I lived in Oklahoma for years, and so many people I love are in or near Moore.

I’m first so thankful that my people are safe. My best friend’s kids go to school just a few miles south of Moore. My 9-year-old called my friend’s 8-year-old last night to make sure she was okay and tell her he loves her.

Second, I’m heartbroken for the people whose lives just got torn apart. I can hardly bear to think about the parents and the children.

Third, I’m grateful for the first responders. I think of first responders as the people who run into tragedy rather than away from it, with a goal of helping. And while that of course includes safety and medical personnel, in my world, it also includes journalists.

Journalists in the Oklahoma City area are working around the clock to not only keep those of us far away up to date about what’s going on on the scene, but more importantly to bring that information to their own neighbors in shelters, staying with friends, working as first responders or wondering how they can help. I heard so many government or nonprofit officials say during interviews yesterday that they were getting their information and perspective from news reports, same as everyone else.

It’s easy, and understandable, to question the role journalism plays in a culture where information is everywhere. But imagine during a situation like this if there weren’t people committed to asking the questions we all have and to being our window into the tragedy.

It’s especially poignant for me, since I learned how to be a journalist while covering an Oklahoma tragedy. Every since the OKC bombing, when I was 20, journalism has been a way for me to cope — to have a purpose during times of disaster. Disasters are also what I think of first when I hear people question why journalism is worth investing in.

As a long-distance spectator, I’m grateful for the news footage, the photos, the questions, the facts and the survival stories. I’m grateful for the people who hug their own children, then head back out to talk to parents who have lost theirs. Who verify and share the names of people missing before they sort through the rubble of their own neighborhoods.

To the non-journalists out there: If you find yourself in a conversation about where you get your news, whether you trust journalists, or what role journalism has in your life, think about what you did when you had vital questions yesterday, and what it feels like to want to know something you can’t know on your own.

It’s How To Get a Job week in Participatory Journalism. I hear from students all the time that they don’t get enough of this while they’re here (or that they just feel like they could always use more), so all are welcome for our two classes this week. We meet Monday and Wednesday from 12-1:15 in Lee Hills Hall, 101A.

Today, we’re going to talk about figuring out what the narrative of your work is, and how to use social media to make that clear. Then we’ll go over some basics of resumes, portfolios, cover letters and references.

On Wednesday, we’ll talk about interviews and go more into personal branding. Then we’ll have a show and tell. The students on the community outreach team at the Missourian are going to make quick video pitches — what they would say if they found themselves in an elevator with someone who was hiring for their dream job. Here are some samples from last semester.

A few other links:

Here are some lessons I previously shared about how to behave professionally in the newsroom, and what pitfalls to avoid.

One I’ll add: Don’t misuse digital communication. Don’t ask a detailed question in a direct message or text message. Those are for quick things — answers I want to type on my phone. Don’t also ask something important, like whether or not I’ll be a reference for you, in a text or DM. Respect the importance of that question by doing it in a more thoughtful way, and using please and thank you.

Here’s where I collect links on how to get a job. See the related links to the left if you want more on a specific topic (resumes, cover letters, etc.).

Here’s what might be my favorite unconventional “resume” ever, because it gets across this guy’s story, not just his list of skills or experience.

 Here’s why you should show a pulse and convey your energy and optimism.

I’ll likely add to this file today and tomorrow. And feel free to add your own links or questions in the comments!

Seth Godin, whose work inspires the heck out of me, had a recent blog post about audience.

He poses a list of questions for marketers, about how to make focused change by first determining who exactly you are trying to reach.

If you can’t answer this specifically, do not proceed to the rest. By who, I mean, “give me a name.” Or, if you can’t give me a name, then a persona, a tribe, a spot in the hierarchy, a set of people who share particular worldviews.

It reminds me of conversations we’ve been having in my newsroom with reporters: Who’s your audience? Where are they already talking? How can you reach them? What do you hope your story will accomplish? What can the audience do with your story, or in response to it? (Here’s a post I wrote recently about those questions.)

Seth has defined marketing as “the art of telling a story that resonates with your audience and then spreads,” and after listening to a recent interview he did with the show “On Being,” my view of marketing has expanded substantially. (On that show, he talked about it as trying to get noticed.)

Don’t journalists want their work to get noticed? Don’t most of us believe the work we do matters, in ways big and small?

After his list of questions to ask about who your product/message is intended for, Seth closes with this:

This was originally published on the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog.

When it comes to the relationship between a news organization and its community, most of us would do well to pay more attention to small-town newsrooms.

These are folks who have:
— a well-established standing as the go-to place for news
— a solid relationship with the people they serve
— a market share that would make bigger operations salivate

It is with that in mind that I prepared to do a workshop last week with members of the Missouri Press Association. The daylong seminar, hosted at RJI, also brought in high school and middle school journalism teachers, who were in town as part of an ASNE training program.

The topic of the workshop was social media, but I’ll embrace that term only if we define it loosely, as media designed to be social. Designed to be acted on, contributed to, talked about and passed along. And these ideas are not at all new to community news, which is often designed to be stuck to the fridge or mailed to the grandparents.

The part that’s new is figuring out how the well-established, social relationship between newspaper and community translates to the digital age. As Dave Marner, managing editor of the Gasconade County Republican, talked to me about last year, what does it mean to fill community scrapbooks these days?

My research into how Missouri’s community newspapers are making the transition to the digital world led me to discover one of my all-time favorite newspaper Facebook pages. Allow me to introduce you to the Houston Herald, which takes the news directly to its community in a way that respects readers’ time and makes it easy to be in the know.

The Herald is a weekly newspaper in south central Missouri, in a community of just under 2,000 and with a print circulation of 4,000. The paper’s Facebook page, which launched in 2008, has 2,500 likes.

Now that’s penetration.

Continue reading “Newspaper Facebook post serves as town megaphone” →