“Whenever someone says, ‘Oh, how do you do it?’ I tell them that I make more calls then they do. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Swisher explained. “People make a bigger deal of it, but I think I just work harder than other people. That’s all. There’s no secret sauce or anything.”

As for how other reporters can make a name for themselves online, Swisher’s advice was simple: “Be accurate; know your stuff.”

Read the full interview at So What Do You Do, Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor of AllThingsD.com?

– Nicholas Braun

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“I think a lot of people get caught up on just trying to build Web traffic and posting things that aren’t really essential to the core of what they’re all about, writing to the lowest common denominator, etc.,” he told Mediabistro. “You now see sites and media properties that tweet about breaking news that has nothing to do with the core of their editorial platform. And that’s the stuff that may give you short-term eyeballs and short-term gain in traffic or circulation but, ultimately, you’re going to alienate any kind of core audience that came to you for what your original intent was.”

Read more about how The Fader is thriving in the digital age in So What Do You Do,Andy Cohn, President and Publisher of The Fader?

– Nicholas Braun

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After founding Sassy and Jane,

“It still amazes me that a lot of women’s magazines in particular will use this magazine speak, this terminology.” Pratt told Mediabistro in the latest installment of So What Do You Do?. “Like, instead of saying ‘your hair,’ they’ll say ‘your mane’ or ‘your tresses.’ And I always feel like if someone says ‘your lackluster tresses’ instead of ‘your dirty hair,’ you feel like they’re not telling you the whole truth. I feel like that makes you as a reader say, ‘Well, if they’re lying to me about that, what else are they lying to me about?’

For more, read So What Do You Do, Jane Pratt, Editor-in-Chief of xojane.com?

– Nicholas Braun

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

That happened today when NPR’s Andy Carvin —  a senior strategist and reporter whose work on the Arab Spring, primarily through his Twitter account @acarvin, led the Washington Post to call him a “one-man Twitter news Bureau” — dispensed helpful advice about digital journalism and production on stories that occur thousands of miles away. His hour-long AMA gave great insights into his own reporting style, and the toll of covering the Arab Spring.

Here’s a roundup of some of the highlights.

On Authenticating Video

The most import thing to do is look for context. Is there something visible in the background that can be IDed, like a building or other landmark? If people are speaking, what kind of accents do they have? If there are weapons involved, what kinds are they? Does the timestamp of the video match the weather forecast, or the location of the sun and shadows? Etc, etc. Fortunately, I have a lot of Twitter followers who love this type of detective work. continued…

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“I not only sometimes hear viewers’ angst about wanting journalistic reporting, I feel it myself as somebody consuming the news. I report and analyze what’s going on in the news, but I also want to know what’s happening in the world. For me, that angst is primarily about newspapers. I live in New Orleans, where we’ve lost our daily newspaper and don’t have reporters on the beat in our neighborhoods… When I think about [the decline in unbiased news], I tend to not think about it in terms of television news, which I never particularly watched, but print journalism.”

Read more in So What Do You Do, Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC Host and Tulane University Professor?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

He helped develop the WSJ‘s iPad app, one of the first from a major newspaper. But he also has some serious journalism chops: Ho has covered national consumer affairs for the AP and reported on telecom and terrorism for Cox Newspapers. In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do? series, he gives advice to aspiring mobile editors and tells how news orgs should approach new technology.

“A lot of news skills only come with experience. I love it when folks can do Photoshop and the like, but more than any one kind of expertise, it’s important to have a general and deep technology comfort level and interest. This is all moving so fast, you have to adapt daily, hourly. It’s as much about making news decisions as it is troubleshooting tech problems. You need to be able to talk to developers as much as you talk to reporters and editors. You need a foot in each world, editorial and technology.”

For more, read So What Do You Do, David Ho, Mobile and Tablets Editor at The Wall Street Journal?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“She came through another gatekeeper, which is pretty much how all of our users come to us,” Hirschfeld said. “The invites went through our closed circle of Harvard friends initially, because we were both really paranoid. We had competitors then, and we were trying to smooth out the process of the workflow. We handed out user names and passwords very carefully back then, and Rice was maybe two or three degrees separated from someone we knew at the school.”

Read more in Hey, How’d You Build Paperless Post Into a Powerhouse, Alexa Hirschfeld? [subscription required]

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“What happened with Laura has made me more defiant than ever about the need for solid journalism,” she said. “The fact that Laura was illegally apprehended and held for so long for wanting to report about the horrific things that are happening to North Korean refugees was just tragic. We need journalists to uncover truths. It’s never more important than now.”

The busy host, whose resume boasts The View and National Geographic’s Explorer, still tries to find time to contribute to Nightline, where she used to be a correspondent. “I think the fact that Nightline is doing so well is a testament to the fact that people are hungry for good, strong storytelling,” she said.

Read more at So What Do You Do, Lisa Ling, Host and Executive Producer of Our America?

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“It’s hard to explain and it sounds very journalism-from-the-future, but it’s finding ways to pull out the really fascinating narratives and trends and issues that are coming out of Tumblr,” she said of her position.

“For example, we did this big piece about how fandom has changed in the Internet Age based around One Direction, the UK boy band, who is huge on Tumblr. It was the kind of feature story you’d read in a newsmagazine, but not so Tumblr-specific that it couldn’t be digestible to a mainstream audience. So, a lot of the ideas I come up with I’m getting from being on Tumblr and monitoring what’s happening on there.

Read more at So What Do You Do, Jessica Bennett, Executive Editor of Tumblr’s Storyboard?

And you can find great social media jobs on our job board. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“I think people make a mistake when they wanna climb the masthead, and they assume the editor-in-chief should pay attention to them. And, now that I’m on the other side of the desk, I love people who come to me,” Holley said in our Media Beat interview.

Holley explained that she succeeded at GQ by giving “steady input without being annoying” to editor-in-chief Art Cooper. “I wasn’t kissing ass, but I would write memos to him and say, ‘I think this section could use this,’ and ‘I think we should start a new section that’s this’… I’m a huge fan of memo writing.”

Part 2: Brandon Holley Calls Fashion Blogging ‘Most Exciting Thing to Happen in Publishing in Decades’
Part 3: Lucky’s Brandon Holley Talks Photoshop and Fashion

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In Mediabistro’s latest So What Do You Do? interview, the award-winning writer and editor talked about the key to landing reporters who truly get the Web.

“Frankly, I think part of it is giving them a chance to take a break from online,” she said.  “The L.A. Weekly has a few perks that online-only sites don’t have: We can give you the chance to write about music or art if that’s your thing. And, hopefully, we can help you find the time to mix it up and write a 4,000-word cover story, too.”

She continued, “But it is tough. I have no idea how most bloggers can sustain that pace. I used to fill in for our news blogger in St. Louis when he was on vacation (the perils of leading a small staff!), and it just about killed me. I have the utmost respect for anyone writing multiple posts per day.”

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Sarah Fenske?

– Andrea Hackett

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Photo Credit: Angela Cranford

So, what is it like to be a social media or community editor? What are the job responsibilities and how does one end up landing such a gig? The goal of “Four Questions With …” is to answer some of these questions and to give insight into what is a new and constantly evolving field.

This month, we talked to Brian Ries, the social media editor at Newsweek & The Daily Beast. Unlike some other social media editors, Ries didn’t start out in journalism. He started his current job in August 2010 after working at advertising and marketing companies with a heavy social bent. He began writing for Newsweek The Daily Beast while it was one of his clients. (It merged with Newsweek later.)

Ries further caught the editors’ attention when, in July 2010, he reported a Facebook post by Sarah Palin on the Ground Zero mosque as hate speech. His resulting Tumblr post went viral and Facebook even took down Palin’s post. He ended up writing an article about it for the site.

Here are his thoughts on what skills a social media editor needs and how you can make your mark in a newsroom with an already established social media strategy. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Congratulations are in order for 10,000 Words founder Mark S. Luckie who will be leaving The Washington Post to join Twitter as its new creative content manager for journalism.

“To say I’m thrilled is an understatement. I’ll be working to transform the way journalists report the news and connect with their audiences and really maximizing my creative skills,” Luckie posted on his Facebook page.

Luckie announced his new job on Tuesday. He later tweeted that his new role, which will be based in New York City, will include coming up with “creative ways journalists use the platform, increase engagement and elevate Twitter use in newsrooms.”

Luckie, currently a social media editor at The Washington Post, started there in October 2010. While at the WaPo, Luckie has been in charge of identifying and implementing different types of social media strategies. He helped train others at the news organization in social media best practices. He was also part of a team nominated for a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting.

So why the switch from a more traditional newsroom to Twitter? continued…

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“If you studied journalism in undergrad, then I don’t think a graduate school degree in journalism is necessary,” said Ogunnaike, who has penned more than two dozen cover stories for everything from Elle to Rolling Stone. “But if you’re new to the craft, I definitely think some education is required.”

Ogunnaike, who earned her Master’s degree in journalism from NYU, says it’s not crucial to shell out $70,000 or $80,000 to understand the intricacies of the field. “I think people underestimate how difficult journalism is. It’s not just sitting at your computer and spouting off your opinions about Beyoncé’s dress at the Met Gala. There is a structure to it, and I feel like that is sorely lacking in a lot of what’s being passed off as journalism today.”

Read the full interview.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

So, what is it like to be a social media or community editor? What are the job responsibilities and how does one end up landing such a gig? The goal of “Four Questions With …” is to answer some of these questions and to give insight into what is a new and constantly evolving field.

For the month of May, we chatted with Anjali Mullany, the social media editor at Fast Company. Previously, Mullany was social media editor at the New York Daily News. She started working with the Daily News in 2009 while a master’s student at New York University’s Studio 20, ultimately becoming the Daily News’ social media editor. In April, she left to become the social media editor at Fast Company.

Here are Mullany’s thoughts on social media, journalism and how technology is changing innovation in the field. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.