More than 20 years after the Internet and web-based technologies stormed onto college campuses, the life of a university student is still rapidly changing.

So goes the focus of another feature I did for the newly rebranded Temple University alumni magazine.

Read the story here or see the sleek new design here [PDF].

As usual, below I have some background and interview extras that I cut from the story.

Original pitch (first taken in October 2011, due November, fact-checking February 2012, published April:

TECHNOLOGY AND CAMPUS LIFE—Over the past five to 10 years, technology has transformed the traditional residential college student experience, from how much they know about their roommates before they come to Temple, to being able to gauge when fitness centers and laundry facilities are available, to receiving safety and weather alerts instantly. What is the residential student’s relationship to technology, and how has it changed the college experience?
Nearly 1,000 students used the RoomSync system for the Fall 2011 Housing Selection Process last year, 800 of which were identified as new incoming freshman. This number represented approximately 25 percent of our incoming freshman class for Fall 2011 – students who used the RoomSync system to either search for potential roommates and/or utilize the system to identify a roommate to pull into Temple’s Student Web Self-Assign (SWSA) system via the MyHousing application via TUportal.

ORIGINAL LEDE

Extras:

• The Fall 2010 Housing Selection Process (February 2010 – August 2010) was the first year we instituted the Room Sync option in our process.
• Dr. Ismail al-Faruqi was a cool dude who taught at Temple
• Temple honors business class piloted iPads
• College campuses, particularly ones with the variety of choice and size as Temple, have always been a sign of what’s to come. If that holds true, students living on Temple’s campus today are promising a world that is (a) more social, (b) more convenient and (c) more available.

Chatting with IMBA student BRIT MILLER

• how much effort to bring people together for a party? “very little, i made a facebook invite and invited them all”
• so twitter def.. not really FB.. is helpful to get a business perspective of whats going on in the world
• “i literally have no idea how i would have gotten through school back then. i mean.. every single thing we do starts with the internet: research, info, how the teachers communicate with us
• ARE YOU BETTER OR WORSE a student?: much better, esp for IMBAs cause i get a better sense of the business world globally, by reading any website i want, where as if i didn’t have the internet, i wouldnt…
• so we had to do a design project on the library. temple lib and they’ve got that place extremelyyyy hooked up to the internet. QR codes to the website, i think there was an app
• Your brother is just a couple years younger. How much have things changed in even that time?: i dunno. facebook came out my freshman year, so it was there, but obviously not as robust as it is now. there werent smartphones. there were no apps. or ok there might have been but no one had a smart phone. i guess just how instantaneous info is. you want it, you got it.. either via a website, an app, a social network

Brit’s father GEORGE MILLER

• I will give you some food for thought…..when I started at Temple in 1969/70 you were not allowed to use a calculator, as they were just being introduced to the masses, they were expensive, and maybe 10 % of the students had one….therefore we all were forced to use slide rules for Physics and chemistry, and all math classes…try that with a problem having 10 calculations to the negative15th power…
• there was no Internet for simple library research…it was all done manually by looking up books and references via the card catalogue…better yet, by the time you found the item in the card catalogue , walked to the back of the second floor only to find the book not there…or better yet every article I ever researched was cut out of the journal (every time)…which forced me to the more tame suburban library’s at Gwynedd Mercy, or Beaver College (Arcadia)..
• .learning was a very tedious process to accumulate knowledge because knowledge of a subject is always built upon understanding the basic foundation previously learned…if you were missing some basic concept of math for example you had not done since 11 grade…you just could not Google for an answer or a tutorial…nobody sold their college text books for fear of not having a handy reference. 3 years later…I still have a few key texts..
• Connecting with friends…casual or close, was so much more of a chore….no texting, no email, no face book, no cell phone..just good old I’ll see you tomorrow, next week or whenever….or I’ll call you, voice mail did not exist so you had to be waiting on the call…
• Obviously you had to attend class as there was no Internet to view BlackBoard the next day..you had to seek a friend who took flawless notes to survive if you missed a class…
• .you could rarely find the prof to ask a question outside the strict hours posted on their office door…today you just email
• and you just could not beat the wrap around lines around the block to register for classes, as there was not electronic access…until it was your turn in line after the 200 in front of you…you had no clue if your necessary classes still were open..
• how will the near future affect us…hope fully for the positive given the $150 charge for the average text book …why not $12 E books…of course it will crush an entire industry that has been changing the editions of their texts every year for at least 40 year
• And obviously the ability to project professional instruction via the Internet has accelerated in the past decade especially by the non traditional degree programs…. does that effect the need for a Prof to stand in front of 250 people…why not in front of 25,000..?

JAMIE NGUYEN

• Facebook…. Anyone you met as a freshman, you became a friend. i wasnt going to look for them, but if they approved. as time went on, with posting pictures. someone would be like, i’m in your class. you still saw.
• AIM, because in stant messaging, to go knock on someone’s door. do you want to go to dinner. promoted a culture of laziness.
• in dorm 1940: people are less inhibited on IM. it’s easier to talk to people once you get their screenname… dining hall, go hang out. you’d study with your laptop, interact your academic with social chatting. if you just missed anything…
• pre-nursing, undergrad, nursing program at Temple hospital, we had to write papers every week for chemistry.
• use wikipedia. google things. prevelant after high school. we were standard blackboard and maybe blackboard. temple email, in academic range. by the end of the college.
•  if we’re doing a group project, we’re using google documents, TECH center, in conference room, we have a white board. editing things in person, looking up in journals. Better student.
• I have at my fingerpoints, all of these medical and nursing journals. type in a subject to find articles in established journals, if i wa in my mom’s time. it would hve been library based. log into temple health sciences college website. she’d type with a typewriter.
• it didn’t even compare. the experience was so different here wasn’t even a conversation to be had. University communication email and text alerts. i thought it was a really good idea. It made more aware of whatever was happening at Temple. commuting Temple Hospital, heavily relied on text, Blackboard and emailing. all the powerpoint. class material was more easier to understand because it was all shared on blackboard, the notes. CIM Center, robot simulation of patient situations…

VIVIENNE ANGELES

• Studying Muslim movements in the Philipines, those movements now have their own websites. Working on Muslim Movement. I had to write a letter to the head of the Liberation Front in Libya, I had no clue where in Libya, put his name, the Moro National Liberation Front, Tripoli, somehow it got to him. It took him months. answering his questions. now there are interviews of him that are online. ..Disseration. Go on an website, send an emial and expect a response in a week. Professor, just an emial and expect a response the next day. …. We went to colleges, the bulletin boards were just for the decoration.
• If you weren’t reading the student paper. If there were things on the, the bulletin board got valuable. If it directly involved, the secretary would call me. KPro, the computer was for typing, Kprol, type formulas. The phone was a very important thing for her. For us, not really, it was important was if the department had to called us. getting the phone, it was not just, it was text messaging haveing an open diary now. It has a lot of positive effects. This is becoming a very complicated world. Through this social media, you can conneect with social media. I think there are people who need that. Sometimes, I feel that, students in my classes, are spenidng more time on it than academics.
• People are in touch, bu tthey’re not together. that can become a substitute. it was important for us to see our friends every now and then. really engaging together physically and meeting them. i think that’s not a thing. i think people need it, it’s how much time is spent on that.
• Though when she first started at Temple, Angeles and her husband lived in Cooney Hall, the graduate housing once located where the 1300 Residence Hall is now, toward the end of her studies, they moved to suburban Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
• “The telephone was always there but somehow it wasn’t enough and it was much harder to keep those friendships I first developed with my classmates,” Angeles said.

I am not going back to freelancing.

Last month, I came on full-time with Technically Media, a company I helped launch and produces Technically Philly.

Still, going back on my own, in some form, has returned me to thinking about and combing through some of the advice I collected in 2009, during my year freelancing.

Too many of those perspectives and resources seemed valuable to not share.

A former Inquirer managing editor gave me this neat take:

“Imagine you have an agent with four hours a day to sell your work. You give that agent a list of people to call and a couple of set scripts or talking points. You also demand that the agent keep an active spreadsheet of calls made, messages left, follow up contacts, networking calls — of editorial management and customer service tasks. A portion of those calls will be cold calls to editors. Ah. The rub: you don’t have an agent. You are the writer and the sales force. Assign yourself those tasks. Devote time to plan and to organize this effort. Do the gritty day-to-day stuff to keep those contacts fresh. Oh yes — and still write 12 hours a day.”

Tips that came across from freelance contacts and banging my head against the wall long enough:

• Have a website, stupid. Have clips and links to others.
• Don’t list rates on your website because that’ll depend a lot on a lot of things. (The friend who first schooled me on this noted that hourly rates lie a lot, as they don’t show the hidden costs to a freelancer. So , say, a $40 rate might leave you with $16,000 for the year.)
• Do put an email address and a phone number.
• Think of having two projects per week, which would be really good, offering two days a week on each project and a day of office and administrative work (like invoicing, organization and outreach). That’s 100 jobs a year and two weeks off, in a dream, but, of course, that gets way more complicated and blurred, particularly when you’re stick a couple years in.
• Having regular work is key — I liked a worse-paying gig because it offered a regular stream of income that allowed for some stability.

Basic business tips –Freelancing was a first introduction to a lot of business basics that have helped me navigate our incorporation and development of Technically Media

• Your Employee Identification Number (EIN) is to your Social Security Number,  as a business is to a human. If you are freelancing full time, you ought to get one, so you can get a bank account and sequester those business assets and expenses from your personal ones.
• Get a business credit card for business expenses, I was instructed to do, though I didn’t follow through. The idea is that it’ll further help you to keep business expenses separate.
• Make business expenses — Travel costs, software, office supplies, office space and the like because, as a freelance photographer friend told me, “it’s much better to invest in your self than to pay more taxes than you have to.”
• Flat rates tend to be the most agreeable, so per-word and hourly rates are good for internal math, a signed, sealed and deliverable flat-rate with expectations make for the best relationships.
• For cold email pitches, you’re lucky to get a 15 percent open rate — That’s not conversion or click, that’s an open rate, and that figure came from a friend who used a paid newsletter service to track click rates.
• Lots of services exist to get you contacts, but the relationships matter most. Still, information like this, sure helps.
• If you’re young, and they know it, people will try to pay you less because of it

Reading that helped:

• Figure out what hourly rate you need — Freelance Switch
• For the Self-Employed, a Year-Round System Will Smooth Tax Time — New York Times
• How to be a freelance journalist — Bad Language
• Recession Writing Tips, Part One — Media Bistro
• Four Steps to a great pitch and sell your writing — Freelance Switch
• Top 10 distraction stoppers — Lifehacker
• Get your brand out there by freelance writing — Personal Branding
• When to work for free — Shifting Careers
• A Freelancer’s Taste Of Anger — Philadelphia Will Do
• Works Made For Hire — Keep Your Copyrights
• Three reasons why freelancers are safer during a recession — Freelance Advisor

Yes, I’ve written plenty about other freelancing advice. Three more notable ones:

• Freelancers: the rules and tricks of deducting your home expenses on your taxes
• Five rules of freelancing I found and didn’t always follow
• When does a freelancer’s workday stop?

Beginnings say as much about who begins them as they do about what they begin.

Journalists and writers, of professional kind or independent and online, take very seriously the ledes they produce and how others see them.

It’s very likely that I have had harsher scrutiny for ledes I’ve written than for anything else, and it’s even more likely you’ve found the same. Thusly, I’ve gotten lots of lede lessons through the years, particularly those with a bite or two that are worth sharing.

Below, lessons I’ve learned about crafting a strong lede. Share your own, so I can add to this list.

1. The rule: Don’t bury the lede
   My mistake: There is a difference between a soft, feature lede to tell a story and simply stringing a reader on for too long before making it clear what’s the story’s point. It’s a delicate balance and something we all grapple with in the industry, myself absolutely included.
   The reasoning: If you want to write a novel, get a publisher, an editor once told me. Online writing, newspapers and magazines have always been pithy media, so to understand that, spice in your storytelling with a solid point.
2. The rule: Don’t use a quotation
   My mistake: I once submitted a story to Allentown Morning Call state Capitol reporter John Micek in which I took a quote from a particularly quotable government activist.
   The reasoning: Only one time in all of history will a quotation admissible in a lede,” he told me. That’ll read: “I’m back,” Jesus said. More broadly, don’t give a single source so much power over the story as to lead it.
3. The rule: Avoid cliches, like these
   My mistake: An Inquirer story of mine fell into the ‘just another day on the job’ catch.
   The reasoning: Simply nothing more unforgivable exists in modern writing. No faster way to turn off readers exists.
4. The rule: “To use ‘and’ in a lede, you better have a good reason and think about it twice.”
   My mistake: Hell, I still spend a good portion of my writing career trying to jam as many phrases and flowery language into my first sentence.
   The reasoning: A lede is meant to welcome, first, and inform second. Don’t overburden the reader too early. Keep your writing tight, particularly in the start.
5. The rule: “There are no reasons for using ‘There are’ to lede a story.”
   My mistake: Handing a former Washington Post executive editor this column of mine from my college newspaper.
   The reasoning: Give the reader a strong noun or verb within four words, and ‘there are’ can almost always be replaced. i.e. “There are a handful of fresh sculptures at 11th and York streets,” could easily and perhaps more powerfully become “[Five] fresh sculptures stand naked in the wind at 11th and York streets.

These posts take a more academic approach but aren’t half bad: seen here, here and here.

What other rules have I missed?

Just a week after I took a full-time job and told the club’s adviser that I’d have to take a bit of a sabbatical from my time there, I wanted to give a primer to have a conversation about the basics of journalism with her students.

In fewer than ten minutes, I tried to bottle an entire journalism degree into five bullet points. Clearly I missed plenty.

Below, see what I shared. Let me know what giant holes these high school kids will have in their foundation because of my failures!

1. Who, Why, Where,What and When (and sometimes how) — Yes, cliche or not, those are the five questions every good news story strives to answer. See inverted pyramid!
2. Lede (yes, we journos spell it that way) — The ‘topic sentence’ for you English teachers is the most important sentence of any story. It’s meant to draw the reader in (point to any number of print pubs that might be floating around in your school). There are two basic types: a feature (or soft lede) and a news (or hard) lede. Simply, a feature lede starts off with a story, and a news lede starts off with fact. They’re each important for relevant stories. Check any newspaper story, and you’ll be able to point out the difference.
3. A quote high (high=early in the story) — I always tell kids that just like how you wish you could hear a different person’s voice in biology class, in news stories we try to break the text up with interesting quotes from other people. So, as soon as it is relevant, most good news stories have a direct quotation that says something interesting and comes from someone relevant from the story. So we need our kids to interview different people (not their friends) and write down exactly what they say.
4. Nut graf — Usually the first thick graf (yes, we journos spell them that way) This is the core of why this story is important, and what the basic details are. Usually, the Who, Why, Where,What and When in its most condensed format. The important part of this for the kids is that we want to get up high why a story is relevant to the reader. It’s the take away the reader should get. (I just went to Philly.com and the top story was on the Sixers, I pulled it up and I see the nut graf, which  is “Tonight’s version of opportunity missed…” it gives me the importance of the story. (And note that it is, like most sports stories, a feature lede).
5. Check facts, check facts, check facts — How do you spell that name, what is her title, where did this story come from and more.

I also directed her to Poynter’s recent list of 100 things a journalist must do.

Any big concepts I missed?

Before I suspended my trips to Frankford High School to work with the school’s journalism club, we established what would have been a nice rhythm.

Every Thursday, I would come and give a lesson, and the following Monday, the students would use what we talked about and put it into practice by getting out of the classroom and shuttling around the school.

With Pioneer Times adviser Beth Ziegenfus, I established a rough curriculum time line, which you can see below and the details of which I hope to continue to share here.

1. Session One: Let students play with cameras and write whatever they want for a sense of excitement.
2. Session Two: Journalism basics (lede, inverted pyramid and the like)
3. Session Three: Interviewing (what types of questions, how to act, how to approach strangers, why not to speak to friends, etc.)
4. Session Four: Photography (basics of using and uploading from a simple point-and-click)
5. Session Five:  Social Media (basics of using a platform like WordPress and using an RSS feed for, say, a student’s Facebook page — and why that stuff is important)
6. Session Six: Video (sometimes troublesome at schools that block video hosting sites, it still helps to teach the basics of keeping videos short, steady and impactful — also touch on using a camera, uploading and posting)
7. Session Seven: The Web (this is where you might explain something about hosting, domains and blogging)

Other items that might interest someone starting to teach a journalism club

• Basic tools most journalists need
• More specifics on tools I use
• Handling clips in the digital age

I’ve written about social media here more than I’d probably like to admit.

These social networking sites are transforming the way we receive our news and information. There’s no secret there.

But they keep popping up, so much so that I’ve stopped joining them, because I never know when enough’s enough.

Newspapers are still figuring out the power of the conversation, and some say that media in general is covering social media more than they are using them. It just seems no one seems interested in deciding what is worth anyone’s time.

The real lesson is that social networking and other media are tools, plainly and simply. Not all are good for everyone.

Facebook — The major player is aiming at being a yellow pages for the future. Anyone you need to find will be there. It’s a shame, then, that I’ve seen increasing levels of spam since I joined last summer, and even more since I credited the network’s value months later.

Some good:

• People still spend a lot of time on that site and will follow links. They will come to your site with the help of link-posting and an RSS feed.
• By some standards, you don’t exist as a young person — read: potential employee — unless you’re on the social networking behemoth.
• It can be a hub for your other online presences
• It’s so popular that, apparently, with the right people, it can make you a happier person.

Some bad:

• Man, people hated the new Facebook version when it came out, and it seems it continues to be reviled. Put that with the pushback over privacy rights, and you can see a real path toward the site’s demise.

Twitter — I knew Twitter long before I joined it, but a friend warned me it was a time suck. And it is. What’s worse is that it’s become awfully fashionable, as some have complained. That would be fine if it wasn’t bloating the conception of who should be there and what purpose it serves. I did join and, while I have a somewhat small following of 430 or so, I have found by regularly sharing good links, I can bring small pockets of traffic.

Here are some positives:

• Create a following of people interested in similar things, who can support your writing, products or initiatives
• By following the habits of successful Twitter users, you can pick up standard best practices online, like sharing links, interaction and followup.
• Some say, those followers can lead to employment or other freelance work or assignments.
• Because Twitter is so popular right now, there are a lot of hacks and alternatives coming out that can help you learn Web possibilities and suggestions and tools to make it easier, so you can better understand what’s out there for the future.

Negatives

• It’s searchability is still janky
• It still goes down on functionality when it’s busy
• It does take more time than other social networking tool because a simple RSS feed is missing the point.

LinkedIn — It aims to be the professional equivalent of Facebook.

Some good:

• This was my first foray into social networking because it felt the least dirty and self-involved.
• It is meant to be nothing but professional, resume and little else.
• It doesn’t require a lot of effort, and it can be a Web presence left on auto-pilot. I do get some clicks from plopping this WordPress site on my LinkedIn page, as you can do, too.

Some bad:

• Nowhere near as powerful or versatile as Facebook
• Can’t compare with the number of links Facebook or Twitter bring

Industry-specific social-network — I just wrote about an event-planners ISSN for Technically Philly, and there seems to be the most growth in this arena. I am a member of Wired Journalistss. I also joined Uwire while still a college journalist.

Here are some positives:

• Job postings and opportunities worth your time. I got some blogging work from a post on WJ.
• Smaller communities allow you to actually e-meet new people

Negative

• Out of your work flow mean you might never ever return after setting it up.

Flickr — Not too long ago, I reawakened my Flickr account, putting photos I was proud of there, and hosting other images elsewhere, whether it be on Slide or Picasa, depending the purpose.

• Show some photography skill by being where many serious photographers are — although there are many alternatives.
• Useful editing and hosting tools there

Bad:

• Free service is, of course, limited — active photographers will likely find the premium services worth the cost.
• Not as prone for others finding you, so it’s hard to develop brand or expect links or traffic from it.

YouTube –I took a healthy look at YouTube’s value as a social media tool, beyond just watching illegal videos and listening to music.

Good:

• It can bring traffic.
• People will likely find your videos.
• And, hey newspapers around the world are on YouTube.

Bad:

• There are better video hosters, like Viddler and Vimeo.
• It doesn’t seem terribly professional. I think newspapers need to see YouTube as a means to promote their video, but I understand wanting to control their product outside of the site.
• YouTube may be unstable, even with Google ownership

MySpace — I say give it up. Sorry. I took the trouble to joining MySpace last summer, and I even tricked it out a bit for journalists, but I won’t recommend anyone else join. In fact, I trashed it in an entire post dedicated to its shortcomings.

The good:

• There are still audiences there.
• It can be incredibly passive after a little time invested to set it up.
• It can be something else that clogs up a Google search for your name, so you can claim another spot.

The Ugly:

• It is MySpace
• Can’t post traditional RSS feed
• On the decline

There is value in being on all of these and everywhere else, too, if only just to more aggressively control a Web search of your name. College Media Innovation showed some other examples of brand-development through major publication, but, some choices are worth being made.

• The Winner: With the right attitude, use and effort, right now Twitter brings the best brand development, links and traffic, though your audience matters.
• The Obvious: Joining Facebook may hurt your pride, but real traffic can come from it, if you cast a wide enough net.
• The Loser: MySpace doesn’t give any real quantifiable traffic or brand devlopment you’d want. I guess unless you’re a music artist, there isn’t anything there for you.

I was at the library last week. I’m not sure the expansion is a necessary ingredient of the Philadelphia ego. Chasing technology as an improvement when the city is not flush is foolish. I can’t imagine it’s a good thing to chase down short attention spans.

Before building it the city should do an evaluation of how much is actually part of the library and not transitory technology.

What only librarians who work in the system know is that the “expansion” makes much less room for books. When the FLP decided to expand the administration it asked librarians at Central to weed one-third of their (flagship, unique) collections. This is a disaster for researchers and readers who rely on Central’s collections.

What many librarians would prefer is to take over the Family Court building which already matches Central for design, is the greener option (only renovation is needed, and maybe a skybridge to connect) and could effectively double the space rather than reducing it, for collections.

Finally, in our enthusiasm for technology, let us not throw out the baby with the bath water. Most books are best read in hard copy, and please do not believe that we will eventually be able to find all that we would like to read on the Internet.

Zack Stalberg was made a legend for his Frank Rizzo moment. As a 2001 Philadelphia Weekly profile suggested:

Within two years the night rewrite kid is a City Hall reporter covering Frank Rizzo at a time when Rizzo was, as Stalberg recalls, “unstoppable … He was going to be governor and his image was untarnished and then–boom!” Boom, of course, was Stalberg himself, who persuaded the mayor to take a lie detector test to resolve a political dispute. Rizzo, as the whole city knows, failed the test in grand fashion, and Stalberg, as the whole city also knows, became someone who would make a name for himself. [Source]

They all can write. They all can write fast. They can develop sources and learn the processes – though names and titles and interests vary. But from the government of D.C. to the big cities like Philadelphia, most journalists are waiting for that moment that propels them to the forefront of their beat, their outlet, their region, their field, the country.

I recently worked with a younger example. David Spett was another who had been named by UWire one of the 100 most promising young journalists (See my page here).

In June, he told me over beers and $1 tacos that he wasn’t sure journalism was for him until “the attention.” While a student at Northwestern he wrote a story for his college newspaper questioning the use of unnamed sources by his journalism school’s dean.

It blew up. Spett got national acclaim. The Chicago Tribune would not shut up about it. It made Spett rethink journalism, he told me.

It was thrilling. That made me think about reporting.”

And why the hell shouldn’t he? This is a profession where you can ride one tip, a single story or a lucky break for a long time.

It’s a little extreme to call it a drug, but the service and excitement and, quite frankly, the attention that is meant to come with reporting attracts many. There is the theory of the beautiful on TV, but there has always been something about getting one’s name in print. Maybe a lot of journalists are people who want their name in the newspaper but aren’t sure they can do it – or want to do it – any way less direct than writing their name themselves.

In writing about the history of the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association – for whom I am worked this summer – I mentioned the concept before, but journalism is said to have gone through a seismic shift after 1973, when two young reporters changed… everything.

To the outside world, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were two, young nothings at the fledgling Washington Post. Their breaking of the Watergate scandal is a perfect example of how journalists are shaped by moments, as much are politicians and Presidents. Both Woodward and Bernstein became journalists of the first degree because the right circumstances. I assure you there is an entire class of journalists who thought neither deserved that story.

But that doesn’t matter. You get the mayor to fail a lie-detector test, you call out a dean’s unnamed sources, you break one of the most significant political stories in a country’s history and a career is set.

Journalists do not make the news, we cover it. The better the news, it is fair to say, the better the opportunity to cover it is. I don’t care what your editor in Carlisle, Pa. or Cheyenne, Wyoming tells you, that is true.

Be ready for your moment – and always work to create more opportunities to find it.

There are those terms: a reporter, a journalist, a correspondent, a newspaperman, and others. What are the differences, and which are you? Find out.

Anyone can be a reporter, a journalist has a craft. A reporter has a job, a journalist has a future, that is never clearer than during the great, slow burst of the century-old newspaper bubble. Reporting also involves the basics – a phone book, a call, a knock on a door. All valuable, but as competition grows, the professional – the journalist – understands the power of beatblogging to foster sources, of how audio and video can complement a story. The journalist uses everything in the journalism tool box.

Both are faster than the writer, who is in journalism for ordering words not what the words mean, but the repoter is fastest, the journalist more complete.

The correspondent has a highly specified knowledge base. Where your general assignment reporter can crank out copy on just about anything, the correspondent is limited but on the subject he knows, he knows better than most. Because of that, the correspondent will often be interviewed himself by others in media.

I wrote of the occupational mythology that infects journalism, but, in rereading the post, those descriptors involve more the ancient craft of print. So, it’s clear a newspaperman is another beast altogether. He is self-righteous and idelogically tied to traditional forms of print journalism. You write how he writes, you report how he reports, you interview how he interviews or you’re not doing it correctly. He is fast and versatile like the reporter but cannot live without a newsroom. The entire class of newspaper editors today were newspapermen in decades past.

Now, you don’t have to be in newspapers to be a reporter, a journalist, a correspondent or even a writer. But the newspaperman has his foil: the TV personality and the Radio voice. They are, their critics say, one dimensional. He is not on TV for the reporting as much as it is to be on TV. He is flash. He is not on the radio for the journalism, but because his voice couldn’t be anywhere else. Their specialty isn’t research - they ask a journalist or other expert - they’re job is to look and sound good. This isn’t meant to be a sleight – their craft simply allows them seconds, not minutes to tell their story.

Our two newest additions to journalism are the blogger and the techie. Both have a touch of a Messiah complex. With newspaper circulation declining, the growing digital age is creating another divide in the industry, much in the way Watergate did in the 1970s and these guys are in it because they say they see the future. The blogger is a night-owl, with a frenzy for social networking, sarcasm to spare and enough technology interests to rough an image for his blog. Conducting an interview over instant messenger or through e-mail doesn’t seem strange, nor does having never heard the voice of a source.

The journalism techie see the blogger as another of his tools. He may just be Computer Jesus- knows some combination of Python, Java, C#, or Ruby. Experience using XML, HTML, XHTML, CSS, AJAX, and/or JavaScript and other things of which I have never heard. He begrudgingly is taking journalism on his back because it needs it. He knows he can do what everyone else in the newsroom does but is quick to point out – or at least think – that no one else can do what he does.

Editors? All editors are corrupted forms of one of the above. Copyeditors are hungry, bitter people with grammar obsessions and intellects a million miles wide and an inch thick – I can say this because I know a handful, some aspiring, others on their way to fulfilling my stereotyping of them. (See how reporters and copyeditors see each other in this famed, half-century old poem).

Despite what some may think, news outlets depend on having a mixture of them all because they all serve a purpose. The big fight is that every one of these people think.. nay, know that their vision of journalism is the only way it can survive. Thusly, the curmudgeons can be part of any of these classes, though there are certainly more in some.

I think many younger people in journalism are the Reporter, though they’d like to be elsewhere. I’d say for now I fit in that category.

Take pride: which are you?

Why are you in journalism?

The Journalist: Public service – bringing transparency and truth the best way I can. I will not hesitate in telling you that.

The Reporter: Hey, it’s still a good job that fits a lot of my interests. I like the competition: it may not always be good, but it will be fast.

The Writer: Nobody will buy my novel, but I am working on a screenplay.

The Critic: I am dead inside. I want to be hired by the New York Times. OK, to be fair, I also love art, film, food or something else I couldn’t quite break into but tried enough to know about it. I am a cousin of the Writer.

The Correspondent: Either I just never left and learned everything there was and can’t leave or I am a zealot for whatever it is I am covering.

The Newspaperman: I saw this industry’s height. I have nowhere else to go, so I am going to fight to keep the integrity in journalism. Plus, it was either a buyout or becoming the deputy, assistant, junior news editor of metro local.

The Blogger: This isn’t a real job. I didn’t know I was one until I woke up, ate cold pizza and linked to an Alycia Lane story.

The TV personality: How does my hair look?

The radio voice: Wanna hear me say the alphabet with inflection?

The Techie: I am the only thing standing between civilization and the apocolypse.

The Businessman: I am the Techie, but replace technology knowledge with business sense. I am going to save the industry and get into the history books. Check this post on Businessmen in newspapers.

Are there others? Do any of these terms have any real merit? Do they matter and did any of my descriptions get them right?

So you have a press release and want someone to actually pay attention to it.

After noting a fine internship with the Philadelphia Business Journal, I thought I might offer some advice I got there. Through that internship, I dealt with thousands of press releases, so let me help you out.

The publicity world is in the midst of plenty of conversations about bypassing media, trying direct-to-consumers press releases, but many criticize the practice.

 It’s not the purpose of public relations, they say. The point is to persuade media to tell their story.

If you’re in that camp, here are some thoughts about getting through to newspapers, journals, magazines and others through press releases.

Don’t lie.

I have gotten e-mails quite often from slick PR dudes who lied about meeting me at some event. It’s not true. I was an intern. I didn’t go to those events. It’s a tactic. I delete their press releases.

Include everything.

Should be obvious, but I’ve gotten press releaeses without contact information. Or the date of an event. Or why I should care. Also, send a graphic, a photo, image, or something else. When a newspaper is suddenly in a pinch for space and design is important – your throwaway image might be a saving grace.

E-mail.

The fax machine is dead. I have been in four different newsrooms where faxes just piled up. Oh, you called to follow up? Chances are, in my experience, if anyone tells you he found it, he is lying. Mail it? Just seems like an unnecessary cost for you. E-mail. E-mail. E-mail.

Be brief.

Additionally including your release in the body of the e-mail is great so I can decide if it’s worth my time, but attach a single sheet Word or PDF document. Space is always an issue on my end, so don’t take four pages, as I often received. Make it easy for me to print – a single sheet. …A single sheet. 

The subject line is absolutely key. Don’t get too showy, it needs to begin with exactly for what you’re submitting your release, but a brief description. I got hundreds of submissions for specific departments, like something that the Business Journal called “People on the Move,” all with the same subject. List where you’re directing your release, but give something particular to yours, “People on the Move – Christopher Wink.” When I got too many with the same subject, I ignored many – just deleted them. With a name or something specific, that subject becomes easily searchable in Gmail or Microsoft Office.

Writing Releases

Get something interesting about the person, event or activity high. If he’s traveled, speaks another language, grew up in the city, lived somewhere out of the region, has any arguably interesting quality at all, tell me. If the event has a long history Don’t write it like a news piece. That’s my job. Don’t give me “breaking news” if it isn’t breaking news.

Don’t make it the same damn thing every time. The trick doesn’t involve being a particularly strong writer at all.

I don’t think puns work, really. You will get initial attention from jaded journalists making fun of you, but nothing more. Here are two actual examples from releases I received.

“As animal lovers, we’re very pleased to get in the doghouse with [animal adoption group].”

“I’m so pleased that more than 1,000 bowlers decided to spare their time for this worthy cause..” emphasis theirs

I am genuinely less likely to cover your event, group or individual because of something that.

Image courtesy of RainerPR.