Why Networking Matters!

Networking is taking me to Brazil!

A few years ago I had an opportunity of travelling for free. Somehow, I wanted a holiday and had no money! I always thought that as a journalist I would get to travel a lot and see the world.

True, but the travelling is not always fun, on the contrary it can be quite stressful. In a student media conference I atttendedn in 2006, I met a travel editor, who I approached to ask him if he would be interested in publishing some travel stories.

At the time, I was travelling to South America to visit my family and my aunty, an archaelogist, who was receiving a Discovery Channel team to film her latest projects and findings in her museum in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. She had invited me to attend the filming sessions and as a chance to meet the team.

I told the travel editor about it, and he said to me, you know you can get an airline to sponsor your flight in return for some promotion.

Bingo, it just kept me thinking! I started writing applications to major airlines, tour companies, the Peruvian Tourism Board who would be interested, it was all last minute and the free ticket didnt go through, but tours,accomodation and internal flights did! However, I was now being commisioned by a his online travel magazine. A lot of gigs in Peru for free!

Now the editor has offered me a press tour trip to Brazil with all expenses paid, well all except my insurance! I guess you have to push and push, so they know you’re determined. Networking really matters! Don’t be afraid to ask! You’re a journalist, don’t forget!

Check out my travel stories at TravelMole

Reporting on the Coroner's Inquest of a Mafia Drug Baron

What I love about journalism is it’s everyday unpredicitability. I was sent to court… yes excting!

Even more when I found out that I was reporting on the murder inquest of high profile Italian mafia drug baron Anthony Romeo.

A funny anecdote is being confused by Mr. Romeo’s widow because I arrived early and dressed in an elegant black trench, black stockings, and black high heels, with big black sunglasess- Jackie Onassis style.

So there was a lot of speculation among the people behind the counter at the Glebe’s Coroners Court of my identity.

Note that you can’t take a tape recorder inside a hearing. It’s against the law. Shorthand is very helpful, especially if you go to court hearings regularly.

In my case, shorthand is pending in my things to do “to become a journalist’.

What you require if you don’t have shorthands skills is extra concetration.

Do some background research first, so you arrive with an essential grasp of the story.

This way you’ll be able to source better juicy quotes or facts that can be really interesting to your angle, especially if your story has been covered previously.

Write down as fast, but also as accurate as you can. If you can’t get a full quote paraphrase.

Talk to the lawyers, just to make sure you got all the facts right. Don’t be afraid to ask it’s your reputation that’s at stake here!

Mingle with other journalists, there will be many sitting next to you. Approach the most friendly looking ones to feel a bit more in place with your story. Ask them questions, even mention that you’re new but also aim to sound engaged and confident in the process .

Most court cases are riveting and interesting. Make the best out of them!

How the crappywriters almost got taken to court

I am the copywriter for two health and fitness websites. Only recently I found out that I can get sued for providing expert content where I don’t have expertise, and which can endanger someone’s life. Real man, no kidding.

From a journalism background, I had issues writing some pieces. What happens if our website gets at least a PR6, booming in readers and someone decides to follow our medical advice instead of going to the doctor?

I was told to scrape information from the web and tweak it. “Not plagiarizing, sharing’ said my manager. I wrote about diabetes, cancer, yoga tips, meditation, alternative treatments, sports and exercise.

I knew as a journo, that it wasn’t right, but since I’m new to online advertising/copywriting arena, “well then I guess this is normal, this how you do it. So what the hell, I have a company to back me up”.

My mind struggled the first month tweaking content, writing in an expert way, and of course producing this type of content in massive quantity rather than in quality.

Until recently, my company hired an in-house lawyer who set the whole building on fire.

I could be take to court she said. Red Light, Red Light

My other copywriter and I face serious danger. You see guys “NO ONE” told me otherwise, because not only is the company trying to make money selling websites with “original” content, but they have no idea about copywright law! I’m talking about my manager to the top CEO!

The blogs I write now, always have to state some sort of indication that is my opinion! Before I was like “Well, for back pain try this type of posture excercise” Some unlucky person might try to do it, and the consequences could be nasty.

It’s good to mention that, I knew somehow that something wasn’t right. The content I produced wasn’t an expert opinion, while at the same time, in a high paced environment, I didn’t know how real bad it was.

It gets worse when I was told that even if you’re reporting to the company, it doesn’t matter, they can get their asses saved, but not always you. Depending of the seriousness of the offence off course!

Twitter Me Fun

Twitter, Inc. was born out of the offices of Obvious in March of 2006. The twitter phenomenon is labeled as micro-blogging. It allows you to write brief text updates about your life on the go, and send them to friends and interested observers via text messaging, instant messaging, email or the web. Twitter users only respond to one question, and in just 140 words. What are you doing?

Register in Twitter and see how you go?

In found Twitter as a social networking site, another way to waste my  time, it’s higly addictive. Though unlike Facebook and Myspace where you can search for names, with photos, for the regular stalking, Twitter is a bit more limited. I found that th people you “follow” (friends you add) are usually people you know, have interests in common, or are referred to you by other people.  According to Author and Technologist Nicholas Carr, “Twitter is the telegraph system of Web 2.0” Or as Jason Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, reported in the New York Times “It’s one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet”

Slate magazine, Michael Agger suggests that “… Twitter is not a mere procrastination tool. It acts as a mental escape hatch. When answering the Twitter prompt — ‘What are you doing?’ — people have a way of checking in with their essential nonwork selves: ‘thinking about fried pickles for lunch’ or ‘daydreamng about a boy that i fancy and how i can snog him.’ It’s the 21st-century equivalent of passing notes in class.”

This twitter  phenomenon of micro-blogging allows you to write brief text updates about your life on the go, and send them to friends and interested observers via text messaging, instant messaging, email or the web. Though sometimes it can be overwhelming and you can limit your daily feeds of updates.

Aside from sharing your faily posts with friends and networking, Twitter is also a great way to stay in touch with news outlets through only one medium. The BBC, The New York Times and Al Jazeera among other news outlets are trying out Twitter as a way to send headlines and links to stories. A good example of the Twitter mania is that the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, who also has a Twitter profile, with thousands of “followers” who check out updates.

For BBC technology editor Darren Waters, “users are not just sending texts and e-mails, but are “lifecasting” words and video 24 hours a day”. An increasing number of applications has been launched that take advantage of “always on” connections, either over the net or on mobile devices.

According to Mark Glasses author of Media Shift blog, one of the great things about Twitter is that fans can create their own add-on applications or visualizations. In terms of design and usability, Twitter is fairly easy to use, navigate and create applications. Check some out:

Twittervision lets you see each Twitter as it happens based on the location of the Twitterer. The web page literally scrolls around a world map to point out where the user is sending the post, and includes the text of the post and profile photo.

Twitterholic is a Top 100 Billboard-like chart for the Twitterers who have the most “followers.” Most of the chart is dominated by tech personalities such as Robert Scoble (3,690 followers) and Twitter founder Evan Williams (2,487), though CNN Breaking News has a decent showing as well (1,664).

Twitterment allows you to search for specific terms such as beer to see who has written a post with that term. You can even see a graph that shows the hours of the day when that term is used most (beer comes in on the later side, naturally), or compare terms such as Mac vs. PC.

Basic Twitter Search helps you search through Twitter blog posts and even search for people. Because Twitter doesn’t have a search engine (yet), PR blogger Steve Rubel created the engine using Google Co-Op tools.

Twitterrific and Twitteroo are computer programs that let you post to Twitter from your Mac or PC, respectively.

The Twitter community is constantly growing and coming ever so popular. Try it for yourself. At the moment the main functions are to follow people, and they can also follow you, you can receive peoples’ ‘what are you doing’ postings by sms. You can customize your profile adding photos, changing layout designs, writing an about you section and linking to your work.

Twitter inspires you to keep up to trend with the latest social networking sites. At the same time, it allowd you to know about other peoples work through networking. A recent example is rock critic and online journalism lecturer at UTS Elmo Keep who has been very popular in her protest for being banned in Facebook, causing headlines in the front page of the SMH online. I’ve found very interesting people, that work in the same industry and every day you learn something new about them, their ideas and have fun.

Twitter, a  social tech phenomenon even has it’s own vocabulary ( from the special Twitter Fan Wiki page).

mistweet: a micro-blog post someone regrets. You can delete posts from your Twitter profile page but you can’t edit them or take them back.

tweet: a micro-blog post via Twitter.

Twitterer: one who Twitters.

Twittermob: a group of people who organize a spontaneous real-world gathering via Twitter.

Twitterrhea: sending too many Twitter messages.

Twitterverse or Twitosphere: the universe of Twitter users.

Twitter is also a great for increasing readers, driving traffic to your blog. You can incorporate Twitter widget into your blog’s sidebar, this brings in conversations from outside of your blog, connecting your blog with different microblogging and social networking applications. It’s a great way of promoting yourself to others and combining all the different online tools available. Remember, that the words that sit there in the sidebar are important to creating a strong first impression. They should support and represent the content found within the blog and its purpose. Also, these words from the microblogs become content on your blog, thus they are scooped up by search engine web crawlers and stored in their databases, turning up in search results. Many people want to combine everything they are doing on the web within their blog. It’s up to you to evaluate the benefits of these to your readers and your own privacy.

The Highs and Lows of Journalism

4. Gaining Fame, Glamour and Notoriety

This situation has it’s own high and lows. The glamorous aspects of journalism if you’re a reporter or news presenter on televsion, you’re recognized and mingle with the stars. If you develop good work, you’re highly regarded by the industry, and even awarded prizes.

However, your work is under display and under scrutiny. Journalists have often been publicly discredited for honest errors, or mistakes made as a result of a short-term lack of attention to detail.

5. Being a Freelancer

The advantage of being a freelancer is to report on what you want, when you want. You also have a lot of variety of work, which keeps you entertained. Again, two days are never the same. But there’s also a lot of pressure, since you may not get work regularly and financially struggle for a long period of time.

If you’re working as a full-time freelancer, then you have to very disciplined to meet deadlines and work solo.

6. Power and Influence

A journalist you have the power to set the political and public agenda. You have the opportunity to influence people and decisions by the way you write, put a story on air or ask questions.

The lows of power and influence is when you abuse it. Some do. So always try to be objective with what you write. Your reputation is also on stake.

7. Workload

Journalists have a lot of workload, with a lot of pressure to work under strict deadlines. Generally working over hours and with a lot of stress. This affects the lifestyle of the reporter, having little time for themselves and family, also putting strain on relationships.

Read Part One