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 be prepared for the changing landscape of journalism. What do you need? Lots of skills and a willingness to learn even more skills.

This is advice, however, is only for those j-school students willing to take risks and who aren’t afraid of trying something new — the j-school students who are willing to try to make a difference in the industry during these difficult times.

This is for the few j-school students willing to do whatever it takes to make a difference. This is for the students who don’t believe that only writing is “real journalism.” This is for the students who want to make journalism that matters in the formats and mediums that matters to the people. We serve the people — not ourselves.

This is what you need to do to prepare yourself for modern-day journalism and to be able to land a job in today’s ultra-competitive market place (nothing breeds competition like scarcity):

You must have an online presence – It’s the 21st-century, are you honestly still sending packets of clips out to employers? And if employers want you to snail male them clips, do you honestly want to work for them? The answer to both is, of course, no.

When I built my personal site a few years ago, I set out to develop a place to showcase my work and talents. I knew I needed a digital résumé. A paper résumé might be fine for a print reporter, but for an online journalist it’s laughable.

Want my contact info? Go to my Web site. Want to view my work? Go to my Web site. Want to find out about me? Go to my Web site.

Business cards, printed résumés and biographies are so last century. I wanted to land a job in the 21st century, so I had to figure out a21st century way of marketing myself.

Professor Mindy McAdams tells students to make sure they have a respectable online presence. The key there is respectable. Don’t waste your time with an ugly, mistake-filled Web site that isn’t compatible on a lots of browsers and has very little content on it. Remember, your personal Web site is a reflection of you.

Even if you want to be “just a reporter” you need an online presence. Why? Because many jobs will ask you if you have a blog or personal Web site.

They won’t be impressed with “no.” Some employers might not care if you have online skills or an online presence (there are still many employers out there like this), but many do care deeply and won’t hire a technophobe. They certainly won’t hire a technophobe not in this job market and with the demands modern journalism.

Luckily for all of you, I already wrote a post on how to make a personal Web site: Build a digital résumé and make yourself stand out. If all j-students left school with the ability to launch a personal Web site and blog, journalism would be infused each year with new talent and skills. Journalism needs people with technical skills and a firm understanding of the Web.

But don’t wait on starting that personal Web site. Meranda Watling says to just do it.

You must have at least some online and multimedia skills — If you have a lot of online and multimedia skills and the flexibility and willingness to learn new things, not only am I confident that you can make a difference, but I’m also confident you would be extremely employable should you choose to leave journalism (and you might have to one day whether you want to or not).

Last year I made a summer reading list for j-school students who wanted to learn new media skills. It covers HTML, CSS, audio, video, Flash, blogs, etc. The list is for learning technical skills, but you’ll also want some more general online skills. Do you belong to social networks? You should at least try a few out.

Try them all and see which ones you like. I guarantee you won’t like them all, but I’m confident you’ll like a few. Understanding social networking is very important for journalists moving forward. The No. 1 thing that most news sites lack is the kind of conversation and community participation that blogs and social networks foment.

If you look at the way most new sites integrate with social networks, it’s a very me-first strategy. News companies are only interested in finding ways of getting users to push news content onto social networks, but it doesn’t really serve the readers. Instead of asking our audience to seek us, we should go out and seek our audience.

The problem, however, is that the majority of people working at and running news sites don’t get social networking and its power. Make it your mission to get social networking. The Web is going to be increasingly social in the years to come.

And I would never, ever consider hiring a new grad who didn’t use social networks. Almost all college kids do, and if you don’t, it would be a huge red flag. Huge.

It’s not too late to learn — It’s never too late to learn skills, whether you are a last semester senior staring at graduation in four months or a 65-year-old reporter. If you’re younger than a college senior, you have no excuse for not learning lots of online and multimedia skills.

If your j-school doesn’t teach the skills you need to succeed — and they probably don’t — make it your mission to learn on your own. Most j-schools will teach you how to be a good interviewer and reporter. Now you just need to learn how to translate those skills into new mediums.

And frankly, it’s not that hard. Sign up for a Lynda.com account to learn lots of online skills. A years worth of great training videos, tutorials and work sheets is less than a lot of you pay for a semesters worth of books you’ll barely touch.

Finally, forget all that talk about how journalists only produce content while we leave the business and marketing to others. You need to understand business and marketing, because you are in the business of marketing yourself.

Go out and grab yourself the computer, online and multimedia skills you need to compete in the 21st century. Then market the hell out of yourself with a great personal Web site and a strong presence on social networks in the blogosphere.

What are you waiting for? Do it.

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 newspapers need to start having more realistic job ads if they hope to actually get applicants:

The market has changed. We know the kinds of people we need to address these changes — and we want the “walk-on-water” candidate with all the Web and interpersonal skills to help us achieve our goals online.

A dose of reality: Ask for too much and you may find that too few candidates respond.

Some ads for online positions list an unrealistic range of qualifications for a single position. For example, seeking candidates who have expertise in PHP and Web development, as well as multimedia production, is asking for a lot.

Instead, focus on what you really need in the person who will fill this position. Define the goals for your new hire and determine the basic qualifications and the top five necessary skills.

If someone really had all those skills, do you think they’d be applying to a newspaper, making substantially less than what they could be making in other industries? In reality those skills I listed above can be broken down into distinct areas and positions. If newspapers have proper job ads (and positions to go with those ads) they’ll get better applicants who can help make their papers better.

First, Web development is usually broken down into front end and back end programming. Front end is the user interface and what a person interacts with, while the back end is the guts that makes a database driven site work (and anything with a CMS). Front end programming requires expert-level knowledge of HTML and CSS (and all the browser compatibility issues surrounding CSS), with some or a lot knowledge of javascript and Ajax.

Back end programming requires a high-level knowledge of a database language like MySQL in addition to at least knowing one language like PHP, Ruby or Python very well. The thing is, if someone knows PHP they can easily learn Python and Ruby. These languages share a lot in common, and programmers are constantly learning new languages.

I’d be more impressed with someone who knew one of those languages very well than someone who know all three languages at an intermediate level. Depth is more important than breadth for certain positions. If you need a programmer to learn a new language, he or she easily can.

Many front end programmers know some PHP and MySQL, while many back end programmers know some HTML and CSS, but few really know both well. They are distinctly different tasks. That’s why Web development companies have both front end and back end programmers.

Web companies don’t realistically expect people to know both well. And Flash? Well, many Web development companies have people whose only job is to work with Flash and ActionScript 3.

Multimedia reporting, whether it be with photos, audio or video, is distinctly different than Web development. It generally requires a strong grasp of journalism, whereas Web development just requires a strong grasp of Web development. You’re not going to find many people who can do journalism and Web development well.

And you certainly aren’t going to find many people who can do multimedia reporting, front end development and back end development. I do know both multimedia reporting (and traditional reporting) and front end development, but I don’t know much back end development. I always work with people who specialize in back end development.

I’ve also been doing Web work a lot longer than I have been doing journalism, which is why I have a varied skill set, but I still look at a lot of job ads and think to myself, “I’m not remotely qualified for this position based on the laundry list of things they want a candidate to have.” Yet, I know my skills and knowledge would be a big asset to most journalism companies.

Newspapers need to stop with these ridiculous job ads that ask for the moon, because they’re going to find it hard to find applicants. The ironic part is that I usually see these ads from smaller papers or papers that aren’t doing very well. I rarely see ridiculous job ads from a newspaper that gets new media or from the really big newspapers — the kind of big-time papers you would think would go after these mythical dream candidates.

This leads me to believe that the people hiring new media talent at many newspapers don’t have a clue about what they are looking for. It’s also important to know what a position is supposed to do. Are you hiring a back end programmer? Are you hiring a multimedia reporter? Are you hiring an online journalist? Are you hiring a front end programmer?

Or are you just trying to find someone with some fancy acronyms on his resume so you can feel like you are trying to improve your newspaper with a fancy new hire?

If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll never find what you need.

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 well:

Is journalism a good career choice for most of you? No.

The audacity of ambition — and innovation

And a surprising, a week-and-a-half-old post, A lot of the best young journalists are leaving.

I strongly recommend everyone read the first post on that list. The story of why an journalist left the profession is a must read (in her own words).

There will certainly be more goodness to come.

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 base my advice on how I see the typical j-school student doing after graduation.

The verdict is not well. Teach J asks why become a journalist?

And the question you have to ask is why would someone want to go into this career right now?

The answer I have is don’t. Don’t do it. At least don’t depend on big media mega companies being there forever. Have a backup plan. And don’t major in journalism, minor in it. And if you have to major in it - double major. Have another major that you can fall back on if journalism collapses.

That’s excellent advice. DO NOT under any circumstances just major in journalism. I had a double major, and it provides me with a great fall back position. You need a fall back too or just grab a minor in journalism.

Here is a comment a poster left on an early post I made about how a lot of young journalists are leaving journalism. It’s the best comment this blog has ever had and a better read than most of what I come up with:

I tried to “tough it out” with journalism for a whopping 15 months. I made $31,000 a year as a copy editor at a daily newspaper in the New York City area –- not the cheapest market. After health care, taxes and a pathetic contribution to my 401K (which has lost 10 percent of its value in the past year, thanks in part to heavy investment in newspaper stock), I made about $430 every week…$1720 a month…or about $22,000 a year.

Between my rent, car payment, car insurance, student loans, gas and food, I had so little money left at the end of the month, I was scared. Even after a year of 99 cent shampoo and absolutely no excess purchases (clothes, unnecessary driving, food that wasn’t on sale), I had saved nearly nothing. I didn’t even have credit card debt to worry about. When I came up for my one-year raise, I was given less than the inflation rate despite having continuously learned more skills and taken on added responsibilities. When I asked for more of a raise, I was told I was being paid in skills that would make me marketable elsewhere.

I thought back to how many holidays I’d spent working instead of with family over the past year and about how much working 4 p.m. until midnight sucked. I wondered what would happen if I ever had an unexpected expense –- medical, car, etc. I wondered what my retirement portfolio (and Social Security) would look like in 40 years. What if I wanted to have kids at some point? What was I struggling and sacrificing for? A company where I’m valued so much I’m told to get a job elsewhere?

I left journalism. Not only am I convinced leaving was the right decision; I’m convinced staying would have been irresponsible.

Yes, there are some good journalism jobs out there and great companies to work for. There are some very innovative newsrooms too. If you can find one of those jobs, I urge you to hold on to it for dear life, enjoy the ride and try to be a beacon of hope and reason for the rest of the industry.

But for the majority of you, there just isn’t a lot to be excited about when it comes to journalism.

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 of risk — and success.

I don’t want to work for an industry that is scared of change.

I don’t want to work for an industry that is afraid to have a conversation with its users.

I don’t want to work for an industry that is content to die.

I want to work for an industry that believes in its audience.

I want to work for an industry that can admit it was wrong.

I want to work for an industry that has the audacity to innovate.

I want to work for an industry that always wants to improve, even when it’s on top.

I want to work for an industry that always strives to be the best.

I want to work for an industry that believes there is no such thing as good enough.

I want to work for an industry that puts innovation first.

If this is the last stand for the American Newspaper, I don’t want to go out without a fight. I want to shatter paradigms, destroy cherished icons and push the envelop of innovation. And if all those efforts fail, I want try again.

I don’t want to admit defeat without at least trying. If I lose, I want it to be because I had nothing left to give. I don’t want to lose because I decided it was too hard to win.

I want the audacity of ambition — and innovation.

What do you want?

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 bold prediction: by late June (the one year anniversary for the JI) the best day ever will have more than double the traffic that yesterday had. I made posting more often one of my New Year’s resolutions, and that resolution has already had a big impact on traffic.

I think the only way to succeed is to set high goals and then go and completely obliterate them. Why do most newspapers have such low goals or none at all? Let’s bring back the era of trying to be the best each and every day.

It’s time for the audacity of ambition — and innovation.

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 first attitude.

Yoni Greenbaum has a must read post about how “Experimentation is the path to online success.” He argues that newspapers need to more nimble and ready to try new things, instead of trying to pass every single little decision to a committee for a formal decision. Most of the text below is a comment I left on his blog:

There is a fundamental lack of innovation at newspapers. It’s a huge reason why they are dying right now.

The problem is simple: there is no culture of innovation. Innovation isn’t rewarded, because most editors and publishers don’t want to deal with an inevitable side-effect of an innovative culture — failure.

Most newspapers are horribly risk averse. Top managers are hanging on until retirement. They want to do just enough to keep their jobs, so they can ride into the sunset while the industry dies. If they risk too much, they risk getting fired and losing that golden parachute. In a culture of fear, which newspapers are firmly in, innovation can never be fomented.

But innovation is the only path to salvation. That’s the fundamental paradox of newspapers. They’re in a death spiral, and because of this spiral they cannot innovate, but it is their lack of innovation that is causing this death spiral.

Most writers and editors are just barely getting by each day, producing that daily miracle. The only “innovation” most of them have ever known is marginally redesigning the print product every 5-10 years.

But the Web demands real innovation and a fundamental paradigm shift. It demands rapid and swift action, not the glacial change that newspapers are accustomed to. It requires people who are willing to let go of everything they have ever held on to.

Do we really think all those newspaper employees who started before the Web was born really get that culture? Do we honestly expect them — most of today’s managers — to take risks on a medium that many of them barely understand? Of course not.

It is up to owners to get the right managers and employees in place to take the necessary risks. And owners must empower publishers to spend money on new ventures. Innovation can never happen in a culture of cost cutting. At some point, newspapers will have to spend money to make money.

And they’ll have to do something that most old-school journalists are loathe to admit — print resources will have to be drastically cut back to beef up new, innovative Web and mobile initiatives.

Most newspapers won’t heed this advice or change their culture. The slow (or fast in some cases) death will continue at most newspapers. But if we don’t change — and fast — many, many journalists will lose their jobs and many newspapers will close down.

Greenbaum says going online is the only way to save our industry, and he’s right:

We need to be more nimble, more aggressive; we need to be quicker to act and even quicker to react. We need to stop being afraid of new technologies and start embracing them. We need to trust our employees and give them the room to work. Success for us online, would not be a bad thing — it is likely the only way to save our industry.

You know why papers like the Lawrence Journal World are thought so highly of and are doing so well? They have a culture of innovation. Top newspaper managers from all over the country go to that tiny paper in Lawrence, Kansas to see how they are so innovative on the Web.

You can only be innovative when their is a culture that foments innovation.

But hey, why do newspapers need to innovate anyway? People have really responded positively to our current products.

Right?

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 you money, waste your staff resources and cause viewers to find other, better Web sites. Look at this video from The Morning Call of Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) announcing he is endorsing Hillary Clinton (I know, riveting).

It was shot on a cheap camera with an internal mic and without a tripod. The video doesn’t sound good, doesn’t look that good and — this is rich — someone walks in front of the camera at some point.

Real professional.

Plus the video is just plain boring. This event was not something made for Internet video, especially a clip that is almost two minutes of just press conference footage. It’s not a remotely important or exciting press conference.

I only watched the clip because a reader tipped me off to the bad video and how he felt it hurt the Morning Call’s image. The Morning Call, by the way, is the third largest paper in Pennsylvania with 100,000+ circulation.

Newspapers, don’t do video that isn’t shot well or by someone who knows how to shoot video. You don’t need the fanciest camera, but you should know when to use a tripod and what is worth shooting. Both of those judgments were clearly lacking in this video.

Long before I’d invest in video, I’d do these things: audio clips to add to print stories, photo essays, photo galleries, audio slideshows, databases, flash infographics, blogs, twitter feeds, social features and microsites.

And, of course, I’d make sure my Web site had a good user interface and that all the content was easily searchable.

With video, you are competing against established content providers, like the local news. And that video The Morning Call posted was worse than most of what is on YouTube. When high school and college kids can provide better quality and content, you should really reconsider what you’re doing.

Honestly, what advertiser is going to want to sign up for poor video? We can’t complain that no one wants to pay for our content when we produce content that is worse than what is on free sites like YouTube.

You could have a totally modern news site without video, and video will not suddenly transform your site into something modern. Be smart with your resources, because the industry doesn’t have a lot of room for error.

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. Monthly visits climbed 9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago.

No one is going to scuff at 6 percent growth, but we need to do more, and I’m confident we can. We need double digit growth for the next few years, because it’s the only way to reverse the decline of newspapers.

But consider this: The industry is experiencing 6 percent growth despite the fact that the majority of newspapers have bad Web products and most papers haven’t put significant resources into their Web products. Imagine the kind of growth newspapers could have if they put real investment into their Web sites.

That’s pretty exciting to me. This report tells me that people still value newspaper content. People, however, are increasingly going online to consume newspaper content.

Newspaper need to seize on this positive data to make real and substantive investment in their Web sites. They all should have a beautiful user interface like CNN, deep database content like EveryBlock and LoudonExtra and great multimedia content like MediaStorm and The New York Times. And go local.

It’s not that difficult: take some resources from the declining print side and put them into the growing Web side. Newspapers cannot wait for their print editions to bottom out before making a strong push on the Web. Let’s be proactive and go where our users want us to go.

The Web is a friend of newspapers.

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 any reason. This is exactly why we need net neutrality.

AT&T wants to stop people from doing unlawful acts on their network, but the solution they are proposing will surely lead to prior restraint and unintended consequences. Plus, they are not even legally obligated to do this filtering on behalf of content owners:

AT&T has talked about such plans since last summer. They represent a break with the current practice of U.S. Internet service providers, who are shielded by law from liability if their subscribers trade copyright files like movies.

They primarily want to filter out Bit Torrent files, but the problem is that the underlying technology for Bit Torrent is a great way for legal broadband content to be distributed. If AT&T blocks or filters this content, it could not only prevent people from doing illegal activities but also from doing legal activities. It would most likely prevent the proliferation of on-demand movies on the Internet.

If the content owners or the government want to go after people for specific violations that’s fine, but filtering out entire technologies because they could be used for illegal activities is just plain unAmerican — and bad for everyone.

If AT&T does this, not only will I not get an iPhone, but I’ll buy my way out of my contract and get a wireless carrier who isn’t so evil — and stupid.

Then they can filter all of my non-existent bandwidth and business all they want.