I love Mindy McAdams’s stuff, and she is teaching all the right things. Yet I am going to disagree with tremendous respect on this point - it’s not as important to me that someone knows coding language as that someone is familiar with what kind of content the audience uses online. She’s right though - if you know FCP or other advanced stuff, by all means list it.

It’s just a tip, jobseekers - you’ll notice that no news director is on here saying : “Yeah - that’s ridiculous. Everyone knows how to set up blogs and webpages.” You may not believe it, you may think it’s silly, and you may - rightly - say “get with it, old people,” but you heard it here on LR: you have the edge.

Nevertheless, am I supposed to put that I’m “proficient in AOL Instant Messenger and MySpace” on my resume? Perhaps I think differently because I’m one of those young whippersnappers, but I’d laugh myself silly if I saw something like that on an applicant’s resume.

Just because a student has a MySpace account doesn’t mean he knows a single thing about producing impressive editorial content for the Web. We can’t allow the lack of Web experience in our industry to cause us to be impressed by what really are everyday non-accomplishments. Having a simple Facebook profile is NOT significant online experience for college grads. If a student has graduated from a journalism school, one can safely assume he or she has experience using a computer, unless you know of any j-schools that still rely on — what are those durned things called again … oh yeah– typewriters.

These websites are more like hobbies then skills, it doesnt take an MIT genesis to post a profile on myspace, it is very simple you follow the step-by-step instructions.

If employers are looking for these social networking websites on resumes then they need a reality check. ANYONE YOUR HIRE COMING OUT OF COLLEGE HAS THIS “EXPERIENCE”

You old farts can take a lesson from Ferris Bueller “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.”

Go on myspace and create a profile
experiance

First idea … keep reading Lost Remote.

I know its a shameless plug for this site, but I stay fresh on industry trends by coming here daily to find out what’s going on. There are some other good portals out there, some of which you can get to from here, to get more information on how the web is impacting / influencing the media industry.

Second idea might be to start blogging. Find a site where you can post blogs and learn everything there is to learn from blogging … how to upload photos to your blog, how to add links within your blog, et cetera.

Third, if you have a digital camera that you can connect to a computer (with ‘net access), or better yet a cellphone with a camera, get in the habit of taking pictures in the field (if you’re a reporter / photog). Make it part of your news gathering process to take pictures primarily for the web so your site gets imagery from breaking news ASAP. You might also post pics on your blog - if you’ve started one - or get a Flickr account.

Fourth, more often than not, people who take TV scripts and re-write them for the web have to do a good deal of re-writing. Writing on the web (in my experience) is akin to print journalism … long form, more details, you have to write out what’s going on instead of relying on video (”As you can see in this video …”). If your station has a web staff, check with them on how they write stories for the website. Try it out yourself and you’ll see there are differences between writing for broadcast and the web.

Fifth, get a Google account and learn all the ins and outs of building a customized homepage. Some swear by independent news readers to aggregate content, but Google is an easy, turnkey solution to learn how to customize a page and aggregate content. That will help you understand RSS feeds and aggregation of content for starters.

Sixth, think beyond the newslink. Many reporters might think that giving a producer or the web staff a newslink is being in touch with the web. Use the web to do research and then build up that additional information to give to the web producers to further enhance your story when it gets put on your station’s website.

There are probably a lot more ideas out there from everyone else, but those few might help you get started.

The fact is that students are *online* and engaging in online behaviors that are relevant to new media. That’s the disconnect I’m talking about. They assume we all know how to use the computer as a social networking tool. We do not. We have 1.0 websites, we do not know 2.0.

They don’t need to know computer programming. I’d expect any kid with those kinds of skills to have that on a resume. But if they have been setting up Facebook, MySpace, Blogger pages, WordPress stuff or their own classroom intranets - TELL US.

Rob has it right in comment #7 - this shows a skill in the web that they discount which is actually valuable.

The second disconnect would be if an employer doesn’t ask about web experience, a potential candidate won’t list it on their resume.

Third, there are some people who might not want to list their web experience because they don’t want to be embarrassed by it. Note to all students: If you want a job in the media industry where your life will be under a microscope, try avoiding those tequila-fueled photo ops in New Orleans and Cabo that one of your close friends will be uploading to Flickr as soon as you get home.

Fourth disconnect … employers might want to hear about it, but students often don’t get exposure to it in the classroom. There might be classes in computer programming, there might be opportunities to post stories to a college news website, but is there training that combines those two disciplines - technology and publishing - to give students a well-rounded appreciation of the web and its role in their careers?

Likewise, it’s only fairly recently that a focus has been placed on students knowing these types of skills to get a job. As recently as October 2005 I was at a convergence conference where hiring editors from broadcast and newspapers in Utah were telling the conference - “we don’t so much want new hires with these tech skills, just good basic reporting skills.”

So there’s a lot of “catching up” that needs to happen on everyone’s part.

And there’s a difference between online experience and a passion of online news.

Online passion may appear on a resume, or maybe not, but it certainly will appear in Google.