For a man who best describes himself as an engineer, producer and entrepreneur, Dominic has an impressive CV that includes roles as co-founder of Beeb.com. He now heads up ITV.com.

Living by the motto ‘Love, Simplicity, Optimism’, Dominic reflected on how he has been able to transform the online forum into a space where people can connect and interact wherever and whenever they like.

With broad experience in the media industry, he gave students digestible information on the future of news and online, with the content revolution at the heart of his presentation.

Dominic explained how ITV.com is changing its ways—not only for its users, but to generate more income for ITV. “The BBC have more of a budget to spend than ITV,” he said, as means to explain the discrepancy in online visibility.

This may have come as a surprise, even to Dominic, bearing in mind ITV is a commercial organisation. He admitted that throughout the process of maximising content for the online user, “we [ITV] had to learn what is acceptable for advertisement on the ITV player.”

Cameron provided students with an in-depth knowledge of the online world, and a great opportunity for students to meet such an influential person in the business.

His lasting piece of advice? “Everyone in media, including graduates, must learn how to learn. Technical skills are given but the key thing is to be acutely curious.”

– Abigail Horseman is a L3 Sunderland University journalism student

Are you a University of Sunderland student? Do you have a blog? If you answered yes to both of these, InJournalism.co.uk wants you.

InJournalism, soon to undergo a name-change and wholesale revamp, is looking to publish your blogposts and link out to your blog – think Huffington Post style -driving lots of valuable traffic to your own personal webspace.

Any featured blogs would also be listed on the InJournalism which features on every page of the site – so you’re never far from a new audience.

If you like the idea of this, leave a comment below or email journalism student and Degrees North Editor, Josh Halliday, at bd78gr@student.sunderland.ac.uk and he’ll get the ball rolling for you.

Happy blogging!

Last week I got an email from one of the module students. It was feedback on the module I run – MAC238, Magazine Writing – saying that there was a general feeling that the leap from reviewing to writing business-to-business articles in weeks 6 and 7 wasn’t well planned, and that the task didn’t really connect with what you, as Level 2 journalists, were wanting to do and learn. It knocked people’s confidence and momentum in getting better on the module. So, what was our response as a teaching team?

The email
1. First off, the student was worried about sending the email, in case I, as module leader, would be p***ed off.

2. Second, the student was voicing general concerns that there wasn’t enough choice in the exercises in class to keep people’s passions and interests high (particularly on Fridays when, ahem, attendance has already been quite low…)

3. Third, the student was concerned that not enough people do let us lecturers know when you’re struggling, or don’t agree with the way things are being done.

It’s important to note that these were valid points, but not held by everyone. Some of the group were doing their best work on the B2B articles. Some groups got through it all in one afternoon. I think it’s also vitally important to stretch and challenge you as journalists to do things you’re not comfortable with, or haven’t done before. However, it was a shared and valid feedback, and in response:

1. I would’ve been miffed if I _hadn’t_ received the email, or if someone hadn’t come to see me about it. Thank you for sending it, it was well received.

2. Point taken. We talk about examples a lot for the exercises we set; and as much as possible we try to make them relevant for individuals. Of course, the topic for each assessed piece, as well as the group project in MAC238, is totally governed by individuals and the group. I’d agree that the press releases for the task in question weren’t brilliant or interesting. Often, they’re not. But, anyway, probably a bit too much of a leap, I accept that.

3. I’d agree with him. The idea that we don’t want to hear what your experiences are on your modules is, well, wrong. And importantly, we do want to hear about them as it goes along, not only at the end, ‘for next year’, although that’s important as well.

So what have we done about it?
There is a lot of talk at the moment about how journalism is changing to become an ‘iterative journalism’, particularly online. Lee Hall, the Digital Editor from the Sunderland Echo describes it as “having a lot more bits at the cherry” if you read ‘cherry’ for ’story’: a first draft, get it up online, then contextualise, add bits, add links and video, then it goes in the paper the next day. Perhaps a more fully rounded explanation of the stages of iterative journalism comes from Paul Bradshaw, and his description of the news process in the 21st century newsroom.  He calls it the news diamond.

For me, it’s just as good a model for teaching, particularly something moving as rapidly as journalism. What it means is that we can and are able to tweak, change, bring in new examples, etc, and respond to how the module is going, as it is still happening, rather than having it fully set-in-stone. The learning goals are the same, but the way we get there can also be up for review.

Here’s an example. At the end of week 4, one of the tutors on MAC238 told me that while his group had enjoyed and done the tasks so far, they were feeling pretty stretched. We had done eight writing tasks in four weeks. So, as  a teaching team, we scrapped the ‘homework’ tasks for week 5 to give students a break. I think it worked well, as it gave people a chance to consolidate their writing around the first assessment, the review piece.

So, things can be fluid, iterative, responsive. As long as you feed back to us–tell us what’s going on. What I’d like to do is hear from people now: here, commenting on this post. Not just on the MAC238 module, perhaps, as you can do that with your tutors, but to this question:

What would be a good way to encourage feedback on your modules as you are studying them?

And if you don’t feel as if you can, why not? Be constructive. As my yoga teacher says, ’struggle never works’ give your comments with joy, or if that’s stretching it a bit (pardon the yoga pun), focus your ideas on what we can do to improve the ways you can feed back on your modules. Because it is your degree, not ours, and we do remember that.

So our own Josh Halliday, editor for www.injournalism.co.uk, is launching a chat for Europe at a more amenable hour. #CollegeJourn Europe will launch this Sunday 22nd March at 8pm GMT.

Josh said: “It’s  a great chance for those in journalism education who are either worried or excited about the state of journalism today to come along and see what others think.”

If you want to share some ideas for the discussion in advance, you can send any topic suggestions towards the #collegejourn hashtag on Twitter, to Josh directly or the deceptively named @florida_mike. To read more about Josh’s plans and the topics that might come up then take a read over at his blog.

The mission of #CollegeJourn is to provide a meaningful and resourceful forum of conversation for college journalists. University journalists, journalism professors, and journalism professionals, are all welcome. Josh is hoping to attract some big names in j-education to the opening debate, including Paul Bradshaw and Adrian Monck.

The chat takes place in Meebo. Put it in your diary now, and spread the word.

Saturday is a one day workshop focussing on documentary making, the role of the media, and environmental issues. This day will engage with topics through film showings, discussion and a news-making workshop, and “interrogate inconvenient untruths about climate change, explore the influence of the media, and ask some hard questions about development.” That’ll be my bit, then. It’s free for students, or otherwise very cheap, and there’s already 120 people signed up for the day, which also includes:

• Flush it and see! documentary film showing followed by debate
• Don’t Shout at the Telly North East workshop in which participants prepare a segment for the online programme WORLDbytes.
• Activism in the noughties, which explores what it means to be an ‘activist’ today

The Great Debate is in its 11th year now.  Supported by Economic and Social Research Council and Newcastle University, its aim is to open up debate around ‘education for sustainable development’, focusing on six topics: Energy generation, Genetic modification, Developing Countries, Climate Change, Sustainable Education (Education, education, education?) and ‘What does sustainability mean?’

Media researchers Nielsen Online says in a report that over two-thirds of web users worldwide take part in “member communities”, which include social networking site and blogs.

It’s even more popular than email, with one in every 11 minutes online being spent social networking and blogging.
Apparently a third of Facebook’s global audience is aged 35-49 and almost one quarter is over 50. In the UK if present trend continue then by mid-June there will be as many 35-49 year olds on Facebook as 18-34 year olds.

Even the relatively-new Twitter is beset by oldies, with 71 per cent of British users now over 35 and more than quarter aged 50-plus. Maybe Stephen Fry wasn’t so far away from the norm as the national papers seemed to think when they featured him twittering from a lift a few weeks ago.

But it’s you young people I feel sorry for. Come up with a good online idea, and what happens?  In this hyper-connected world people of all ages jump on the bandwagon and muscle their way to the front. And what started off as alternative becomes mainstream and then fuddy-duddy before you know what you are doing.

You have to keep your wits about you. Just imagine – if you’re not careful you’ll be chatting online with people who turn out to be the sort of naff adults who do the Birdie song at your divorced auntie’s second wedding. On behalf of all of you — Yuk!

Before the Hunt

1. Have a CV that shows the impact of what you’ve done.

Take this as an example. Which is the more impressive?

• Created Rocksonline at www.rocksmagazine.co.uk
• Created Rocksonline at www.rocksmagazine.co.uk, which boosted Rocks print edition readership by 10,000 a month

Hopefully you’ve gone for the second one. 95% of graduate CVs say what it is you’ve done, and what you’ve learnt from it, but only 5% show what quantifiable impact you’ve had on the business you work for. These are the ones that stand out. For help in making your CV stand out, use these templates we developed with a top research organisation. Templates 1, 2 and 3 are the most relevant for you now, but bookmark this page for future reference.

2. Have an online presence and portfolio of work that works

Journalism students should have an online portfolio of work and a personal profile on key sites such as a blog and Twitter account. And make sure it is working for you. That means it sells your skills well. We’ve already blogged here on six great student portfolio sites. For a list of student blogs you could begin to emulate, check out the Journalism.co.uk TNTJ blog network. And you should:

• Get yourself published on InJournalism.co.uk - editorial meetings 1pm, Mondays, in the Newsroom
• Buy your own URL, e.g. www.yourname.co.uk, and launch a portfolio site. This one, from level 2 student Charlotte, is exactly the thing you should be starting out with
• Get your hard copy portfolio in order — your best examples of published work well laid out
• Start up a blog, using blogger or Wordpress. Here are a couple of examples of great blogs from your Sunderland peers: Josh Halliday, Mike Carter, Scott Malthouse
• Cultivate your professional networks. So don’t just rely on Facebook, but get connecting on Delicious, LinkedIn and Wired Journalists to name a few.

3. Face that decision (you know, “I don’t know what I want to do“…)

It’s ok, you know. Some of the most creative, successful people never quite know what they want to do. Kate Adie, the Sunderland-born war reporter, never knew she wanted to be a journalist. What they do, however, is channel this into each new thing, so that this never becomes a blockage or obstacle for them. What you can do is start by using Template 5 from the Creative Choices site, to help you identify the right job for you.

However, you might want some advice first. In fact, the most important thing you can do right now is talk to as many people as possible to get as much advice and different views to help you work out where you’re at, and where you might want to go. That includes your tutors, careers advisors, online help, your parents, but perhaps not your friends who might be feeling the same thing. No need to get into a spiral of panic over a pint!

• How to decide what you want to do
• Career advice: choosing a career
• What do I want to do with my life???!

During the Hunt

There are a number of ways into the journalism industry. Now, there’s a lot of doom and gloom about the industry in general, particularly the regional press, and some of the shrinking down of even the bigger papers and publishers. BUT. You should also remember that the journalism industry today is vastly different from just newspapers and magzines. There are thousands of other places you can go to use your journalism skills, particularly online, but also in other sectors, such as the charity, campaigning and business sectors. In fact, these are sometimes better, quicker and more well paid entry points. So let’s look at some of the ways into the sector:

4. Placement to placement

As discussed in the Guardian this weekend, “While 76% of students believed internships increased their job prospects, of the 766 interviewed, only around a quarter had some work experience under their belt. More than a fifth said they would graduate with absolutely no work experience – not even a few shifts at the union bar.”

Much of the advice you hear from people already in the industry is that this is the only way into a job. Do enough placements, and one day you’ll be in the right place at the right time when a job comes up. This is great if you’ve got enough savings or rich parents, but not so good if you need to earn money. However, placements will look good on your CV, so do try to get as many as you can within your limits. And while you are there, make as good impression as possible — read the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss’s guide to getting the most out of your placements.

Or you could even combine a year out travelling with a work placement abroad. But placements are not the only way into the industry. There are others…

5. Be a big journalist fish in a small publication pond

One of the best and most successful way into the industry is to go via trade and b2b publications. No, they’re not as sexy as Cosmo or cocky as Loaded, but they are often smaller, which means you get to do a lot more a lot more quickly. Which means you could be deputy editor in two years, which gives you a great launchpad to cross over into newspapers or consumer magazines.

Or you might even love b2b – Cardiff graduate Kieran Long did, and he’s now editor of the Architect’s Journal. So, how do you get into b2b magazines (nb: b2b titles are very newsy, so good for news skills too)? Seek out the big b2b publishers, and see if they have any vacancies. People such as:

• Incisive Media
• Centaur Media
• Reed Business

For a full list, head to Magforum. Remember, it might be ok to send CVs to these places, or at least to get work placements from them.

6. And don’t forget contract publishers

These publish the big company magazines like Sky magazine, Sainsbury’s magazine etc. It’s ok to send off your CV to the Human Resources (HR) departments if they don’t have any current vacancies. Some of the major publishers include:

• The Redwood Publishing group
• Specialistuk
• Archant Dialogue
• Cedar

There are more — seek them out.

7. Think outside the journalism industry box

Long gone are the days where only newspapers and magazines hired journalists. Think, for example, of graduate Sam Butler. His first editorial job was with a press cutttings library. His second was with Adfero, a news-writing agency, who are always looking to hire journalists. His third was with Creative Choices, a careers site. His fourth is with Carers.org, a charity representing carers, as online editor.

The point is that not all editorial or journalism roles are now found in the ‘journalism’ industry. So where are these jobs advertised?

• If you want to work as an editor for a charity, then OneWorld Jobs or Charity Job is a good place to start
• How about editorial roles in environment?
• Or the wider third sector?
• And then there’s ethical jobs.co.uk.

So think more widely. Sign up to the email alerts from these other job sites. Some of these jobs may be communications or information roles, but you, as journalism graduates, are very well placed to get these ones too, and they involve a lot of writing and editing.

8. Graduate Recruitment

There are a number of specific editorial graduate recruitment companies, and some that are general recruitmenrt agencies but that also have editorial roles. A recruitment agency gets paid by the employer to find the right person for their job, so you, as the employee, are doing them a favour by registering with them. But it’ll be competitive, so make sure you know what types of jobs they offer, and if they’re right for you:

• PFJ Editorial
• PFJ Graduate Recruitment Company
• Graduate Jobs
• GradJobs

9. I’m not going to list all the job sites…

…but there are plenty of them, such as Journalism.co.uk, PPAJobs, Jobs4Journalists, Holdthefrontpage, CareersUK and of course the Guardian etc. Go and find them. There are also the big recruitment sites, such as Monster and Fish4Jobs. Add your CVs to these.

Dirty Secrets

10. Many jobs are not advertised (Or, “It’s not what you know… so…”)

It is true to some extent that it is who you know, in the end, that helps you along to your first (and second) job. Many jobs are already earmarked for internal or personally-known candidates. But that’s even more reason why you should be cultivating your networks through social and professional media networks. Get out to events. Get along to online webinars. Also, write/blog about journalism. If you want some tips on how to start, read Paul Bradshaw’s blog, or look at some leading student blog sites such as Greg Linch, If you can prove to potential employers that you are interested in the industry–not just the writing, but the business, the advertising, the way the industry is growing and surviving, then that gives you another step up.

11. Be careful about the first job you take

Your first job can set you on a particular path which sometimes becomes difficult to get off from. So work out where that job can take you before accepting. For example, YES, do take an editorial assistant or library or press cuttings role, where you are in the editorial team and can be seen as enthusiastic and in the right place when jobs come up. But, NO, do not take media sales, marketing or executive roles where you might be working for a publisher, but outside of the editorial team. One, you won’t get spotted, and two, when you go for editorial roles, they’ll wonder why you went for a media/sales role in the first place.

12.  Don’t get discouraged

Back to that opening — this is the toughest graduate market for 20 years. But it’s also one of the most exciting time for working in the industry, and people within the industry–your potential bosses–want enthusiastic and driven people. So take a read of Kevin Donlin’s still great 2003 article, and what it means to:

1. Seek the Path Less Followed
2. Network Backwards
3. Reject Rejection; and
4. Networking Begins at home

What are your experiences so far? Comment here, let us know, and we can respond with more information for you through the J&PR blog. Good luck.

Team members may undertake a variety of roles throughout the year, some examples of which are given in the advert. The average time commitment is about 1-2 hours per week but may be more on some occasions. Great opportunity for people to gain press/media experience for their CVs but without having to pay for travel.

He would say that, though: Future has been selling a successful 1.7m magazines a month through the recession with its hobby and geek-lad magazines. As written elsewhere, you could call 2008 the Year of the Niche as people look to do things at home, cheaply, and the things they love most during the economic downturn.

Others were not quite so confident, for two main reasons. Louise White, Group Marketing Director at B2B publisher Incisive Media was clear that the publishing business model was broken and needed fixing: classified and recruitment revenue was dead, a sentiment echoed by a number of editors in the b2b market. And second, Ashley Norris, founder of commercial blogging network Shiny Media, emphasized the new generation of media consumers just aren’t in the habit of buying a magazine, or buying media in general. That meant organised packages of content from one media product–such as a magazine–was at an end. “The world has changed, guys.”

But from the panel came six reasons why magazines as brands, whether print or online, do have a future:

1. Andrew Davies of idiomag, the music content personalisation site, emphasized the possibilities for each unique user building their own magazine of content through companies, like his, developing software sophisticated enough to be ultra-niche; and the advertising opportunities that provided were unrivalled for buiding consumer relationships.

2. Mike Soutar, founder of Shortlist Media and “pioneers” in quality free magazine content, was confident that print magazines had found a model–brand-to-hand distribution and outsourced costs, keeping magazine teams very small–that would mean print magazines could continue to do what other forms of media just could not: be there where a screen wasn’t, or where people didn’t want them to be.

3. Sarah Clegg, chief executive of John Menzies Digital and provider of magazinesondemand.co.uk, delivering digital editions of top brands, believed they had passed the tipping point and, critically, persuaded publishers that they couldn’t charge their normal cover price for a digital magazine that had no transport, printing and retail costs attached to it.

4. Ashley Norris of Shiny saw a future of 20-30 blogs in a network doing the work–and replacing–the work of 2-3 magazines, and brokering creative sponsorship between brands and social media as central to the business model for producing great experiences online.

5. Simon Wear of Future, perhaps the most positive and persuasive, believed that his magazine company would be growing as they had a) remembered they weren’t software companies, and also b) had remembered how to write realy strong, probing news around their niche interest sectors, whichs translates well online, and meant their nice-to-have content had found its way back to need-to-have status.

6. Finally, the most hopeful and most sceptical at the same time, Louise White of Incisive said their b2b titles were not magazines any more, but information providers that found their way into their audiences’ work flow–”platform agnostic” content that was as important to be on someone’s Blackberry than online or in print.

The new editorial group is holding a meeting this Monday at 1pm in the Newsroom (now also the InJournalism room) for people wanting to get a bit more involved with the magazine. Look out for Rupinder, Zoe, Alfie and Josh who will make you an offer you can’t refuse. They’re looking for people interested in arts, news, features, sports, music, and lots of things they’ve probably not thought of yet. Don’t know about InJournalism yet? Then check out www.injournalism.co.uk.

If you want to be a contributor, then they will be holding a meeting every Monday from the 23rd Feb so you can come aliong, meet people and get involved, even if it’s just sending in the odd story or image every now and then.

It’s good for your CV, you get an online portfolio, and it’s good for working as a journalism team developing what could be a great publication.