Archive for January, 2008
My advice for j-students who want to make a difference (and get a job)
I just told you how journalism is not a good career choice for most of you, but I know many of you are going to attempt to change journalism and I salute you. Therefor, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer you advice on how to get a good journalism job and how to [...]
Realistic job ads get more applicants. Who knew?
We’ve all seen the newspaper ads looking for people who know PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Python, Django, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ajax, Flash, multimedia reporting, photo editing, video editing, Incredible Hulk strength, etc. Except most of us have never really seen those people in real life. Hmmm, what gives? Colleen on Careers over at Poynter says that [...]
I spoke too soon
I said that Monday was the biggest day ever for this blog. I lied. Yesterday had about 200 more page views than Monday. Today is already beating Monday’s numbers. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but it appears to have been the perfect storm of posts hitting at once. Three posts are currently doing very [...]
Is journalism a good career choice for most of you? No.
This question comes up a lot with j-school students, and the answer is an emphatic no. It just isn’t. I’m not going to blow any smoke up your ass. I’m just going to tell you like it is. I’m doing fine, but in addition to being a journalist, I’m also a Web developer. Rather, I [...]
The audacity of ambition — and innovation
I don’t want to work for an industry that is content with the status quo. I don’t want to work for an industry that is afraid of innovation. I don’t want to work for an industry that blames its readers when things go bad. I don’t want to work for an industry that is scared [...]
The biggest day ever for the JI
Yesterday was the biggest day ever for The Journalism Iconoclast by users and page views. The surge in traffic was brought on by two posts becoming popular simultaneously, “Innovation is the path to salvation” and “You know, you don’t have to do video.” Plus, I’m still seeing a post-Poynter bounce. I’m going to make a [...]
Innovation is the path to salvation
With rampant budget cuts, newspapers have taken the exact opposite approach. That’s exactly why newspapers are struggling so much. You cannot innovate when everyone has a bunker mentality, grasping desperately to the faint echoes of a dying industry. But newspapers don’t have to die. They can rise like the Phoenix, but only with an innovation [...]
You know, you don’t have to do video
Apparently every newspaper that has a bad Web site got some sort of memo that said, “if you just put video on your Web site, you’ll get tons of traffic and be a modern newspaper. It’ll be totally bitchin’.” But here is the thing: Doing video poorly will only hurt your newspaper. It will cost [...]
It’s not all doom and gloom for newspapers
Oh, the print editions are still dying, but Web sites are improving and becoming more popular. In fact, newspaper Web sites are doing better than ever: The Newspaper Association of America reported the number of unique visitors to newspaper Web sites last year rose more than 6 percent to a monthly average of 60 million. [...]
If AT&T filters traffic I am dropping them and the iPhone
I signed up for a new two-year contract with AT&T because I plan on getting an iPhone this year after it’s updated. But that may not happen if AT&T goes through with its plans to filter content on its Internet lines. AT&T is an ISP, they shouldn’t be in the business of filtering traffic for [...]