Obvious answers would include links to your work hosted On line or files burned to a CD or attached to an email. When viewing these, a recruiter will see a single dimension of you, the same as any public viewer. They will get a sense of what your final product looks like, and will gain no other knowledge about you.  Showing a recruiter that you can initiate, innovate and be creative is a fantastic opportunity and a multimedia journalist can’t afford to disregard that.

Realizing the Resume Podcast

I realized this for myself after sending off several emailed resumes that had some in-field audio recordings attached as loose mp3s. The email explained what the mp3s were, but it finally occurred to me that this flew in the face of choosing the best technology to tell the story, in this case my story.

I struck on the idea of a resume podcast when trying to figure out the best way to contextualize the clips and a quick Google search revealed that I’m certainly not the first to come up with the concept.

However, I could find no examples of professionally created resume podcasts, just discussion. The one
live example I found claims to have been made “in about 5 minutes” and it shows.

So, for reference and a little self promotion, here is my try at a resume podcast:

Thoughts into Actions

My first move was to sift through the podcast section of the iTunes store (accessible through the iTunes player) for ideas on what makes a podcast more than just a person speaking in mp3 format.

Compelling and careful use of music, employing good broadcast voice and focusing on brevity were some tips I picked up, but if you’re interested in creating your own resume podcast, I’d suggest rummaging through casts that are related in tone to what you’d like to come out with.

For broadcast voice tips, check out The Broadcast Voice by Jenni Mills. While it’s hard to come by in the United States (try interlibrary loan from your public library) it is definitely worth the effort. Written in 2004, it takes the computer revolution into account, an event many broadcast voice books predate.

When selecting music, keep copyright issues in mind as if you were preparing the podcast for a media outlet. It will demonstrate to a perspective employer that you understand and abide by intellectual property law. I’d like to thank Leah Goodwyne, a class mate in UF’s Journalism College, for pointing out Podington Bear, who makes his music available via a creative commons license.  I chose out his tracks “The Growly Song” and “Steppin’ In” for my podcast, but he has a tune for just about any mood if you have time to sit down and sort through it.

This is a beloved fact by most everyone I come across who is in the print mindset. And while those who have switched from print to multimedia advocate spending some money to flesh the kit out, their suggestions stick to the $50-$100 range.

I understand the sentiment. The digital divide is a touchy subject and it is frustrating to think that talented people may be held away just because they can’t afford the admission price. But the divide is commonly discussed in universities, where students are told that money spent on education (whether grant, parent or loan) is an investment in their future. I agree, the same kind of investment you make when you purchase a professional or semi-professional piece of equipment.

For example, you can sign up for a web course that will teach you how to code HTML and CSS for $80. You will sit at your computer for several hours a week, maybe correspond with your professor by email and get some class interaction in a forum or chat room. Or you can take a $450 at a University that will teach you HTML and CSS in a lab, with your peers and an instructor physically at hand. In addition, you’ll get a series of lectures on the history of Journalism on the web, plus support from the department.

In the short run, $80 seems like a solid deal. But no professor of journalism will argue against the cumulative advantage of college courses.

A $50 sound recorder, $200 video kit or $100 point and shoot camera all sound good in the short term. But are they going to provide the opportunity for experience that I need, at the levels I need it, to produce professional quality media?

So, I respectfully ask, why are we often offered the cheapest way out again and again when discussing equipment at the University of Florida?

Ultimately, I want to bring this issue out into the open. I would like an honest discussion of how to inform students without scaring them away.

If I am investing in an education, I want to learn what a piece of professional equipment costs, how to evaluate it, how to purchase it and, most importantly, how to use it.

Inspired by subjects touched on in my studies, I have already begun to answer some of these questions for myself. If you are interested in a more practical discussion of where semi-professional multimedia equipment is at right now then look for future posts here at Swamp Sloggin’.

If your in Journalism and you have a pulse, then you can’t help but have some feeling on the issue of Digital Divide and it’s influence on advice and instruction so be sure to sound off in the comments.

(Note: Student reporting can be done completely on campus, especially by covering just events. I’m assuming that the reporter is covering a wide variety of stories.)

Gainesville is built on the grid system, a city design common in some parts of the world, but rare in the Southeast in my experience.

The epicenter of Gainesville is the intersection of University and Main. All numbered streets radiate from Main and all numbered avenues radiate from University, with numbers counting up towards the outskirts of town:

A Gainesville reporter, or resident even, worth their salt should be able to visualize the rough location of any intersection in Gainesville, save for a few stray boulevards.

The one draw back to grids and visualizing them is making a mistake can be costly, for instance heading to SW Gainesville when the intersection in NE.
The naming scheme is broken a couple of times for the main roads of Gainesville: University/Newberry, Archer, Williston, Waldo, 34th and 13th. Roads that are not numbered refer to the next small town reached by heading out of Gainesville on that road (Newberry Rd. leads to Newberry, Archer to Archer, and so on).

Traffic can become excruciating on some of these roads.
For instance, avoid Archer between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays, because rush hour traffic in both lanes can slow to a crawl.
During any major University event, University Avenue is barely usable. It pays to be aware of sports and entertainment schedules on campus.

Sure the photo is a little small, but it is still the same basic layout, the same University focused stories.

But that photo, in a small way, is progress. It is a frame from HD video camera footage, wielded by Andrew Stanfill, who is commonly recognized for his photo work at the Alligator.

Stanfill was excited last night at the prospect of the photo. He mused about a future where there are no still cameras, where everything is shot in HD video, which amounts to a constant stream of high-quality, still photos.

Matt Tripp, another photojournalism student who works at the Alligator, wasn’t so thrilled. He likes the medium of still photography, just as print journalists like the medium of newspapers.

I bring up this story to illustrate how real and immediate the changes in technology are to the students of Weimer Hall, and how that should effect a student’s approach to journalism education.

The most important things we learn here are concepts, not mediums. When in Reporting lab, students are taught the concepts of a news story: newsworthiness, storytelling and description, among others.

They are also taught how to formulate these concepts for print, i.e. lede, nutgraph, good quotes, etc…

The formulas will change dramatically, probably multiple times in our coming careers. But the concepts that guide the formulas, like the laws of physics that will always guide aeronautics, are the essence of a journalism education.

So when Stanfill shoots a professional quality video, he is referencing concepts and formulating them for the medium. Or at least that’s what I got from his argument that he did indeed shoot a photo, in response to offhanded criticism in the office that it didn’t count because it was pulled from a video.

Journalism is the same way. Reporting skills and concepts will always be relevant. Understanding the information gathered and how it can be used will always be valuable. Just understand that the you’re being taught to put it all together right now is just one way it can be done.

In the future you may tell a stories through interactive graphs, in text structured in unimagined ways or any number of  other, innovative ways. In all, make sure the education is you receive is flexible.

McKeen’s article saw heavy use during his stretch an Intro to Journalism professor. It was his canned response to an endless wave of disgruntled J-school newbs who came rapping on his office door with incredulous questioning (I was one of them).

But his argument applies equally well to Reporting: digital solutions kill the magic of discovery.

You’re reporting on a story that involves the health department, Bob’s Gyro Palace and John Shmoe, a disgruntled employee. Shmoe has sent you an email that tips you off to the story, Gyro Palace is clearly listed in the phone book (or anywho.com) and the Health Department has a detailed Contact Us page. Collecting the info on this story could take an hour and half worth of phone calls and a couple public records requests which will be emailed to you. The story is easily written from your apartment.

Foley will tell you this is bad practice because people can easily ignore your calls and effortlessly dodge your emails. But the investment of time pays few dividends compared to physically going to your sources.

To illustrate, what happened out in the world while you sat in your room?

• A 5 car pileup at the corner of University and Waldo on your way out to the health center.
• The 3 flyers for local community events, which of course have no web presence, posted in the lobby of the health center.
• Shmoe’s neighbor that just started carving lawn flamingos from a tree that fell in his yard, which he decorates with waste paint from the Alachua County Hazardous Waste facility, because he can’t get a job in this economy.
• The wild gestures or interesting clothing of Bob, owner of Bob’s Gyro Palace, which would’ve made great details to your story.

Of course you are unlikely to come across all of these ideas in one day, but all you need is one decent one and there are plenty of stories out there.

By relying on a phone and email a reporter is making that day’s story easy, but there is no investment in the future. Every moment spent reporting on your feet is both an investment in this week’s assignment and next week’s story idea.