What’s on the plate for AAJA Seattle

Members of the old board and freshly-elected AAJA Seattle board met at a retreat last week to hand off ideas and kick off the new year. Thanks to all the board members for coming, and to Sharon Chan for hosting the event in her condo building. Here are some raw notes from the meeting about what we have planned for 2012.

Sanjay, the outgoing president, outlined the chapter history for new board members:

• Founded in mid-’80s, 1986. Third nat’l chapter after LA and SF
• 2006 reached milestone of raising 100k
• Founders scholarship, try to give out one per year

Three priorities that AAJA Seattle has established

1. Outreach – partnership with SPJ for savings for AAJA members. Trying to figure out how to engage members more.
2. Mentoring
3. Training

(more…)

Posted in Meeting notes, News | Leave a comment

Good news for freelancers: Public Insight Network is acquiring Spot.us

If you’re a freelancer and you haven’t heard of Spot.us yet, you’ve been missing out. (Full disclosure: I worked as a contract designer for Spot.us from Dec. 2009 – Jan 2011). Spot.us is a crowd-funded reporting platform that allows reporters and organizations to submit story ideas, set a funding goal, and raise money from the public toward that goal.

But this week, the possibilities for Spot.us just got a lot more interesting: They were acquired by the Public Insight Network. As part of American Public Media, PIN is a platform that gives journalists access to a repository of knowledgeable sources to help make their reporting stronger.

So the merger means that freelancers who pitch stories will have both the means of raising money, plus the access to people who can give quality information about those stories. Read more about it here.

Posted in News | 1 Comment

Meet Sunny Wu, editor and ex-lifeguard

Editor’s note: This is part of a new, bi-weekly series, where Sarah will be profiling one of our AAJA members

Name: Sunny Wu
Hometown: A native-born Seattleite.
Education: Political science degree from University of Washington.
Work: Projects editor, MSN (starting in December).
Formerly: Editor at FOX Sports, ESPN, AOL and msnbc.com. Lifeguard in high school.
AAJA member since: 2004.
Daily reads: The Seattle Times, The New York Times, ESPN, tech blogs, Twitter and RSS feeds.
Print or online news? Print, online, broadcast, mobile … all of the above.
Favorite book: “Depends on the book I’m reading at the moment. I’ve gravitated toward nonfiction the past few years.” (more…)

Posted in Members, News | Leave a comment

What’s in Your Backpack, Journalist?

If you’ve been looking for your next journalism position then you know your journey has probably been painfully bumpy against the backdrop of the lingering recession, newsroom cut backs, leaner paychecks, scarcity of jobs and scores of unemployed journalists eager to get back to another newsroom. Many others have even jumped the journalism ship in search of other opportunities.

You may have invested the last few months or years doing everything you could possibly do to help secure that next job. You’ve sent out hundreds of resumes tapes, relentlessly telephoned news directors to tell them why you are the “One,” hit the journalism conventions running and networked until you are blue in your face. You tweet and follow the who’s who on social media, and perhaps you accomplished all that on a very tight budget. It’s no wonder that your backpack feels heavier with discouragement and doubt about your future in journalism.

You thought you paid your dues by busting your rear end when you were trying to break into the journalism industry and then working yourself to the bone at your first or next job. Now it seems you are back to ground zero. Not really. You are a backpack journalist! (also known as a video, multimedia, multiplatform, digital or one-man/woman band journalist). You are accustomed to producing several stories a day under deadline. The tools in your backpack and your story-telling skills make it all happen. And with so much versatility at your fingertips you can do it all over again even if you are not working in a newsroom right now.

So journalist what’s in your backpack that can turn that long or short spell of unemployment or underemployment into an opportunity to innovate, explore and keep your skills sharp?

Three Tips to Strengthen Your Job Search Backpack:

Create Web Footprint: Employers are looking for creative self-starters. Your website is your broadcasting channel to showcase your multimedia skills. It’s your story-telling portfolio for video/online/audio stories, photographs and news writing. Many journalists are using WordPress.com or WordPress.org to create their sites and tell their stories. The good news…website design credentials are not required to own your own piece of real estate on the internet. You can also use other website developers like Tumblr, Drupal or Joomla. Plus free online tutorials will show you what to do. I’ve been using a WordPress tutorial from the Knight Digital Media Center. It’s an easy to follow, step-by-step approach. Try it.

Practice Super Story-telling: Jobs will come and go. So will tools. But your story-telling skills will be yours to keep and nurture. NBC multimedia journalist Thanh Truong told me at a recent AAJA convention that many journalists can shoot video, edit and deliver the news. But it’s how well you capture the essence of a story that differentiates one storyteller from another. As a master story-teller your chances of hitting a home run to your next journalism position improve significantly. So put your video gear to work. Check out Poynter’s News University online courses. These courses are affordable, sometimes free and will really help you craft compelling visual stories.

Nurture Strong Relationships: The journalism industry continues to shed jobs. CNN is reportedly one of the latest casualties with some fifty out the door. You know that you are not the only one. But when times are tough it is easy to spiral down into the abyss of pessimism, low self-esteem and isolation. So don’t turn into an island. Reach out to your trusted family, friends and peers. They will help you weather the storm and encourage you to stay afloat. Stay active in your community. Start groups with like-minded people. Volunteer your skills for a worthy cause. You have the ability to help change lives and your circumstances.

So journalist what else is in your backpack?

Furhana Afrid is a backpack journalist and social media manager.

Posted in Convention, Multimedia, News | Tagged AAJA, AAJA Seattle, backpack journalist, digital journalist, Multimedia, video journalist | 1 Comment

Behind the scenes of The Seattle Times’ newest blog

A few weeks ago at The Seattle Times, we launched a new blog called The Today File. Technologically, the blog is a breath of fresh air in our newsroom that — like many traditional newsrooms– deals with a lot of legacy software.

We launched the blog on open-source blogging software WordPress, the very software that runs this blog and millions around the globe. It’s a place for us to break news, be more transparent, be more nimble about coverage, and do cool things on the web quickly.

I recently published a behind-the-scenes post to my personal blog that could be worth a read if you want to set up something similar in your newsroom, or on your own as a freelancer. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, see my post or email me directly! From my blog:

Prior to the launch of The Today File, we had a crime blog, weather blog, politics blog and a ton of other niche-topic blogs. If any other random in-between news broke (traffic, education, general metro), there wasn’t a home for it except as a “full story” i.e. something that originates in our print CMS (CCI) and goes through the standard workflow of being published to the web. It could sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes to get an item up on our site, and it could only be done from within the building.

Not only is this a many-step process, but it’s a print-centric one that doesn’t allow us to easily do things like hyperlinking, dropping in maps, sharing on social media, etc. WordPress, of course, changes all of that.

You can read the full details here.

Posted in Local highlights, News | Leave a comment