Last week I wrote about how clips provide little value in helping me make a hiring decision.
Now it appears that Wired has gone a step further -- telling prospective hires for at least one job not to bother sending a resume, but to instead forward a blog post.
I'm not surprised by Wired's move. And I suspect we'll see more situations like this in which employers screen applicants based on their access to Web tools and sensibilities. (For example, why would any radio station hire anyone who doesn't have a podcast?)
It's also no surprise to me that I heard about the Wired job through a post on Ryan Sholin's blog. I first came across Ryan's work back when he was a student. And I often used him as an example of how young journalists should approach the new world of media. Ryan has since graduated. And he's become central to the debate over how to educate the next generation of journalists. He's also become one of the people that helps me follow -- and make sense of -- the changes in journalism.
In my post last week about clips, I also made reference to three things that I think make a college kid worth hiring for an entry level job. And number two on that list was that the student be "self-taught" -- picking up skills that weren't taught as part of the curriculum.
Well Ryan is the king of self taught. And his graduation didn't change his belief that he needs to constantly expand his skill set.
Take a look at this piece from his blog in which he takes "an informal poll on what I should learn next."
(Personal note: I experienced some problems with email last week. Several hundred old emails were lost. And for about 24 hours or so, new incoming emails simply disappeared. The problem seems to be resolved. But if you sent something to me last week and didn't get a response, please try again. Thanks.)
tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media, journalism education
Thanks, man.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I haven't actually finished up the Master's I'm working on just yet. One thesis away... I'll walk in December with any luck at all.
Being self-taught is as easy as subscribing to a healthy fleet of RSS feeds and buying an instructional book every now and then, but you have to be passionate about what you're doing.
Self-advancement for the sake of adding another line to the "skills" section of a resume won't fool anyone in the long run.
I think this is a sad but unfortunate truth of journalism today that editors are more interested in hiring computer geeks than actual reporters. It's really disconcerting that editors have resorted to putting the cheapest, sleaziest form of so-called journalism online to feed the public's insane desire for 24-hour news at the expense of sloppy writing and reporting.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I've ever seen a sillier comment.
Why, pray tell, can a "computer geek" not also be a reporter? And what is "insane" about wanting 24-hour news?
And your final sentence is too funny to take seriously. You complain that cheap forms of online journalism have come at the expense of sloppy writing. I'm quite sure that what you meant to say is that cheap forms of journalism have led to sloppy writing. But that's not what you wrote. You, my friend, are a sloppy writer.