For a journo who has found success with decidedly old-school methods, Ed Gordon has some advice for aspiring broadcasters: get on YouTube. “In today’s world… it’s about producing and owning your content,” he told Mediabistro in the latest installment of So What Do You Do?. Gordon also advises young people with dreams of being on the small screen to “learn where your craft is headed,” and talks about the importance of perseverance when it comes to career success.

“There are a lot of people who’ve given up trying to get on commercial television and have gone to securing their own YouTube channels, and I think, at the end of the day, that’s going to be the future of broadcasting,” Gordon said. “People are just going to put stuff out there. They’re gonna have their own YouTube channels, and eventually you’ll be able to buy things from those channels. But I think one of the things that people have to understand is it takes perseverance.”

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Ed Gordon, Host of Conversations with Ed Gordon?

I am exhausted from following the explosion of opinion about how much freelance journalists should be paid after writer Nate Thayer took on The Atlantic for offering to publish his work, for free.

It used to be that freelance meant you were a free-agent. Now, it just means you work for free, or scraps.

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How important is it for journalists to know HTML/CSS? How about for journalism students, who will be entering a job market with more digital and fewer traditional job choices? This point has been discussed and debated to death. We’ve talked about it and covered sites and organizations that aim to help teach journalists to program.

But reading a recent post by University of Florida professor Mindy McAdams, it occurred to me how these skills have increasingly become expectations for job-hunting journalists. It’s not been enough for a long time to be a writer or a photographer, you need to be very good at something and at least good enough at others to be competitive in a world where writer’s send standups back from crime scenes and photographers produce slideshows, with intros and captions on the fly. But HTML? CSS? Javascript?

Her post is primarily aimed at journalism educators and why they should learn and teach HTML and CSS so their students are better equipped. But it’s beneficial to all journalists. She writes:

The system we use to present information on Web pages begins with HTML, a markup language that structures the content of the page.

I’m starting with HTML because I know a heck of a lot of journalism educators have never tried to learn HTML, and that’s just wrong. You know how to use a comma? Good, I would expect that. The basic use of HTML is just as important as correct use of commas, and it’s certainly not harder to learn.

The web is littered with comma splices, so certainly not everyone learned that skill. Nor will everyone be willing to learn HTML and CSS. (I say willing because I agree with Mindy that’s they’re very learnable. I taught myself starting when I was 10.) But she’s right, if a journalist wants to be competitive, to place themselves in the best position to land and keep a job, to have the best and most opportunities open to them, they’re going to want to know the basics or be willing to learn.
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This summer, Patch will be partnering with the Dow Jones News Fund to provide their summer interns with a unique experience: Interns will complete a week-long training program at Western Kentucky University before heading back to their prospective posts across the country. Not only are travel expenses and housing covered, interns get an hourly wage and will receive a $1000 scholarship upon completing the program.

All in all, about 40 students will be selected in 18 states. The program will have two start dates: early June through August and mid-June through the first week of September. “[We're looking for] someone who’s really passionate about community journalism,” Andi Morrison, college recruiter at Patch, told 10,000 Words. “That kind of entrepreneurial spirit is the first thing I really look for.” To apply, students should have some online journalism experience, whether it’s writing for campus media or freelancing for a local news outlet. Read more

Though Google may have contributed to the ailing journalism industry, the search giant will now be offering journalism students 10-week long fellowships. The first of these fellowships will start in the summer of 2013, and are open to both undergrads and graduate students.

The fellowship is aimed at “students interested in using technology to tell stories in new and dynamic ways,” said the announcement. Fellows spend their first week at the Knight Foundation and the last week at Google. The program is especially suited to readers of 10,000 Words, as the intersection of journalism and technology is exactly what the fellowship is about. Below are the qualities that the program is seeking: Read more