What does having a blog do for you as a journalist?
I mean, yes, the papers and media outlets we all want to go work for are looking for young people with new ideas and media skills such as creating Web sites (check), updating sites (check), knowing the software (check) and blogging (double check).
But for how long is this skill going to be something they look for when considering our applications?
I feel like when this craze wears off — and people once agains realize that while blogs work for some things in the journalism world, they really don't work for others — will personal "personal opinion" blogs (like this one) make me obsolete (or at least undesirable) in the workforce.
At the same time however, I rather relish this opportunity to give even a little opinion, having to hold it in under punishment of death (okay, not quite) in my other journalistic endeavors.
This is so far such a short lived wave that, while I am learning everything I can about being a fully online and internet and multimedia savvy journalist, I really fear that it will be like learning everything you could to be an expert on "New Coke" and then being crushed when it turns out to, in fact, be pretty useless in the end — you would have been better off sticking with the old.
But I may have "soon-to-graduate-journalism-student" paranoia.
1 comment:
I definitely don't think it'll make you obsolete. But I agree, employers aren't going to care about personal blogging about whatever you want. I think the blogging you'd do as a journalist in the real world is updating stories and using it as a medium to dump stuff that didn't fit in the print version, or offer commentary.
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