes in The New York Times this morning, “It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline."

Just consider:

• The Christian Science Monitor announced Tuesday it would cease publication of its weekday print edition.
  
• On the same day Time Inc., publisher of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff.
  
• Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, revealed plans to lay off 10 percent of its work force, as many as 3,000 people.
  
• On Monday, the Tribune Company announced it was cutting 75 more jobs from the newsroom of The Los Angeles Times, leaving it approximately half the size it was at the turn of this century.
  
• And The Star-Ledger of Newark, the 15th-largest paper in the country, declared plans to reduce its editorial staff by 40 percent.
  

All this came amid news that the nation's daily newspapers saw circulation decline more steeply than anticipated. On Monday the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that average weekday circulation was 38,165,848 at 507 of the nation's leading dailies in the six months ending in September, a 4.6 percent decline from 40,022,356 a year earlier. Up till then, advertising revenue had risen quarter after quarter.

Here at the Marriott in downtown KC, where nearly 1,800 students and advisers involved in college media are gathered for five days of workshops and panel discussions, we urge students to develop new skills. We encourage them to "think multimedia," we teach them how to create interactive maps, audio slide shows and video reports for the Web so that they'll be able to do things that 25-year veteran reporters and photographers can't. We tell them they need to be flexible, creative and skilled in many areas to survive and thrive.

But even with such new media skills, where are they going to get jobs? News Web sites are struggling too. And online publications do not appear to be the savior of their print counterparts.

As Carr notes in his column, "More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day."

Two weeks ago, the Times and other news media reported that online revenue at newspaper sites was stalling. In the second quarter, it was down 2.4 percent compared with last year, to $777 million, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The impact here in Kansas City is palpable. Only three media companies sent recruiters to the convention, down from about 14 in previous years. Why should they meet with potential employees when they have no jobs to fill?

And still we talk here about the power of "capital-J" journalism. We encourage our students to seek out the truth, to expose wrongs, to, as the old saying goes, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

What will students here be thinking as they head home Saturday and Sunday after sitting through session after session and speech after speech? Will they mull over the words of inspiration and the heartfelt advice from media professionals and journalism educators? Will they pledge to develop new skills and embrace new media?

Or will they simply think about changing majors. Maybe philosophy isn't so impractical after all. At least opportunities for philosophers aren't evaporating before their eyes.

Medill J-school alumni protest changes

Alumni of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism have sent a petition and letter to the university protesting recent changes in the curriculum, according to a post on the Chicago Reader's News Bites blog.

The alumni wrote that they were particularly concerned about the way changes have been implemented at the school by Dean John Lavine.

"Because faculty governance has been suspended, Dean Lavine has been making changes unilaterally or with staff members that support him indiscriminately. Those who have expressed dissent have been demoted or forced out."

The petition, signed by more than 75 alumni, was delivered to the university’s Board of Trustees and provost.

A 2006 Columbia Journalism Review article about Lavine quoted him as saying he planned to "blow up" the school's curriculum. The new 2020 Curricula, which was unveiled in August, puts increased emphasis on integrated marketing communications, new technology and "audience understanding."

The alumni also objected to changes in the school's Washington program, which allowed students to work as Washington, DC correspondents for specific publications. "The changes to the program will not only damage the quality of the Washington reporting experience, but it will also hurt student job prospects," said the letter, signed by Camille Gerwin, who earn her MSJ in 2004, and Andrew Bossone, graduated from the program in 2005.

You can read questions and responses about the J-school's new curricula on the school's Web site.

What do you think of Northwestern's new curricula -- is it a vision for the future or does it sacrifice old-fashioned journalistic values? Post a comment.

LA Times editor pushes Web-only publishing

A Los Angeles Times editor challenged student newspaper editors from around California to "stop killing trees" and try online-only publishing.

"Kill your paper," Sean Gallagher, the LATimes.com's managing editor for section development, told about 60 college newspapers editors who gathered at UCLA Saturday for an editors training session sponsored by the California College Media Association. "Stop publishing your print paper."

He suggested student newspapers "take the money from dead trees and put it into training."

Student journalists, Gallagher said, need to develop skills in database building, Flash, multimedia reporting and other new media tools.

Gallagher's presentation, "Getting Serious About Your Web Site," was one of half a dozen sessions at the fourth annual College Editors Boot Camp, sponsored by the California College Media Association, a statewide organization of four-year college media organizations and journalism programs. The organization also sponsored a daylong training for student newspaper ad salespeople on Saturday.

Gallagher urged the student editors to think about the visual side of storytelling and to find ways to interact with readers.

"That old model of us to them, it's dead," he said. "Now it's about blogs, Flash, other multimedia presentations."

Among the ideas he presented for student newspapers to try:
* Set up message boards. "You'll see there are topics (readers) want to talk about and some they don't."

* Run capsule reviews in print. Tease to the full reviews online.

* Post useful information online. He suggested things like bus schedules, gym hours, where to buy tickets for student performances. "It goes back to local, local, local."

* Post stories on the Web first. "A lot of people say, 'Don't put it on the Web yet, I want that in print first.' It's that print mentality you need to throw off. It's gone."

* Set up flat screen monitors around campus. Once they're in cafeterias, student lounges and other student gathering spots you can display the college newspaper Web site on them, giving you a captive audience.

* Sell online sponsorships. Invite advertisers to sponsor podcasts of an on-campus lecture series or other special features.

* Take on a database project. One example: get the office hours of all the professors on campus and monitor whether the profs show up. Publish the results in a searchable database. "That would be a great resource for the campus."

* Send out e-mail alerts.

* Look for student experts. Even if you don't know how to build a database or design a flash presentation, you can learn from other students who do. "There are people on your campus who have the knowledge. They want to be able to put it on their resume, 'I built this Web site.' They want to say to a potential employer, 'I did this graphic.'


Disclosure: The writer is vice president of the California College Media Association.

Is college media behind the times?

Are college newspapers lagging behind their professional counterparts when it comes to new media? Are journalism programs failing to equip graduates with the skills they need to get a job in the industry? Are journalism students sticking to narrow, outdated ideas about the kind of journalist they want to be?

These are some of the questions discussed in a recent article, "New Media Meets Campus Media" published by InsideHigherEd.com. The article reports on a panel discussion held Friday at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Washington, DC.

Scheduled speakers for the panel, entitled "Issues and Challenges Facing Campus Media," included Dave Wendelken and Toni B. Mehling of James Madison University; Daniel Reimold of Ohio University; and Bryan Murley of Eastern Illinois University.

Perhaps even more interesting than the article itself -- after all, journalism students and professors have been discussing these issues for years -- are the comments in response to the piece. Journalism educators, students, recent graduates, even a self-described blogomist all weigh in, and several offer interesting insights.

Check it out -- and feel free to add your own two cents, either at InsideHigherEd.com or here.