Check this out, via Will Sullivan:

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLToday.com is seeking a multimedia intern for the Fall 2008.

This new position is for a multidisciplined and flexible multimedia journalist who can generate and execute multimedia ideas. Ideal candidates will be able to hit the ground running and juggle all types of content and content mediums on deadline assignments. One day you’ll be shooting breaking news photos and transmitting live from the scene, the next day creating a Soundslide feature on a local music festival, the next day shooting video of a political rally for the presidential election.

This position works for the web department and will be focused on quick turn assignments for the web as well as engaging feature assignments that are web-only. Video and audio gear provided, some still equipment provided but the focus of this internship is multimedia. This 13-week, paid internship has a flexible start date (ideally sometime in September) and college credit is available.

Mandatory skills:
+ iMovie or Final Cut Pro
+ Audacity (or other multi-track audio editing programs)
+ Soundslides
+ Photo, video and audio content gathering and editing skills
+ FTP and remote transmission skills
+ Ability to turn high-quality projects quickly
+ Ability to write cleanly and create engaging, informative blog entries, captions, web teases and headlines

Would be awesome skills:
+ Flash or any other multimedia production tools

To apply:
+ Brief biographical cover letter
+ Resume
+ Portfolio of samples of your work or a website
+ Transcript (This can be sent separately from the school administrators)
+ Four references (Your references should include the name, title and phone number of the person who supervised your training)

Mail the information to:
Irv Harrell
Director of Newsroom Recruitment
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
900 N. Tucker Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63101
iharrell@post-dispatch.com

Application deadline:
Must be post marked by July 14

Image via WikipediaAgain, summer is long, and not much going on in the way of college media-related blogging. What’s up with you? Drop a comment and let us know.

As mentioned previously, I’ve been away from the journoblogosphere for the past few weeks. It’s been a welcomed respite, but I’m sure I’ll be back in the swing of things after the July 4 holiday weekend.

Off topic, if you’re into roots music or bluegrass or folk or whatever, you might check out the Carolina Chocolate Drops. And if you ever get the chance to see them live, do so. It’s worth the money. Here’s a streaming video of a concert.

It’s time to stop worrying about the medium and focus on the idea.

As a recent graduate of a mostly print-oriented journalism program who is more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it and sitting in the crowd than standing in front of it, some find it odd that I just couldn’t care less about the future of newspapers.

I’m not crying “print is dead.” I’m saying the decline of newspapers is a skirmish; there’s a bigger war to fight. I’m saying that engaging in good journalism is more important than the medium you contribute to.

Rather than trying to save newspapers or broadcast news, can we focus on saving journalism?

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear complaints - from the audience, not the peanut gallery - about liberal media, sensationalism, or cover-ups.

My neighbor declares daily that news should be positive rather than negative. OK, a man killed his neighbors - but the police caught him.

My best friend’s mom says there’s only one good news show on TV - The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. Even though fewer stories are presented, the depth of the stories is much greater than the traditional “news at 5.”

Our readers, watchers and listeners aren’t sheep. They can and do think for themselves. They know what they want, and they’ll get it - somewhere.

So we need to pick up the pace.

Video won’t save journalism. Blogging won’t save journalism. Podcasts won’t save journalism. Databases won’t save journalism.

These are all parts of doing journalism.

Journalism is the discipline of gathering, contextualizing and presenting facts which have “impact, timeliness, prominence, proximity, conflict or weirdness” within a community.

Think of a community as any group of people who identify in some way with one another.

Now serve them, dammit!

via Rachele Kanigel, a report that the Spectator at Mississippi University for Women is going to abandon print for an online-only approach this fall.

I suspect we’ll hear another round of these types of discussions now that state legislatures are grappling with the effects of the economic downturn.

Anyway, it’s a topic we’ve rehashed several times. See related discussion here.

Image via WikipediaWe’ve finally reached the end of the Tim Russert hagiography on MSNBC and other major television networks, and Hal Boedeker rightly describes it as “one of the most embarrassing chapters in television journalism.” Indeed. While Russert’s death was untimely, and he was a media star, he received coverage normally reserved for heads of state and popes when they die.

Boedeker doesn’t just dissect the coverage, though. He offers some lessons that should be taught in J-schools. To wit:

1. Don’t lose perspective. On Friday, “NBC Nightly News” devoted its entire half-hour to Russert. The network ignored all the other news in the world. I thought Brian Williams would say, “Tim would want us to move to the news of the day.” Williams never did. That was a prelude to the days upon days coverage of Russert coverage on MSNBC. It was a misuse of a valuable platform — and dereliction of journalistic duty.

2. Journalists should remember it’s not about them. NBC has a bad habit of turning the news into a family album. The Russert coverage was the worst example yet. We, the journalists, are not the news. If we can’t keep perspective about ourselves, how can you trust us when we turn to other topics?

3. If you can’t hold it together, perhaps you shouldn’t go on the air. Chris Matthews actually seemed dazed on Wednesday’s “Hardball.”

And he offered this bizarre comment: “Do you think it’s an odd coincidence that ever since the bad news came Friday from the studio in Nebraska — we all heard about it in our own worlds — that nothing else seems to have happened. It just seems to have been a moment of — almost a moment of silence, politically for this to be marked, this tragedy.”

Actually, quite a lot has happened in that time: flooding in the Midwest, a deadly bombing in Baghdad, fighting in Afghanistan, the possibility of peace talks in the Mideast, talk of oil drilling off the U.S. coast. That last story could become the biggest this year in Florida.

All those stories have political repercussions. NBC, however, was too busy being self-referential and self-reverential.

There’s more that is worth the read. (via Romenesko)

Jim Killam videos a panel discussion of the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association. here are the videos:

Part 1

Part 2

So the last two weeks, I haven’t read a thing in my RSS reader about journalism. You may have noticed the silence on the blog here. Instead, I’ve been overdosing on political coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign.

That’s okay, because summer is usually pretty quiet on the college media front.

Last night, however, I came across a critique of the web sites of the two presidential contenders that’s worth a read: Obama vs. McCain: Web Design Wars. Brian Yerkes makes the case that Obama’s site is more Web 2.0 than McCain’s.

While news web sites have a vastly different purpose than the web site of a political campaign, there are perhaps lessons college media can take away from this comparison, including the clean look and coherent design of the Obama campaign site, along with the use of tools like blogs and video channels for content distribution.  As just a taste of how much more organized the Obama camp is in terms of web and media savvy, check out the downloads section of the site (where I got the logo above), and try to find something like that on McCain’s front page (I took his logo from the front page of his site).

Of course, Yerkes’ analysis may be a little too geeky, in which case you can look at Vanity Fair’s comparison, or this one from ReadWriteWeb

For a contrarian position, read this blog post by Andrew Romano for Newsweek about the differences between Obama’s blog and McCain’s. I’d disagree with some of Romano’s criticisms of Obama’s blog as too sterile and corporate, while McCain’s newest blog is breezy and fun, but that’s a debate that isn’t likely to go anywhere.

Pat Thornton is the author of the Journalism Iconoclast weblog. He’s outspoken and unafraid to skewer some sacred journalistic icons (hence the name). He currently works for Stars & Stripes. More bio here. I interviewed Pat last week via gmail chat. This is an edited transcript of that interview.

ICM: Alright, first a little background to familiarize our readers with you. What’s your title at Stars & Stripes and how long have you been working there?

Thornton: My title is something like Web Content Editor, although it probably needs some revising. I was recently put in charge of our blogs. I’ve been here about a year and a half.
ICM: How large is the S&S web staff?
Thornton: Editorial is 4 people. There are other Web people who do strictly technical tasks.
ICM: Do you consider S&S a “converged” operation? Or is there still a wall between print and web?
Thornton: There is a strong wall. Ironically, the Web staff does work that gets into the print edition, but print staffers rarely do work that is Web-exclusive.
ICM: Do you see that changing? Has it changed since you started?
Thornton: Stripes is a unique operation because our print circulation is growing. Our Web and print audiences are quite dissimilar too. So, it makes sense to expand the Web staff, so we can serve our Web audience better. But, I would like to see the two staffs work together more. We get along with the print staff, and they do produce content for us on major Web projects.
It has changed a bit since I started. On some special features I have led, I’ve gotten some help from print reporters and photographers.
ICM: What’s an average day like for you as a web-content editor?
Thornton: That really depends on the day. Some days I put print content on the Web site and design a top story graphic for our homepage. Other days, I’m out in the field capturing multimedia content. Other days, I’m writing HTML and CSS. The typical day is a combination of at least two of those. Obviously, there are certain days I prefer over others.
ICM: What’s the biggest challenge you face in your job?
Thornton: Fomenting change. Innovation. It’s a big cultural challenge.
ICM: How are you overcoming that challenge in the newsroom?
Thornton: Slowly. In a newsroom like Stripes, change takes time. Patience is key. Stripes doesn’t have to innovate right now because there are two major wars going on, which have caused our reach and circulation to grow. But if Stripes wants to grow stateside — it’s not printed stateside — it will have to be much more innovative on the Web.
ICM: Your weblog writings are often challenging to the way news media (especially newspapers) do new media. Has that ever caused a problem with your work? Do your bosses read your blog?
Thornton: It has not caused problems with work. Stripes has no issues with me blogging, and I wouldn’t work for an employer that did. In fact, the success of my blog is a major reason I’m now the editor in charge of our blogging operations. I don’t know if my bosses regularly read my blog. My guess is no.
ICM: So you’re the blog editor - how’s that going?
Thornton: It just happened this month. We still have to work out exactly what they want me to do with our blogging operations here and what our ultimate goals are for them. We’re installing a new print and Web CMS this month, so things are pretty hectic. I should be able to answer that question much better in a month. But we needed drastic change with your blogging operations. The JI gets more traffic than Stripes’ most popular blog, and my blog is not backed by a 100,000 circulation newspaper.
ICM: heh. back to the journalism iconoclast. What prompted you to start blogging?
Thornton: The JI is not my first blog. It’s actually my third attempt at blogging, but it’s my first successful blog. I knew I wanted to blog and share my thoughts. I was an opinion columnist for my college newspaper and was successful at that. I also figured out that if I wanted to have a popular blog, I would have to write about something I knew about. Journalism and Web development are two important things in my life. And sometimes I get so fired up, I just have to get it out somehow. Some nights I can’t get to sleep until I write a post to vent my frustration.
ICM: Where do you get inspiration for your posts?
Thornton: Many places. I have a bunch of journalism bloggers in Google Reader. My last post was inspired by a post by William M. Hartnett. Readers of the JI also send me links and suggestions to blog about. Other posts are framed our my personal experiences. I do a lot of thinking throughout the day, and eventually some of my thoughts become ideas for posts.
ICM: What have you learned from the experience of blogging?

Thornton: First, blogging can give anyone a voice. I don’t work for a major journalism corporation, and yet I have one of the more popular journalism blogs. Second, blogging is a great networking and marketing tool. I’ve met a lot of great people through my blog and have been approached with a lot of great ideas because of it.
Any journalism student who wants to get noticed should get a blog. Starting the JI is the best journalism decision I have ever made.
ICM: Okay, obviously our audience is primarily student journalists and advisers. What tips do you have for students who are now in college - maybe working on their school newspaper or whatever - to prepare for the future of journalism?
Thornton: Working on my student newspaper was another one of the best decisions I ever made. There is so much autonomy at many student publications. I was eventually editor in chief, and I got to force real change. Also, working at a student publication is a great way to try different things. I wrote sports, news, was a columnist, a photographer, built special features and an editor. If there ever was a time to take risks — big risks — it’s when you are in college. And one of those risks might turn out to have a huge reward.
To prepare for the future, I’d say this:
Have at least two things you are really good at besides reporting and editing. Mine are HTML and CSS and multimedia reporting.
Every journalist needs to know how to write, edit and report. But the future needs journalists who get and understand the Web.

And if you want to make journalism better — truly foment change — you have to believe there is no idea too crazy to succeed. Journalism needs dreamers. Journalism needs entrepreneurs. Journalism needs people willing to take big risks. The status quo will result in all of us losing our jobs.
ICM: You mention that journalists need to “get and understand the Web.” Could you flesh that out a little more. Lots of students, for instance, know facebook, youtube, and the like. Is there something more to understanding “the Web”?
Thornton: It’s one of those things that if you need someone to show you how to do something or if you need to read a manual for something like YouTube or Blogger.com, you don’t really get the Web.
Anyone can use Facebook. We need people who have that entrepreneurial spirit — the people starting their own blogs, creating their own personal sites, etc. Making a MySpace page is nothing. Do you know some HTML and CSS? Can you FTP files to your site? That’s understanding the Web. And getting the Web means that you understand that the Web is an interconnected Web of people, cultures and civilizations.

Just because you can shoot video or make an audio slideshow, doesn’t mean you get that concept. Journalism needs people who understand that the Web is a community. That’s how we break out of this one-way communication paralysis in journalism. The Web allows everyone to have a voice, and many journalists — and journalism students — still don’t get that.
ICM: Do you have any “big risks” on the horizon you’d care to mention - any entrepreneurial efforts?
Thornton: This is the year I start taking big risks. I can’t really talk about anything yet, but expect some announcements this summer. I can say that I will be applying for a Knight News Challenge grant.
ICM: Okay, so besides the blog, do you have one work project that you’re especially proud of that you’d like to mention with a link?

Thornton: Army-Navy - I’m proud of it because it’s the first project I planned for Stripes. I designed the feature, coded it, wrote some of the content, captured audio, took photos and did some multimedia.

Ryan Sholin asks the following question for this month’s Carnival of Journalism:

What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation?

Unfortunately, I’m a little bit late to get in on the carnival this month, and there are a LOT of great suggestions that have already rolled into the big tents.

But I would like to narrow the question down a bit for the college audience. I think there are different considerations that should go into the equation for university organizations. Part of the purpose of these organizations, after all, is to train future journalists.

So, for example, while I might counsel a professional newspaper to stop requiring reporters to come into the office and stop having so many meetings about story budgets, I wouldn’t necessarily do the same for a college news outlet. Beginning reporters (mostly volunteers) NEED to meet face-to-face with editors and advisers. Editors need face-to-face time with advisers and those budding young reporters.

So what can a campus news organization do? I’ll throw it open to the readers (and my fellow carnival participants).

I can’t say I have many answers right now (stop e-mailing finished stories to editors in MS Word format, cut down on the amount of AP content), but maybe we’ll get some more soon.

(photo used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user JDCDC)

Enjoy the weekend and remember those who served our nation and paid the ultimate sacrifice in that service. ICM will return Tuesday with an interview with the Journalism Iconoclast Pat Thornton.