Digital News Journalist

At the beginning of February, I began a job at Sports Illustrated’s website SI.com as part of their new video team. I chalk this up to a small miracle (and a possible mistake in HR), but the people here at Digital News Journalist don’t seem to buy into my aberration theory. They asked me to share some tips for anyone aspiring to their own small miracle, so here are a few things I’ve learned along the way:

• Care. There is nothing more important to your success at journalism—at anything—than caring. You don’t need to love every assignment you’re given, but you do need to want the product to reflect positively on you. If you don’t care, figure out why. Maybe you don’t like the topic (so you know not to look for jobs at places that focus on that topic). Maybe you aren’t comfortable with the medium (either find a different one to work in or practice until you are comfortable). Learning what you don’t like or care about is useful information for you.

• Use what you know. You probably consume more media than any other generation in history. If you stop and think about it, you know exactly what works and doesn’t work in journalism. There’s a reason you’ll stick around to read one site’s article lede-to-kicker but click off another site without scrolling down the page. When you’re the one creating, generate the former.
  
• Words like lede and kicker are an annoyance (as demonstrated above). Use them only to get through classes or newsrooms, never in your daily life.

• Execution counts. If you’re building a site, pitching a business idea, editing a video, whatever—how you pull it off matters. Sure, good content always trumps bad content, but good content coupled with style blows away good content with a bland presentation. The fonts you choose for title placards matter. The color scheme of your website matters. The timing of the edits in your video matter. Consider all aspects.

• Push boundaries. It’s good to know the rules. It’s bad to be constricted by them. There’s a reason so many people have read Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra has a Cold” and it’s not because it was more of the same.

• Reach out to the people you look up to. I don’t like calling it networking—that makes it sound like work and a little cheap. If you are interested in something, reaching out to people who are good at that isn’t work as much as a desire to learn (social networks make this easier than ever). And follow up with them often. In my experience, they remember being where you are now.

• Immerse yourself in the best. Before every video shoot I went on, I would go to the site MediaStorm. The work there is visually appealing and powerful, and I wanted that in my mind when I went out. Find whatever you think is best and draw from it often.

• Procrastinate–sometimes. Okay, I’ve never seen anyone prescribe procrastination before.  But I have yet to meet a journalist who doesn’t wait until an hour before deadline to start pushing hard. Some traditions should live on—even in this “shifting journalistic environment.”

• Now stop procrastinating and go create something. Journalism’s shifting I hear. Be the ones that pace the change.