Reporter resumes lacking web experience
Cory Bergman April 16th, 2007
I took a quick look at the bulletin board where students and young reporters post their resumes — about 50 of them now — and less than a quarter make any mention of the web. This despite the fact that most of them likely have MySpace or Facebook blogs (and aren’t all journalism schools teaching HTML now?) Most of the resumes, however, do mention that they can shoot and edit. It’s good to see they’ve caught up to 2004, but a lack of web experience on a resume is a non-starter for me if I were hiring for a TV reporter position — especially in a smaller market.
7 Comments Add your own
1. Rob | April 16th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
When I talk to people here in market seventy-something, particularly those that might be looking at trading up out of here at the end of their contracts, I let them know that contributing to the station’s website in some form or fashion, whether its blogging or posting content or video to the site, is just one more thing you can add to your resume to make yourself more marketable over someone without web experience.
2. thomas | April 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
HTML? people still use that? Seriously though, most sites use a CMS of some sort which probably does not require much knowledge of HTML, a basic understanding should suffice. I wouldn’t imagine that many journalism majors are taking web-development courses; if they are then they are just one step ahead of the rest.
3. Michael Rosenblum | April 16th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Like I said yesterday, they are wasting their time and money. Go study history or english lit and learn to be video and web literate on your own. Get a camera, shoot stuff, post online. Make your own site. I would rather hire someone who had done that than someone who was a journalism major.
4. Jason | April 16th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I’ll be thrilled when employers actually start looking at that for reporter hires. But just like my skill at writing a vosot for the morning show won’t get me a job… writing for the web also won’t get me a job. Neither will blogging or videoblogging. At least not yet. I think that’s changing, but it’s still a slow process. Or maybe some hiring manager will prove me wrong.
5. Michael | April 17th, 2007 at 6:13 am
On the other hand, I’ve found that new reporters fresh out of college or making that first career jump are some of our strongest contributors. I’d say of the nine that have come and gone over my tenure, eight came out of the gate writing complete Web stories, not just pasting from the rundown and fixing a few things.
In my experience, they got it. Calling from the field with breaking news updates, ideas for extra links or content, even overall ideas to improve the site.
Maybe we’ve been lucky, but our new reporters have come out of the gate knowing how important the Web component is.
6. invitedmedia | April 17th, 2007 at 6:48 am
over the last few weeks i’ve taken to looking at my 17 year old daughter’s myspace/facebook as well as that of her friends.
sorry to say, but these KIDS could kick some major ass over much of what i see coming from corporations.
seriously.
to my knowledge not one has their high school diploma yet.
7. unsurelok | April 17th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
It this awkward in-between stage of media convergence, if you know web you still need to say so. The next generation will be so fluent it would be like putting “I read” on a resume.
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