This post is the second of mine in the Carnival of Journalism. The first is here.

I had a media literacy course in community college. It was an elective. I liked it. It was cool. I don’t remember much from it, though.

I also had a critical thinking course at the same college. It was a requirement. I loved it. It changed my life. It wasn’t a “journalism” class, but it definitely focused a lot on the media. And it was more than cool.

I remember being asked to clip advertisements and identify the marketing tactics used to sway people into buying the product. I remember we were asked to memorize seven most common logical fallacies and apply them to different news articles we found.

Both assignments would have worked wonderfully in the media literacy course. But nope. Missed opportunity for the elective, but thank God students had to take the critical thinking course to transfer to a 4-year university.

We need more requirements like this, for everyone.

Media works best when the public is smart

When I read “Study: Many college students not learning to think critically,” I wish I were more surprised. This is not a j-school problem, it’s a school-school problem. And a painfully obvious one to boot.

So to address the root problems in this month’s Carnival of Journalism, we have to go deeper and wider than just the journosphere.

The Knight Foundation loves to use wording like “journalistic activity” and “information needs” to step away from thinking that only journalists can impart good information. I like that.

So to apply it to the role of the university, how about empowering departments who conduct original research to write for the public? Much of their work is inaccessible because of academic jargon or restrictive publications. If the school has a journalism program, what about a tighter and more in-depth partnership with them? And what if the journalism schools were able to broadcast this to a broader audience?

A scenario

Let’s invent an example. A university with a great biology department discovers an important find. A peer-review journal has published the study and it is passing the test.

To spread it to the community at large, the university PR department sends out a one-page press release describing the research. It’s not very in-depth, and frankly, the poor overworked PR department has other things to do.

If there were no journalism program at the university, an outside entity (such as the Knight Foundation!) could set up content-production training with the people in the biology department. It could give them tools to build their own website, seminars on how to write engaging blog posts, workshops on how to publish a database to the web.

But luckily for this fictional school, they do have a j-school and it has a special reporting class. (Yeah, yeah, I know I said let’s look outside the j-school, but let’s return to navel-gazing for a bit. Humor me.)

The class’ sole job is to maintain different online journalistic outlets — websites, blogs, newsletters, etc. The class maintains a handful of niche websites or blogs, and they keep the content coming every day. The niches could be on science, entertainment, politics, finances — whatever is an identified information need, whether it’s a local or a national niche. (The publications stay the same, no matter what semester.)

So the biology department’s press release lands on the instructor’s desk. She gives it to the student assigned to writing for the science blog that day (each student has to be well-rounded enough to rotate through all the blogs). They notify the established student media that they’re working on this article. They might do a short write-up, or they might wait until the student does something more in-depth on the science blog. They choose that route. The student then acts as the liaison with the science department into helping them translate this finding into English, obtaining some databases or spreadsheets, and posting it in an interactive way to the blog. If the science blog had a national audience niche, even better. The class could also set up a place on the site where the biology department themselves could upload and post articles. The student newspaper does a short write-up and references the science blog in a link or QR code from the article.

How is this different?

I view this kind of scenario as different from the current student media setup in that it encourages national audiences with very specific niches and consistent writers. How many good blogs do you know have gone dead because the person behind them got sick of doing it?

Research needs to be done in each community on what the information need is, however, not what the students want to blog about. That’s for their own blogging time (and it’s good journalism training to write for subjects you didn’t choose).

The flagship student media should represent a general-interest campus niche and should focus all of its efforts on that. But this class would allow students to identify information needs and focus on that regardless of campus relevance — or if there’s a deeper relevant topic on campus, it could fill that need where the established student media can’t devote the resources.

I will say, it IS similar to UC Berkeley’s Mission Local, but I’m imagining an undergraduate class writing for national audiences. I like to dream big.

Ideas more practical than that one

I’m full of too many ideas, and frankly, I need to wrap this up, so I’m going to toss out a few ideas of practical things that 1) don’t involve a brand new class and 2) is related to the Carnival of Journalism topic:

I originally was going to use this space to bitch and moan about how journalism schools should never lose sight of the basics, but I’m sure you all know that by now. I’d rather leave you with a sprinkling of ideas that you could turn into actual classroom exercises. Hope you do.

This post is the first of mine in the Carnival of Journalism. And this one is my second. Go forth and be a part as well!

I have written so much on the subject of journalism education, I wanted to make a condensed post of some of those ideas first before I jumped into a point-by-point response to the Carnival of Journalism’s questions.

In February 2009 a group of journalism students held a massive online chat to talk about how journalism education needed to be revamped. Here are the highlights. It’s a great read.

In August 2009, I had the good fortune of appearing on a panel at AEJMC with the likes of Dan Gillmor and Sandeep Junnarkar. Before the panel, I hosted a #collegejourn chat and asked participants what I should tell the room full of educators. Here are the key bullet points of what I gathered:

• It’s going to take much more than throwing social media classes into the curriculum to make real changes needed. Read Daniel Bachhuber’s thoughts on this.
• There’s a lesson plan in comparing ethics policies, legal quandaries and best practices of news organizations using social media. Less emphasis on teaching the tools, more on teaching principles.
• Students who know social media should become TAs or peer teachers, or help organize a bootcamp/BarCamp at school to teach both students and the professors about social media.
• But, professors, please still keep hammering fundamentals. Don’t get lost in the latest buzzword. Everything taught about social media should point straight back to the basics.

A few ideas I wrote about after the panel:

• Students want the ability to experiment and fail. There needs to be a grading system that allows for this.
• Educators and even some students feel queasy about marketing themselves. With all due respect, they need to get over it.
• Don’t teach social media tools, teach concepts behind them. Don’t teach Twitter, teach why Twitter.
• Too many students think someone’s going to fix the industry for them. Sorry. It’s all on the students now.
• From what I’ve heard of Arizona State’s program, it has a lot of things going for it. Gillmor sets up a Ning for each of his classes and has students write and correct Wikipedia entries. There’s also an entrepreneurial class, and (if I remember correctly) students edit each other’s work on live on WordPress.

But to be more on point with the topic of Carnival of Journalism — “the changing role of Universities for the information needs of a community” — I really want to focus on another idea altogether: going outside of j-school to get this done.

Watch for my follow-up post.

• find story ideas
• report stories
• build a relationship with readers
• promote stories or the newspaper and website itself.

Her textbook is geared toward student journalists who want to know everything there is to know about the student newspaper process.

So this is what I told her, and I’m sharing it with you now:

Finding news stories on Twitter

We used a site called Hootsuite.com to manage our Twitter and Facebook accounts. It does a million things we like: It lets several people co-manage accounts without having to sacrifice password security, we can schedule tweets and Facebook posts into the future, and we can set up searches and friends lists to easily sift through all the noise. There’s also analytics built in, which is a nice add.

We have a search set up in Hootsuite for anyone on Twitter who mentions SJSU. (You can also just use search.twitter.com.) That has proved invaluable in a handful of cases. We can be alerted to news stories posted by the mainstream media the second they appear, and we can take action.

We can also get specific leads for stories that no one else really sees. For example, I found one Twitterer in my SJSU search who mentioned a blind classmate in an orchestra class. I messaged her and got more details: Apparently the Braille technician on campus had moved on to another job, and the blind student wasn’t able to have the sheet music printed in Braille, so the orchestra had to be limited to pieces that were already available in Braille. It was an interesting story I don’t think I would have found any other way.

Using social media for reporting

Social media was extremely helpful for one of our biggest stories of the semester, but our big breaks in the process came from old-fashioned reporting.

Last March, a man named John Patrick Bedell brought a gun into the Pentagon and opened fire. No one at the Pentagon was seriously hurt, but the man was shot and killed in retaliation. We had heard he was a former SJSU student, so we worked all night to verify that fact.

Bedell was quite tech-savvy and had accounts on LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Amazon that mentioned SJSU and revealed more pieces of his character. We used that in our stories, but we didn’t have definitive verification until the school’s media relations officer came through. She had access to a student database we didn’t have, and she provided the student photo that matched the photo the FBI released.

We also wanted to find a student who knew the shooter, so we scoured Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and web bulletin boards. We came very close to finding students who would speak to the media, but they never came through. We used our newsroom Google group to e-mail the entire news staff, and it turned out that a friend of an editor knew someone who had a class with him. We eventually nailed the story.

My takeaway was this: You get better sources and better information with established connections. It’s tough to make cold calls, and they come through sometimes. It’s also tough to make cold connections on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. We got the best results when we had pre-existing relationships with sources, or friends of sources. There’s an established trust, and that reinforces the need for journalists to make online connections through social media before those connections are needed. Start following Twitterers in the area, or be active on Facebook fan pages and other bulletin boards.

Building a relationship with readers

On our newspaper’s Facebook fan page, we made sure we asked questions of readers, at least one every day, about the issues of the day. We tried some different things with that. For example, if two columnists write opposing views on one subject, we asked the Facebook fans to “like” the article they agreed with the most.

Because of abuse and lack of moderation options, we had to shut down the ability for fans to post on our wall. At the time Facebook had no way for us to moderate wall comments. But our workaround was having an “Open-topic Friday” every Friday where people could post their rants, raves, events and news items in one thread. It’s actually a good idea to have those kinds of posts occasionally anyway, because some people won’t contribute to the community unless there’s a reason.

Another idea: Create a graphic of a scale of 1 to 10, and ask Facebook fans to tag themselves on the photo that best reflected their viewpoint. For example, if they were for tighter gun control, they would tag themselves near the 1, and if they were against, they’d place their tag near the 10. That way, their friends are notified that they are tagged in this photo, and they are automatically subscribed to the comment thread. It’s another way to make an issue of the day go viral.

Promoting stories

We actually slow-released our headlines on Twitter every fifteen minutes in the morning. It avoids the RSS dump most news feeds have when a site goes live. We used to post every story to the Facebook page but we wanted to avoid overload, so we picked a good representative of stories and released them throughout the day via Hootsuite. We’d post our three top headlines at 7 a.m., a discussion-generating question at 10 a.m., an opinion column at noon, a feature or entertainment story at 3 p.m. and a multimedia piece at 6 p.m.

[Note: Since I originally wrote this about a month ago, Facebook has revealed that 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. are the best times for reader engagement, according to a presentation the company gave at a Hacks/Hackers meetup. For more, read Poynter's article on the subject. There's also an interesting spike of activity after midnight, they said, something that I found true when I had to post something late and got surprisingly immediate comments. Then again, this is a college newspaper, and college students are notorious night owls. I would take advantage of that.]

If I had more time as the online editor, I would have submitted our stories to StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and Delicious, with the proper tags attached. I’ve found StumbleUpon to be one of the top referral sources to my own website, and research shows that to be true on a wider scale. So don’t make the mistake I made, and find time to promote your site beyond Facebook and Twitter.

So what practices have you found that work for you? Do you have any specific examples?

In yesterday’s CollegeJourn chat, a group of student journalists produced a road map for our first global collaborative reporting project. Sarah Jackson blogged about the idea here, and Josh Halliday wrote about it for the Online Journalism Blog here.

Students, join us. Take up the assignment. Use this opportunity for one of your journalism classes, produce a piece for your college media outlet, or just jump in because you want the unprecedented experience for your resume. Teachers and pros, we welcome any help and guidance you can give us!

We split the topic of health into two, so that the feature writers and beginning reporters could jump in to one area and the data-miners and investigative reporters could jump into another.

If you want to do a news feature, here is your assignment:

What does health mean in your area?

Get creative. We want to get humanizing stories from around the world. How does your town’s attitudes toward health differ from the rest of your country, and how does your country differ from other countries? Find those stories and share them.

Here’s some prompts you may want to explore:

• What is physical health?
• What is mental health?
• What is good health care?
• What is a healthy work/leisure balance?
• What is healthy eating?
• What are healthy relationships?
• What is addiction?

Use writing, video, audio, slideshows, whatever you see fit. You can produce one story or many. It’s up to you to get creative. But do get specific to your geographic location.

If you want to help us with the data-driven reporting, here is your assignment:

How does the health care on my university campus compare to the health care at other universities?

We want to examine what happens when a student becomes sick or injured on the university campus. What process do they go through, what’s the quality of care, and how does it rank with other campuses around the world?

The first leg of the assignment: Establish a narrative on what happens to a sick or injured student on campus. The second part is gathering data from each area, such as:

• Distance to nearest hospital or clinic
• Ambulance response times
• Average cost of visit (if not to student, then to whom?)
• Number of clinicians per 100 students
• What services are available on-site
• Population statistics over time for the campus
• Statistics like weight, pregnancy, AIDS diagnoses, gonnohrea/syphillis, etc.

Any statistics we can find that will help us compare campuses, we want to dig up. It will also take a basic explainer on how your country’s health care system differs from others, and that will take collaboration and note-sharing.

We realize this can be very complex. We also want to be flexible in case the stats are unavailable, but we want you to use good reporting skills to do whatever necessary to find out.

I should also mention that the coordinating and planning will be conducted in the English language, but we are open and willing to find a way to accommodate non-English speakers. (Suggestions welcome!)

We are going to use Paul Bradshaw’s Help Me Investigate website to coordinate. Please contact either me (suzanneyada ~at~ gmail) or Josh Halliday if you want to participate, and we will invite you to the HMI group. (We also have a WiredJournalists‘s group you can join here without invitation.)

This means for you North American CollegeJourners that the Sunday chats will be moved up to 3 pm ET/noon PT until further notice, so we can chat at a reasonable global time and update each other about our progress.

So you have your assignment. It’s due Oct. 30, but each week we will advance our reporting and share notes, so we will know where we need to go for the next week. You’ll have a support group and clear guidance for what’s expected week by week.

More logistics will be hammered out, and we will keep you informed.

Any questions?

EDIT: Here is the Google group we are using to do internal coordination. Leave a comment here on this blog and then join — I’d like to know who you are!

This time, we’re breaking out of the navel-gazing. Let’s stop talking about journalism and do some journalism.

We talked last Sunday about ideas for student reporting projects (transcript here), then quickly realized that there’s real potential for online collaboration around a particular story or topic.

Two ideas popped up, and they could go hand-in-hand. The first one focuses on data-gathering from all over the world on a particular issue. This is more geared for hard news. What information can you waaaaay over there access that my readers waaaaaay over here would want to know? Is (insert topic here) really this good/bad around the world? This one was inspired by ProPublica’s Adopt-A-Stimulus-Project efforts, but we need a subject that students around the globe could tackle.

The other idea would be focused on a word, like “victory” or “death” or “love” or “injustice,” and have student publications around the world publish stories that reflect their geographical location and culture with that theme. This could be feature, or hard news, or even arts and photography students could contribute.

It’s possible to cross-breed the two, but I had an idea of offering both assignments at the same time — the theme-based idea for audio/video reporters, feature writers or beginning journalists, and the data-gathering idea for the investigative journalists, data visualizers and computer-assisted reporting students. (BTW, I’m not suggesting multimedia reporters can’t be investigative and vice-versa, but some stories and topics lend themselves to different platforms, you know what I mean?)

On Sunday (that’s tomorrow!) we’ll be deciding many of the details, such as what the assignment will be, deadlines (if any), how to collaborate and what to do with the final product. Sarah Jackson (@sarahsodyssey) has already blogged about her vision here. It’s an exciting one.

Please join us at 8 p.m. BST if you’re in Europe and 3 p.m. ET/noon PT if you’re in North America. Those locations have already had CollegeJourn chats set up, but we want to expand to other continents, too, so please check out what time that will be in your time zone.

Also, join the newly formed CollegeJourn group on WiredJournalists. It could be just the platform we use to do the planning and collaboration.

I will be speaking to a host of journalism educators, and I am not going to waste this opportunity.

So just a few hours ago, we held a CollegeJourn.com chat about what we, the journalism students already immersed in social media, wanted to tell these educators.

Read the full transcript here, but here’s a very brief summary:

• Professors need to not only teach social media, but practice it. It is now their job to understand this.
• The students are also resistant. Just because they’re young and on Facebook doesn’t mean they know social media.
• There’s a lesson plan in comparing ethics policies, legal quandaries and best practices of news organizations using social media. Less emphasis on teaching the tools, more on teaching principles.
• Students who know social media should become TAs or peer teachers, or help organize a bootcamp/BarCamp at school to teach both students and the professors about social media.
• But, professors, please still keep hammering fundamentals. Don’t get lost in the latest buzzword. Everything taught about social media should point straight back to the basics.

But even after all that discussion, the most telling is the separate session that happened among three college journalism powerhouses (if you don’t mind me being so bold). Daniel Bachhuber, Greg Linch and Joey Baker from CoPress were particularly peeved at the idea that all it takes is a few social media courses to bring j-schools up to snuff.

What they want is a revolution. A radical dismantling of the entire structure and starting from scratch. Adding a class on Twitter isn’t going to cut it.

Read this, or better yet, download the podcast to hear for yourself. Also, read Daniel’s previous posts here, here and here on rebooting journalism education.

CollegeJourn had previously hosted a Bring-Your-Professor chat night, another must-read synopsis. It sounds like we might need another one. This time, will there be a single school out there who will listen?

ADDENDUM

Hoisting up some more links for your reading pleasure, thanks to comments from Daniel, Greg and Joey:

• Mark Hamilton’s “Remaking Journalism Education: Some Thoughts.”
• Vin Crosbie’s “Anatomy of a 21st Century Media Executive“ and “Getting Journalism Education Out of the Way.” (Plus Joey’s Publish2 links.)
• Greg’s posts on “Wanted: Resident Butt-Kicker (Thoughts on journalism education)” and “Rich Beckman discusses how to reshape journalism education.”

It was a fun interview, but I tend to ramble when I speak, so let me emphasize a couple of points:

• Yes, j-schools should be weeding out students who aren’t going to cut it. There are simply more journalism students than jobs. Perhaps we should stop coddling the tagalongs. And perhaps deficiencies in the journalism curriculum help sort out the people who are there to get a degree only, and those self-starters who see something they need to learn and will go out and learn it, whether or not there’s a class offered.
• Fancy modern tools are great. Telling stories is better. I will stand by that and plan to emphasize that in tonight’s chat.
• By show of hands, how many students know they can directly approach whoever sets the curriculum at their school?
• I want to give proper credit to my own school at San Jose State University. During many weeks of the CollegeJourn chats, I realize that I am lucky to have professors who at least acknowledge the need for new media. There’s still room for improvement, there always is. But most of my concerns about the future of journalism are not aimed towards the SJSU faculty. They’re doing the best they can.

I did want to clarify one point: I said print is dying. That’s not the full truth. The INFLUENCE of print is diminishing and the demand for print-side jobs are on their way out, which makes it even more important to shake old-school professors awake from their belief that they should teach nothing but print skills. However, there are still niches available for print, so it should still be included as one of many things students should learn.

Here’s some specific contexts where print still makes a lot of sense, off the top of my head:

• Free publications, particularly in low-income neighborhoods or downtown areas.
• Coffee shops.
• Waiting rooms.
• In-depth weeklies or monthlies, publishing articles too long to be read comfortably at a computer. That is, until e-readers become as commonplace as books, which still has a long way to go.
• Public transportation – planes, trains and buses. Again, until e-readers become ubiquitous.
• College campuses.

Yes, I said college campuses.

Print makes sense there because of its small geographic circulation (the campus and its neighborhood), the advertising revenue and, perhaps most importantly, its lack of competition for attention.

Look at the way students pick up the paper. They walk to class, minding their own business, perhaps thinking about how boring their next teacher is going to be. Then they see a newsstand and remember that yes, there is a campus publication, and they pick it up, just in case class is going to be as boring as they feared.

If the publication was primarily online, what would compel any student to go there first instead of Facebook or MySpace? The only chance you have of getting read online is to post an article that went viral in other classmates’ Facebook news feed.

Another argument for print, which comes from a surprising source: I stumbled on this recap from a student Editors’ Day conference in Southern California (full disclosure: I participated heavily in JACC when I was editor in chief at College of the Sequoias). I was completely surprised to see one of the top complaints from students is that instructors push new media too hard.

It’s the students who still want to focus on print. And why not? Anyone can post a blog; not everyone appears in print. And because print still makes the most sense for college campuses, news staffs are already stretched thin just trying to put out a quality newspaper.

Students want to produce in print, and students want to read print. Most of the money is made from print. So what’s the problem?

The problem is after graduation.

Not every journalism student is going to be employed in print niches. That’s why it’s so important to diversify. But because print still makes sense on the college campus, how can we ask them to do more video, audio, blogging and multimedia for a publication that they 1) typically aren’t paid to work for and 2) may only be taking as a requirement for graduation?

I think we better figure out a way, and quick.

We’re going to try and limit (or carefully control) the “print is dead” discussion at tonight’s CollegeJourn.com chat. But as long as it’s relevant to the subject, we will carefully tread the subject. It’s is the main reason why I am blogging here: to get it out of my system and be fresh and ready.

So join us. 8-11 p.m. EST.

If you haven’t read part one of these resolutions for journalism students, start here. And take good notes. Because we move on to the second overall goal, which applies to just about everyone in any profession, not just journalism students:

Network like mad

• # First things first: Make people remember your name.
  Much of this entire list are specific ways to make this happen, but here’s the gist: You want people to know your name like they know Anderson Cooper‘s (@andersoncooper). So start using your real name online. Hammer on your specialty and make that shine through. Make yourself a brand. The personal brand was the topic of discussion over at Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists, (@TNTJ) which is well worth the read. EDIT: Jay Rosen sent me this excellent post from Sarah Lacy, who knows a thing or two about personal brands in journalism. Andy Dickinson (@digidickinson), who teaches at the University of Central Lancashire, also touches on the rise of individual brands here. And the very-non-journalist self-proclaimed guru Dan Schawbel (@danschawbel) likes to waffle on about this (sometimes annoyingly so, but the information is still there). I took my own advice between my last post and this one and renamed my blog from “Everyday Journalism” to just “Suzanne Yada.” Many other bullet points on this list are more specific how-tos that fall under this “branding” umbrella, like the next one:
• # Consistency is everything.
  Be consistent through your writing style, your follow-ups with your sources, the way you meet deadlines and in your social networking presence. That all reflects on your reputation, and it’s your most valuable asset. That’s your “brand.” What do you want people to think when they see your byline? Is it “smart investigative reporter covering state politics?” Or is it “that funny writer in the lifestyles section?” Have people who read your articles, visit your blog, see your resume or look at your portfolio recognize it’s from you. You can start with something simple: Megan Taylor (@selfmadepsyche) says here that she reuses the same colors with everything she does online. And David Cohn (@digidave) of Spot.Us does it best with his five personalities image and use of the same nickname across all his social networking sites. Adam Hemphill (@ahemphill) says here succinctly: “If you’re not consistent with your message, potential employers or collaborators will not know what to make of you. Think about these questions: What is your goal? What are your most valuable skills? What do you want to affect? Consider these things and develop a plan for presenting yourself consistently, whether you’re answering interview questions or tying Web sites together visually.”
• # Get professional, not stodgy.
  Yes, you do need to create an image that says that you know your stuff and you mean business. So take down the frat party pics from Facebook and change your email from whatchutalkinboutwillis85@aol.com. Google your name and make sure everything you find is something you want an employer to see. But Jesus Christ, don’t take out ALL your personality, people! News does not have to be dry, and neither do you. You’re not a robot, and sources are less intimidated talking to a human than they are talking to a, gasp, journalist. Yes, still have expertise, but be lively, be engaging, be intelligent, be funny, even be a smart-ass if it calls for it. Christopher Wink (@christopherwink) a freelance journalist in Philadelphia, says that adopting a clear voice in your writing style is all part of your brand. But you do have to learn to let your style show through without being opinionated or skewing your reporting. (Keeping your writing style intact through the editing process is another story altogether.)
• # Get your domain name.
  If you don’t already have “your name dot com,” do it yesterday. It’s only $10 a year or so, sometimes even less. Post your resume, portfolio and clips on it at the very least, and if you’re adopting the very first resolution to Write Like Crazy, post your blog there too. That way, when that potential internship calls you back and asks for clips, you don’t have to keep them waiting for an e-mail. Just tell them your URL.
• # Start collecting potential sources.
  It’s never too early to start filling out your little black book with phone numbers. Reporting is ALL about connections. Who can you call 30 minutes from deadline to verify something (other than trying Help A Reporter Out [@skydiver] )? If a source knows who you are, they’re much more likely to help you. And now’s the time to initiate those connections. Whether you’re the campus crime reporter or a wannabe food critic, make your name known now so you don’t have an uphill battle to climb later (say, 30 minutes from deadline). And keep a backup of that little black book (or BlackBerry database)! Keep it updated, organized and ON YOUR PERSON at all times.
• # Make Twitter your friend.
  Notice that I’ve posted a (@username) after every single person I mentioned in this post from beginning to end? Those are their Twitter names. It is not a coincidence everyone has them, and I didn’t exclude anyone just because they didn’t have a Twitter account. If you are a journalist and don’t have one: Fix. That. Problem. Right. Now. Use your Twitter to network with both other journalists AND potential sources. Start on the journalist side of things by following everyone I’ve referenced in this post (especially those in the next bullet point). Also follow 10,000 Words’ top 10 journalists on Twitter (full disclosure: I’m on it). If you’re really ambitious, add the people who follow @JournalistTweet, and follow them yourself. To hunt down potential sources, go to the advanced Twitter search and look up people tweeting about your beat subject in your area. Poynter (@poynter) gives basic journalism Twitter tips here. Steve Yelvington (@yelvington) explains more thoroughly here.
• # Read and follow other journalists’ blogs and Twitters.
  Find the good journalism-related bloggers out there and read them religiously. Fill up your RSS reader (like Google Reader) with their work. Give ‘em feedback, ask questions. Link to them, quote them, share their posts, reply to their tweets and they just might return the favor. Want to get started? I’ve freshened up my blog roll on the right column of this Web site with some high quality folks, but if that’s too much to follow, then start with these. These are all the names that are at the top of my mind right now — playing into the importance that your personal brand makes:

  YOUNG JOURNALISTS:
  Greg Linch (@greglinch)
  Daniel Bachhuber (@danielbachhuber)
  David Cohn (@digidave)
  Meranda Watling (@meranduh)
  Daniel Victor (@bydanielvictor)
  Anyone else involved with CoPress (@CoPress)
  Anyone else involved with Tomorrow’s News Tomorrow’s Journalists (@TNTJ)

  SEASONED HEAVY HITTERS:
  Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu)
  Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis)
  Ryan Sholin (@ryansholin)
  Chrys Wu (@MacDivaONA)
  Mindy McAdams (@macloo)

• # Boost the link economy.
  The exchange of links makes the Internet go ’round. So do it. When you come across a blog post or an article you like, save it and spread it. Write a blog post about it. Share it on Delicious, Twitter, Publish2, Google Reader, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon. Make it second-nature. That’s how you meet people, make contacts and build a name for yourself. But it’s more than that: Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis)  harps on linking as a journalistic skill too. When you are immersed in your beat, instead of viewing other news outlets as competition, he suggests you do what you do best, then link to the rest. If your beat has an online presence (like those at BeatBlogging.org), reference as much information on your subject as possible. Having a robust collection of links about your subject sets you apart as a well-read and connected source of information of your beat.
• # Join online networks.
  Get on LinkedIn right away. Jump in on blog rings, like TNTJ or the Carnival of Journalism (even if unofficially). Join Facebook groups like Social Journalism, CollegeJourn or the aptly named Journalists and Facebook. Sign up for Ning sites like Wired Journalists or Visual Editors. Join Twitter chats like Wired Journalists chat (#wjchat) or CollegeJourn (#cjchat). Your name will be known as long as you have good ideas and discussions behind it. As an extra bonus, having a presence on all of these gives you wonderfully high rankings in Google.
• # Join associations.
  Part of me wants to tell you to join as many journalism-related associations as possible. The other part thinks it’s best to pick one or two and go hog-wild with those. Since most associations worth listing on your resume cost money, I am going with the latter option and I’m saving up my pennies for a membership of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of News Design this year. (Be sure to check if your school has chapters and what the price of membership is.) It doesn’t matter if you’re a multimedia reporter, a photojournalist, a copy editor or an investigative reporter; are interested in religious, environmental, health care or GLBT issues; or you come from a black, Asian or Hispanic background. There’s an association for you. Once you find one, network like hell with the other members, and attend any and all meetings associated with it. If you can’t find an association that interests you on any of these links here, just Google your interest plus the words “journalists association” (without the quotes). You might be surprised.
• # Get business cards.
  I’m serious. Design them, print them, carry them everywhere, especially to those association events mentioned above. Vista Print will give you some for free, but I personally think the tagline they add to the back of the cards makes you look cheap. (Full disclosure time: My family owns a handful of print shops in Central California, so I am naturally going to encourage you to support your local printer. ;) ) EDIT: Gina Chen (@bloggingmom67) commented here to add: “Be sure all your contact info is on your business card. (This is more advice for folks who have been employed for a while and never thought of putting their blog address on their card. Do it.)”
• # Get rid of the business cards.
  You are not going through the trouble of getting business cards just to have a stack of them in your closet. SCHMOOZE. Pass them out. I’ve given mine out in formal networking settings, to people I’ve interviewed for stories, I’ve even handed them out to a few people on a bus stuck in traffic. You’re not selling your soul here, you’re letting people know who you are and how you can help them, either in telling their stories or being the best damn hire they’ll ever make.
• # Hone your elevator pitch.
  Sum up your personality and career goals in 10 seconds or less, and repeat it over and over in your head. It’s called the elevator pitch because you never know who you might bump into in an elevator, and you have to be prepared. Memorize your pitch so the exact wording tumbles out of your mouth the next time you bump into Ms. Executive Editor in the checkout line. (Career marketing consultant Michelle Dumas [@michelledumas] posts a more thorough look here. Or try the 15-second pitch generator here.) Once you spill your spiel, hand them your professional business card with your URL on it, and they have an instant ticket to your whole portfolio of work.
• # Never underestimate the power of lunch.
  Free food is just one of the stuff journalists like. Feeling like a mentor to a fresh-faced journo student is another. When Sean Webby (@seanwebby), a San Jose Mercury News reporter, came and spoke to my magazine writing class, I had the guts to hand him my card after class. He handed me his. I e-mailed him later and offered to buy lunch. He e-mailed back with an even better offer: a two-hour tagalong on his beat. That experience was as phenomenal as it was educational. And it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t do this next item:
• # Follow up. With everything. Yes, even that.
  With everyone who hears your elevator pitch, with every business card you collect, with every e-mail exchange that happened today or the one that happened six months ago, follow up. When someone links to you, thank them. When someone writes something of interest, leave a comment. When someone retweets something you said, respond. When in doubt, follow up. Also, invest in some thank-you cards. Actual, paper-based ones. Send them to the internships that called you back, the professionals that speak in your class, your teachers, your student editors at school publications, and most importantly, after every interview or callback from potential employers. Have the fact that you follow up on everything become a part of your “brand.”

Now, I fully realize the title of this post is sorely misleading. This isn’t just for journalism students at all. This is for everyone wanting to develop their career, whether you’re simply looking for another job in the field or an entrepreneur wanting to expand your startup’s network. But there’s a reason I’m specifying journalism students: We don’t think about this stuff nearly enough. We don’t go to the campus job center or read career advice blogs. We have our heads stuck in the projects that are right in front of us. So it’s my hope that a post with the words “journalism students” in the title is more likely to be read.

Because now is the best time to make a name for yourself. Do it before this so-called real world comes by and hits you in the face. Do it now, while you have the flexible schedule and the energy.

Set specific goals, right now. Take a look at both these blog posts and choose a couple of these items you really want to focus on this year. But only a couple at a time! Then tailor them to your situation. Give them deadlines, timelines and other specifics, such as “I will order and pass out 250 business cards by March,” “I will study PHP one hour a weekend,” “I will blog once a week for 10 weeks” or “I will pitch three stories to magazines by May.”

In fact, just close this browser. Shut off the Internet. Go make your own personalized list of resolutions, and do them. Now.

Related posts from me:

• Tips for an awesome student newspaper experience
• How our university newspaper used social media to find news and break it

Excellent related posts elsewhere:

• Read Will Sullivan‘s (@journerdism) fantastic series on job hunting and career advice:
  • 32 real world advice to journalism grads
  • How to network like a ninja
  • 94 journo job-seeking resources
  • Freelance and entrepreneur tips
  • Advice to college students
• Meranda Watling (@meranduh) wrote a lovely post in response to mine.

1) Become invaluable, and
2) Network like mad.

Every goal I can think of would fall under these two categories, and it works with any career. But since I am currently a journalism student, I naturally have a lot of specifics for those of us in the same boat.

But these resolutions are more than just some j-school student spouting off edicts from on high. Many extraordinary people in the profession and in the schools have submitted their advice via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook. Also, having been a copy editor for three years myself before returning to school, I have seen glimpses of the other side of the equation, and I can see exactly what it takes to be really, really good at your job. And in the interest of full disclosure, I still have plenty of work to do — many of these goals are for me, too.

So with that, here’s what every journalism student should aspire to accomplish this year, in a two-part blog post (EDIT: Part II is now up here.):

Become invaluable

• # Write like crazy.
  If you’re not composing pieces for student media, write anyway. Write in your blog (start a free one here), write for a local blog, or even keep a private journal and write every day in it. This is my big resolution right here. I have to force myself to get into the writing habit. Analyst Anne-Marie McReynolds (@amcreynolds) gives some good ideas via Twitter: “Collaborate w/citizens, launch hyper-local blog, pitch investigative stories to Spot.Us.” (See the “Start pitching stories to publications” for an explanation of Spot.Us.)
• # Produce multimedia like crazy.
  Robert Courtemanche (@teach_j), a journalism/media teacher in Houston, Texas, says this: “Learn EVERYTHING you can about the web. Learn how to make good visuals. Learn video editing. Learn to shoot video/photos.” A perfect starting point is KQED’s Digital Storytelling Initiative, which you can download for free and includes audio/visual tutorials and advice on crafting a good story. Also, Brandon Mendelson (@BJMendelson), a graduate student at UAlbany, says, “Journalism students should learn the basics behind web coding (php,ect.); Others in the newsroom will depend on this knowledge.” A great resource to learn anything computer-related is Lynda.com, which for $25 a month will offer you video tutorials on just about ANY piece of software you can imagine. Absolutely worth the investment — and so much cheaper than a textbook. EDIT: Alfred Hermida (@hermida) of PBS’s excellent MediaShift blog interviews several industry professionals about what they’re looking for in a journalism grad. All of them say that in addition to the basic core of journalism skills, you need new media skills.
• # Meet your deadlines.
  Every journalist I know is a natural procrastinator, including me. That’s why we thrive on tight deadlines. But you won’t thrive in the industry if you don’t meet them. This is my confession: while I meet deadlines, I don’t pace myself well AT ALL. It’s always a last-minute rush, and quality suffers as a result. This is my other huge goal for this year: Start on an assignment either the moment I get it, or within the hour.
• # Grow some cojones.
  Let me level with you. The world doesn’t need more music reviewers or opinion spouters. The world needs more people willing to ask tough questions. The first step to reversing journalism’s tarnished image is to have the guts to dig for information the public can’t easily find themselves, and be an advocate of unbiased, straightforward truth. If you can show depth and research with your reporting clips, if you can show you can ask the tough questions and be more than just a parrot for your interviewee, if you can fact-check the living snot out of your articles, you will rise to the top of the crop. EDIT: Alan Kellogg commented here with an important addendum: “Have the courage to acknowledge and correct your mistakes. You will make mistakes. When you err tell people you erred, where you erred, and fix your error. Your audience will think better of you.”
• # Dig for better stories beneath the surface.
  Former CNN anchor Miles O’Brien (@milesobrien) was kind enough to send me a short yet complex New Year’s resolution: “I resolve to stay relevant amid tectonic changes.” The world may seem to be crashing in on journalism, but if we don’t stay relevant to people and their information needs, we might as well dig an early grave. That also means finding different, deeper angles to the same old stories and providing context to the public. Alex Kellner (@kellnaaah), a political blogger and Master’s student at GWU, says it best: “Bring intellectual curiosity to the profession of journalism, don’t just write about what MSM and Drudge tell you is a story.”
• # Know AP or Chicago style, and LURN TOO SPEL.
  You can’t aspire to be a cabinetmaker and not know how to use the tools. Likewise, you can’t write without knowing the mechanics of English and the standard rules of media style. Make it a goal to plow through your stylebook page by page, and if you’ve already done that, do it again to refresh yourself. That’s my goal. The AP Stylebook is used more widely and is available in a searchable online format here for $25 a year (a fair price!), and the Chicago Style is also available online here for $30 a year. Or buy a hard copy and a good old-fashioned highlighter.
• # Be absolutely, 100% ethical.
  In my emails to my San Jose State professors, this one was the common thread. Professor Tom Ulrich says he has the same simple resolutions every year: “Meet all deadlines. Write bullet-proof copy. Abide by the ethics of the profession. Sounds quaint, but your reputation means everything.” Read, reread, and re-reread SPJ’s Code of Ethics. Then use it to decide beforehand what you would do in certain situations before those situations even arise.
• # Treat all your school assignments like your next ticket to a job.
  Because they are. All of them. Even reading that stupid textbook, the one the teacher never teaches from. Don’t tailor your homework assignments and projects to meet the teacher’s standards; tailor them to a potential employer’s standards. I wish I took some of my school projects more seriously, because I would have loved to have shown them off if they were done to a higher quality than just the instructor’s expectations. The more material you can flaunt in your portfolio, the better.
• # Apply, apply, apply.
  You can’t get internships or scholarships if you never apply. Find internships at Journalism Jobs, CubReporters.org, Ed2010 for magazines, on your local craigslist, through your school and via your instructors. Apply for scholarships through FastWeb, CubReporters.org, American Journalism Review, and again, through your school and via your instructors. Make a goal to submit a predetermined amount of applications in a predetermined amount of time.
• # Talk with your teachers about something other than class.
  Psst, here’s a secret: Teachers are itching to swap real-world stories and insider information with students, but not nearly enough students ask. If you can’t make their posted office hours, take them out to lunch. They’re also a gold mine of connections, and they really, actually, DO want you to use them.
• # Start pitching stories to publications.
  Just start. See where it gets you. It could get you 100 rejection letters, but you might break through somewhere. Make this the year you got published and — *gasp* — got paid for it. Look at Writer’s Market, select the publications for which you want to write, learn how to write a good query and start pitching stories. If you can’t find the book at your library or bookstore, subscribe to the online version. It’s searchable, current and affordable. Also, if you have an idea for an in-depth report, you may want to consider Spot.Us, a Web site where you can pitch a story idea and ask the public to fund your freelance wages. It’s a bit harder for students to convince the public that they are qualified enough to handle a story worthy of their money, but the platform is there. EDIT: Came across a great blog post from Ben LaMothe (@benlamothe) explaining why writing for the student paper may just not be enough anymore.
• # Take a business course, or five.
  It’s not easy, and I hate math, but I’m minoring in business for several good reasons. I don’t need to tell you this economy is in the dumps and this profession is in trouble. Adam Hemphill (@ahemphill), a freelancer and former CoPresser, says, “Journalism students should resolve to make their news organizations self-sustaining.” Your knowledge of the world of business will help you tenfold in landing a job — or creating your own (see next item). If you’re not able to take courses at your university, try the community college nearest you, or contact the Small Business Administration. They often give free seminars across the nation and are ready to give you advice. Also dig up information on the business side of journalism: I keep tabs on Poynter’s Biz Blog and NewsPay, Reflections of a Newsosaur, The Media Business and Monday Note as well as devouring the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual State of the Media report. (EDIT: I wrote a follow-up blog post for this: “14 of the best blogs about the news business.”)
• # Be prepared to go entrepreneurial.
  Entrepreneurial journalism is something every single j-school graduate should be prepared to jump into. MediaShift agrees, as does Eat Sleep Publish. The Online Journalism Review has a number of great posts on it here, not the least of which is this one. Don’t attempt this until you 1) network like mad and 2) learn how to talk business.
• # Learn something that doesn’t earn school units.
  Do you feel like your j-school not teaching you what you need to know? With impossible budgets and a crazy bureaucracy to battle, they try to do the best they can, but they can only do so much for you. Your education is in your hands, so take command of it. I already mentioned Lynda.com for learning multimedia software, something every journalism student should know. Another fantastic resource is NewsU to relearn (or learn) everything you only skimmed over in class. On top of that, if you want to be a reporter and your school shamefully doesn’t require a minor or academic focus outside of the journalism department, dive into a second subject of interest that you want to cover as a reporter. Environment? Politics? Schools? Crime? Business? International relations? Make it a goal this year to do some research online and read books (remember books?) on the subject. Which reminds me…
• # Read.
  Read for fun. Read for learning. Read voraciously. But read quality materials. Scott Fosdick, a professor at San Jose State University, has this excellent resolution to offer: “I resolve to regularly monitor my media consumption, with an eye toward increasing the meaningful and deep and decreasing the trivial and shallow.
• # Teach.
  Chrys Wu (@MacDivaONA), a journalist and editorial consultant, puts it eloquently: “A respect for experience and a willingness to teach.” All of this information you’re soaking up should be passed along, don’t you think? Teach others what you’ve learned, whether it’s to fellow students, through your blog, or even your teachers and other professionals. Yes, you might know something they don’t (but don’t let that get to your head!). Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) posts here about journalism students who learn new computer applications and turn around to teach the professional journalists how to use them. It’s an excellent idea. Nothing ensures you know a subject more than having to teach it, and programs like the one Jeff mentions ensures that others in the profession know it too.

A bit too much? Well there’s more. Part II: Network Like Mad is now up!

Want to add a resolution? Please add your own in the comments below!

Related posts from me:

• Tips for an awesome student newspaper experience
• How our university newspaper used social media to find news and break it

Excellent related posts elsewhere:

• Top ten list of tips for journalism students by Greg Linch (@greglinch)
• 2008 objectives for today’s non-wired journalist by Howard Owens (@howardowens)
• Wiki: How To Be A Journalism Student, based on a post on OJB by Paul Bradshaw (@paulbradshaw). (Psst: the password is “howto.”)
• “Forget survival: The Journalist’s Guide to Owning 2009 and Beyond” by Shawn Smith (@shawnsmith)
• New year’s resolutions for graduating journos by Whitney Rhodes (@wrhodes)
• My hopes for journalists in the future by Gina Chen at Save The Media