The Changing Face of Journalism
This weekend I went to the SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists) conference in St. Louis. I serve as programming chair for our chapter and our executive board got to stay at the Crowne Plaza where the conference was being held. Very fancy and very informative.
The first presentation that I attended was Navigating the New Media given by Mike Anderson, creator of STLmedia.net. An interesting tidbit is that there are 71 million blogs out there. How to make your blog unique is the key. He spoke about how to create a blog including tips like “Cover what you know, link to the rest.”
I learned about freelancing and the importance of writing what you know: life, work/education and passions. Networking is particularly important in this job to search out markets and build relationships with editors. We did several writing exercises to get the ideas flowing.
During the afternoon, I learned about New Reporting for a New Age to avoid having holes in our stories. The first element when composing a story, according to Mizzou journalism professor Martha Steffens, is to come up with a News Hypothesis based on what the story means. Then the next pieces are data (facts, observable details), context (background), and perspective (journalist’s lens). The important thing is to do the research first, then get the interviews (or else the interviews lead the story).
The SPJ Conference “The Changing Face of Journalism” allowed me to meet both professionals and students and learn about the new direction that journalism is going. And it’s definitely changing.