5 Things

Whether you’re a soon-to-be J-school graduate or a journalist looking for a new gig, one thing you will most certainly need is a good portfolio. And not just any portfolio — it has to be online.

When a potential employer Googles your name, you want your website — complete with all your best articles, social media profiles, videos and other work — to be the first thing that shows up.

An online portfolio is the new first impression and you want yours to be a strong one.

This doesn’t mean you have to b a web designer or someone who can code in their sleep. Luckily, more and more sites are popping up that make collecting your clips in one place and creating an online portfolio as easy as 1-2-3.

Here are five sites to visit if you are in the market to create your own online portfolio. They all offer the ability to create a customizable URL, are free (unless you choose the paid version), and don’t require you to know any code. The most work you’ll have to do is click the mouse or trackpad. Read more

Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

Facebook just rolled out a new feature called Interest Lists that lets users organize what they care about into, well, lists.

Or, as the company said in its official announcement, Interest Lists “turn Facebook into your own personalized newspaper, with special sections—or feeds—for topics that matter to you.”

One group of people using the service immediately is journalists. Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook’s journalist program manager, has even curated a list of “How Writers Are Using Interest Lists.” To search for other lists, visit the Add Interests page.

While it’s early days yet for Interest Lists, here are five possible ways journalists can use the new service. Read more

Does Pinterest, the year old digital pinboard site, have value as a tool for journalists?

The site’s gained a lot of traction in the social media world recently. It cracked the top 10 most trafficked social network sites, with 11 million visitors during the second full week of December, according to Hitwise. The site’s main users tend to be brides-to-be, people interested in home decor and lifestyle magazines, such as Better Homes and Gardens. I haven’t, however, seen a lot of news organizations using it.

Don’t get me wrong. They are there. Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and the Today Show have some boards up as does Mashable and the Daily Beast. Individual reporters may also be “pinners,” as users are called, but it’s a bit hard to search for them. There are also users who create boards called “news” and pin news stories to them. Generally speaking, it just doesn’t seem like a lot of journalists and news organizations are in any hurry to use Pinterest for the news.

Part of the problem is that at first glance, Pinterest doesn’t seem incredibly relevant for hard news. The news orgs that are on it cater to lifestyle and health, creating boards mainly focusing on those topics. (Take a look at the WSJ’s boards.) With a bit of creativity and imagination, however, Pinterest could prove very useful for all areas of a news organization. If you are thinking about using Pinterest, just remember the site is still invite-only.

Without further delay, here are five ways reporters and news organizations can use Pinterest. Read more

Ah, the new year. A time for promising to do new things and reflecting on what you failed to achieve in the past year. For the ever-evolving news industry, it’s a fresh opportunity to assess what’s working and what’s not, and a reason to get others around you to try something new (not always the easiest thing to accomplish in the newsroom).

These are five resolutions, ranging from relatively simple to somewhat radical, that you can use as a source of inspiration for your own newsroom.

1. Cut back on paper usage.

People like meetings. People like for their meetings to feel productive and important. Therefore, people print handouts, packets, memos. In an era of Google Docs, project screens and smart phones, there’s really no reason to print out twenty versions of the same document, which will, no doubt, be lost in a pile on a desk or immediately end up in a recycling bin. It’s wasteful.

Part of getting a newsroom to think digitally is getting them to act digitally. A few tools you can use to accomplish this: Google Docs, Quick Notes (A Chrome app), the iPad Notes app or Notes Plus, Evernote (great for syncing across devices) Read more

In this week’s episode of “5 Things You Need to Know This Week,” we talk with a veteran Butterball turkey expert, introduce our very own 5 Things Muppet, discuss Black Friday deals, and think up interesting things to talk about while watching football. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

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