What Marcos Breton missed: The tech tips you'll need to get a job as a journalist

by Cody Kitaura

Marcos Bretón means well, but he probably isn't the best person to ask for job-hunting help. The Sacramento Bee columnist spoke to our column writing class last week, and answered many questions from the hungry and apprehensive journalism majors the same way: with stories from his tooth-and-nail climb up the newsroom hierarchy and his “bullish” view on newspapers.

He had a lot of good stories, but he didn't seem to have much in the way of job-hunting tips. He clearly understands that journalism is changing, but his advice was more philosophical than concrete.

As many journalism students near graduation, they may face a more uncertain future than ever before. But there are a few things they can do to better prepare themselves for jobs in the real world:

1. Don't fear the reaper

Nothing is certain in the future of news. The Christian Science Monitor's 90-year history didn't guarantee its safety, and in April the newspaper will cease daily printing and focus on its website and a new weekend edition. Its editor called it “a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years.”

The theme here is not the death of newspapers. It is the evolution of newspapers into new forms – many of which probably have not yet been developed. It's important for journalists to be flexible and to not be afraid of change.

2. Video, video, video

When readers hear about an event that has a great visual aspect (a protest, a fire, exotic locales, etc), they expect to see video. It might end up being part of the average journalist's job to carry a video camera and, when necessary, abandon a traditional story in favor of a video.

In order to be competitive in today's job market, it's more important than ever for journalists to become jacks-of-all-trade – and that includes video. Learning the basics of video doesn't take much specific training, but it does take time and practice.

One of the most important things for journalists to remember is that video is just another tool. A video won't add to every kind of story, so it's just as important to develop a sense for when to shoot video (example: A video of an elevator's grand opening = boring. A video of a skateboarder = visually interesting.).

3. Learn the tools, but don't focus on them

News organizations around the country are scrambling to form accounts with the micro-blogging service Twitter – a website many organizations use to post links and connect with readers. In the process, it's easy to get so caught up in the excitement of learning about shiny new web tools that you forget what you're going to use them for. Jeremiah Owyang, a web analyst, has a perfect analogy:

“Instead of honing in on the specific technology, you should approach developing your web strategy as you would building a house. Focus on who you’re inviting to come over to your property (websites) and what is it that they want (needs). Start there.”

The moral here is that new tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs and RSS feeds are useful, but they are the means, not the end. Journalists should familiarize themselves with these tools, but focus more on how they can be used (NYU's Jay Rosen agrees).

4. Pay attention in journalism school

None of this matters if a journalist can't piece together a decent sentence. A tech-savvy journalist with no writing skills won't be much better off than a great writer with a 19th-century tech sensibility.

Out in the real world, journalists will be competing with crowds of bloggers and citizen journalists. Journalism school teaches a vital skill many of them lack – the ability to analyze.

As multitudes of smaller outlets compete for readers, it's possible that the role of newspapers will change to focus on more long-term, team-based stories that probe deeply into government policies or environmental issues.

In order to stand out, it's important for journalists to have a strong foundation in these skills.



These are just a few basic tips to help prepare journalists for the real world, but the most important thing to remember is that no one has all the answers. No one can predict what news organizations will look like in five or 10 years – but that doesn't mean we can't all be a little more prepared for that future.

[photo courtesy Flickr user from a second story.]

[disclaimer: I am not in the business of hiring journalists. These are just my personal opinions on what employers will probably be looking for in the near future. I don't have all the answers. If I did, I'd write a book and get rich.]

Obama's YouTube address misses the entire point of YouTube

by Cody Kitaura

The next Presidency has a face, but it isn't listening to you.

On Saturday, President-elect Barack Obama delivered the first of what will become weekly addresses – on YouTube. His first 3 ½ minute address touched on the grim future of the economy and urged Congress to take quick action to kickstart it.

Using YouTube to deliver weekly addresses like this is a great step forward. More people are likely to watch these addresses if they're sitting on the front page of YouTube – a site they likely already visit – rather than on that dusty, boring other site: WhiteHouse.gov.

But Obama's first address is missing out on the most important feature of YouTube: interaction. Comments and ratings are not allowed on the video, and video responses cannot be posted. By barring interaction with his addresses, Obama is using YouTube more like a buzzword rather than a new type of openness.

Members of his “transition team” have been treating policies like the weekly YouTube addresses as great leaps forward in transparency, under the assumption that when people hear earnest, frequent messages from the government, they will trust it more.

Well, it worked for FDR.

The last time a president made such a radical shift in the way he communicated with the public was during the first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he began a series of informal evening radio addresses – the fireside chats.

Obama's promised weekly addresses have already drawn many comparisons to Roosevelt's, and with good reason. The first of Roosevelt's fireside chats started, “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking . . .”

That was 1933, and the country was buried in economic turmoil. Now, as the country again faces deep economic problems, Obama is hoping to use a similar approach to communicate with the public, but there's a problem – Obama is using a 1933 approach to a 2008 medium.

Roosevelt's fireside chats were over the radio. Radios only work one way. Obama's weekly addresses will be broadcast around the world via YouTube. YouTube is a social media website – it is at its best when videos are accompanied by thoughtful comments and intelligent response videos.

But wait – that's not the YouTube you or I know. The real-world YouTube is full of trolls, comments begging for viewers to take a peek at someone else's video, and responses luring viewers to unrelated videos with screenshots of plump, barely covered breasts.

Maybe there just aren't enough people in the “transition team” to filter out all the noise created by the more juvenile members of YouTube. Maybe Obama doesn't want his weekly addresses to be bombarded with video responses that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. That's only natural, right?

Well, there's only one way to find out – and so far, the team behind Change.gov seems willing to dip its toe into the waters of new media, but it's not ready for the full plunge into – (gasp!) – allowing comments.

Obama has always been a master of controlling his message and not allowing too much open conversation, according to Chris Parsons, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He told NPR that a perfect example of this was Obama's carefully prepared response to the fiery remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"Part of the power of it, I think, was that he hadn't spoken to that issue over and over again, every time a reporter showed up with a microphone," Parsons told NPR. "He saved it for a moment where he could craft it and tell it in his way, without being interrupted or filtered."

Obama is a powerful orator, and waiting for the right moment to speak allows his words to have maximum effect on all of us. But without embracing the true strengths of Web 2.0 technologies and encouraging open dialogue, Obama is simply continuing age-old strategies for delivering a message down a one-way pipeline.

Mr. President-elect, we need dialogue. It's 2008 – we don't need a 1933 message in HD. We need a message that will spur conversation and debate – the kinds of debate that should be shaping your policies to begin with.

Review: Servers hop frantically at Hoppy Brewing Co.

by Cody Kitaura

The Hoppy Brewing Co. in Sacramento faces a dilemma any microbrewery must face: Is it a bar, or is it a restaurant? The excellent food and bright interior suggest a restaurant, but the sports pages posted in the restroom and the tragically slow service scream crowded pub.

And that's exactly what the Hoppy Brewing Co. became on Tuesday night. The multitude of TV screens were tuned to election coverage, and the hordes of people in the main eating area let out a cheer every time a state turned their color.

Considering the crowd amassed in the dining area, our wait was relatively short – although one prudent member of our party had actually been on time (and had hence been waiting for the rest of us for a while).

Once we became the waiter's responsibility, we received considerably less attention – perhaps with good cause. Every time an employee wanted to reach one of the inner tables, he or she seemed to have to squeeze sideways and carefully maneuver between one packed table after another. They moved with purpose, and barely seemed to break stride when stopping to fill up waters or remove salad plates.

Browsing the menu, vegetarians or vegans used to having only one or two entrees to choose from will fare a little better here. There's a multitude of seafood options, and anyone with a more strict diet will have about one item from each category to choose from, including the impossibly hard-to-pronounce Capellini Pomodoro ($8.75; $2 more with chicken, $3 more with prawns or crab) – a mouthfull of Italian that seems out of place in a brewpub with a giant, yellow smiley face for a logo.

It came with the standard option of a soup or salad. The raucous crowd made it hard to hear the long list of soups our waiter quickly spat out, so I chose the first one that I could repeat: baked potato. It seemed like a good idea until, a few bites in, a thick slab of bacon floated to the creamy surface (it was my fault for not asking, but the waiter didn't seem to have time for questions).

“Maybe you can get them to give you something else,” a friend suggested. A couple moments later, the nearly full bowl had been whisked away without as much as a passing glance from the busboy.

Eventually, the main courses arrived and it was a moot point. The capellini noodles sat low in a bowl so large it made the portion look diminutive. Steam rose from the bowl of thin noodles, fresh tomatoes and a thin pool of white wine sauce.

The entire mixture of basil, garlic and tomatoes was tangy and bright, but also very light. After a few eager minutes with it, the portion seemed more generous than it did at first. The smooth taste, however, made the pasta disappear relatively quickly.

It might seem sacrilegious to visit a microbrewery and have just water to drink, but a beer didn't seem like a good pairing with a cold and a sore throat – even if they were free to people who voted. This decision too, almost seemed moot, considering the amount of time my glass spent empty.

But maybe it wasn't the waiter's fault. It seemed like he had control over almost half the dining area, which was packed. If it had been split between more waiters, perhaps it wouldn't have taken what seemed like an eternity to receive our separate bills (but then again, perhaps a long delay is to be expected with seven separate checks).

Still, the rushed demeanor of the employees left almost as much of an impression as the garlic, which lingered for hours after our visit.


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High-megapixel camera phones won't make you a better photographer

by Cody Kitaura

The megapixel war is on, but it's not where you might expect it – among high-end camera phones.

With the 8-megapixel phones slowly filtering onto the scene, cell phone manufacturers are trying to do for photography what the iPod did for music: take it everywhere, just in a slightly lower-quality package.

It's nothing consumers haven't done before. It used to be that if someone wanted to listen to music on the go, he or she had to lug around a pile of extra cassettes or CDs. Then came the iPod: Thousands of songs could be stored on a single device that would fit in your pocket. The quality wasn't great, but no one seemed to mind. In fact, compressed, so-so-quality mp3 files and tiny, white earbuds became the norm. Music didn't have to sound good anymore – it was convenient.

Music has become simply a backdrop for our daily lives, and a dropoff in sound quality has become an acceptable tradeoff for convenience.

Now cell phone manufacturers are trying to do the same thing: make consumers accept decent quality snapshots in exchange for great portability.

Phones with 8-megapixel cameras are already in the works from LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and many have advanced features like Xenon flashes, manual ISO adjustment and face-detection – all of which would have been completely unheard-of in a phone just a year or two ago.

Last week, an ad campaign set to run in men's magazine FHM for the Sony Ericsson C905 phone was revealed. It's the standard “busty woman holding the phone being advertised” photo, but with a catch: The full-page photo was shot using the camera phone being displayed in the ad.

British website Marketing Week reports that Sony Ericsson is claiming this as the first-ever ad shot with a cell-phone camera, and writes, “It aims to show that the C905's camera is as good as an ordinary digital camera.”

The 8.1 megapixel camera crammed into the C905 is certainly a step in the right direction, but don't expect to replicate the photo in this ad with every shot. Marketing Week also explains, “Bauer Media, the publisher of FHM, says it developed the idea of . . . of testing the camera for a photography shoot, and bought in a fashion photographer to take the pictures.”

Just because a camera (or a camera phone, for that matter) has a lot of megapixels, it doesn't mean it will make you a better photographer. The photo in this ad was illuminated by studio lights that probably cost more than the phone itself, and it was shot by a professional photographer who likely spent hours retouching it in Photoshop afterward.

A camera phone does not encourage this type of thoughtful approach to photos at all. It screams to hurry up and take the picture so you can get back to calling or texting your friends, surfing the web or checking your e-mail. With so many other features beckoning for your attention, it seems unlikely that anyone will bother to take the time to carefully frame each shot, consider shadows, or any of the other things professional photographers do each time they snap a photo.

So if the phones from LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson are any indication, more megapixels are the future of cell phones. Consumers seem to love the idea of “one device to rule them all,” as shown by the explosive popularity of the king of all-in-one, Apple's iPhone, but what they're really getting may be compromised versions of each device in exchange for convenience. If we don't want to lose our appreciation for quality in photography like we have with music, we can't let quick, decent-quality snapshots from camera phones replace the thoughtful process allowed by high-quality, dedicated cameras.

[camera phone picture courtesy Flickr user Travallai]