I’ve picked out three points to look at in detail, they’re of particular relevance to new journalists:

1. targeting your content to a niche market
2. using technology to help you
3. why being ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough.

1. Target your content to a niche market

“Trust is central to it working” – Simon Perry, Ventnor Blog

Simon Perry from Ventnor blog set up a site to cover news of the Isle of Wight. It’s been going over five years, has won several Talk About Local awards and is fiercely supported by the community.

Simon’s experience shows that if you take the time to cater your content to the audience, they’ll stick with you. Ask them what they want. Accept criticism and try to make your site the most trusted place to be.

Learning point: Ask for feedback. Listen to what people say about your site and make changes if you need to.

2. Use technology to help you

“Journalists should always be mobile” – Ilicco Elia, Reuters

Ilicco Elia is the Head of Mobile at Reuters Media. He admits to owning a lot of mobile phones and being a technology nut. He shared a great story about an embedded war journalist using a mobile phone to record video, audio, take pictures and send them back to the UK after his ‘proper’ equipment was damaged.

Ilicco’s story shows how journalists use technology to help tell the story. You’re not out in the field telling the story because you have a smartphone – you’d be out there anyway. Technology helps you tell the story in pictures, sound and text.

Learning point: You’re a journalist, go out and get stories. Use simple technology to help you, not to take over the story. Sometimes just a pen and paper will do!

Hannah Waldram – works as a Cardiff Beatblogger for the Guardian and also set up a hyperlocal site for Bournville, Birmingham.

Hannah is a great example of an enterprising young journalist. After graduating she decided to set up her own website to cover news where she lived. She simply set up her site and off she went – on her bike as it happens. Her ability to get to grips with tools such as a smartphone, free image manipulation and web publishing software as well as a knack for using open data websites means she is able to report efficiently without an office.

How does Hannah work? Take a peek inside her roving reporter’s toolkit.

Learning point: You should be confident in several ways to tell a story – writing, pictures, video and audio. Aim to be fantastic in at least one of these areas to stand out.

“Oh. And it’s fun!” – Simon Perry, Ventnor Blog

What is obvious is that the people working in online journalism love it. They don’t use video because they have to – they use it because it helps to tell the story.

If you’re a student journalist or have recently graduated think about setting up a site to do with one of your interests. Whether you cover knitting, sport or hyperlocal news – you can use your phone to help you and you’ll be working with the same equipment as the professionals.

Be passionate about your subject and tell the story the best way you can. Passion breeds success and there’s never been a better time to get stuck in.

On election night 2010, one student at the Department of Journalism at the University of Sheffield discovered a story. Through a combination of speed, contacts and Twitter we made her story go national – and this is how we did it.

Let me set the scene

The journalism postgraduates at Sheffield University work together for one week in the second semester to produce news output of the highest standard possible. I help the web MAs with the website – how to populate with content and organise it, how to attract an audience and keep the site fresh. What I love about this week is that the adrenaline is flowing, stress levels skyrocket and the output is absolutely top drawer.

Output from the students

Print: Two editions of a newspaper (Thursday and Friday)
Broadcast: Hourly radio news bulletins plus an extended final show and two TV bulletins (Thursday and Friday)
Magazine: Work for several weeks beforehand to produce a 60-page magazine
Web: Liaise with all the groups to put the best content online on the JUS News website, as well as populating the site with local, national and sport news. The website is also able to stream the news bulletins and showcase the TV packages.

Spotting the story

Print student Anna Macnaughton noticed a friend’s tweet saying she’d been waiting in a queue for two hours to vote. Anna decided to head over to the polling station to investigate. She had her journalistic instincts firmly engaged:

• Is this new?
• Is it interesting?
• Do I want to know more – and are there several points of view I can gather?

Anna popped into the multimedia newsroom (where the web team were stationed) to pick up a camera and tell us where she was going. We decided to run the story and Joey Close (the day’s web editor) started writing it up from tweets he found using the search function. Anna promised to call us with more details once she was at the polling station and rushed off, tiny kodak video camera in hand.

Just a few minutes later, Anna called up with more details and to let us know she had pictures and video. Joey was able to file the first version of the story, which he pushed out to Twitter using the @JUS_News account.

Knowing who to look for on Twitter

Neal Mann, Sky News journalist, had been in the department the day before to help out. Neal graduated from the department a few years ago and we’d spent a few minutes catching up. We talked about how Twitter is today’s essential tool for journalists and how helpful it is to him as a journalist as Sky strive to be first with the news.

Knowing Neal (and Sky) would be interested in the story, I sent a tweet that we would have video from Ranmoor polling station shortly and were they interested? (Incidentally, I’d seen Neal say he was going to get some sleep as he was on shift in the early hours of the morning, so Broadcast Course leader Marie Kinsey suggested we tweet Sky journalist Niall Paterson.)

A few minutes later we had a message from Hazel, Sky News online journalist/producer asking for video/pictures.

Bingo. Once we had uploaded our fresh pictures and video we sent the information to Hazel. And once Sky were running our stuff, other news agencies saw it and wanted it!

Other news agencies come running

Soon enough we had spotted our story (and several incoming links) on the Times Online, the BBC, Channel4 and the New Statesman (see the screengrabs below).

By this time, a couple more student journalists had gone to join Anna with a stills camera and video camera to get better quality content. Reuters paid the student who took the camera footage £150 for using her video and picture agency Picture It Now used the images taken by Colin Shek.

So, how DO you break a national news story?

Assuming you are in the right place at the right time:

• Have a smartphone that can take pictures, video, audio, even type up text
• Be quick! Others might be doing as you do so your aim is to file first
• Be connected – follow journalists. Who will want your story? Is it local, national or special interest?
• Use Twitter to tap into the contacts in your network quickly
• Be trustworthy: Report the facts, don’t omit anything – and did I mention checking your facts?

We also hashtagged all our tweets (whether from our own accounts or the @JUS_News one) with #jusnews to help others following us see what new content we were putting live and also to cross promote the other output the students were producing. See the #jusnews tweets.

Further reading: In the students’ own words:

Anna Macnaughton: Blog: Getting the story at Hallam polling station

Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy: People denied the right to vote at Sheffield Hallam polling station: link round-up

1. What skills are essential for up-and-coming online journalists/web writers? E.g. writing, image manipulation
2. What should they be able to do by the time they come for an interview? E.g. re-write a press release, upload into a CMS
3. Do they need HTML? Dreamweaver?
4. Is metadata and tagging still important?
5. How much awareness do they need about the web? E.g. content syndication, SEO, accessibility, usability, technical/how websites work
6. Where is online journalism going in the next few years? E.g. the role of online in terms of the decline of newspapers, innovation and who is driving it (developers, journalists, users), citizen journalists

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

This post was originally published by Christine on Mon, 04/20/2009