One in 13,000

2 years, 73 cover letters, 10 interviews and still unemployed

2011-07-31T22:01:00.002-04:00

Message to the White House last fall, on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building. (photo by me, via cellphone) This month, I marked the two-year anniversary of being out of work. As the date approached, though, I felt things finally were looking up. I had three hot prospects on the line: one, an employer with whom I had already had a face-to-face interview (and had moved on to the "critique

Gotta get me a smartphone

2011-06-21T20:45:00.000-04:00

Some say the reign of the paper résumé will come to an end. Maybe. If so, its overthrow surely was sped by job-seekers as creative as this guy: QR CODE - Content-rich Resume from Victor petit on Vimeo. (h/t: Dan Schawbel)

Back for the weekend: a passel of journalism reads

2011-06-11T19:22:00.250-04:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) I know, I know: I've fallen behind on weekend reads. I could offer up numerous excuses, but won't bore you. Instead, on to things you'd hate to have missed: "FCC Report Recommends Targeting Government Ads Toward Local News" (Nieman Journalism Lab): The big news for the week was the release -- finally -- of the Federal Communications Commission's report on how the

Weekend read: Reporters as 'maestros'

2011-05-21T20:01:00.153-04:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) It's the weekend, so pull up a chair and settle in for some interesting reads: "Chapter Nine: Managing Digital" (Columbia Journalism Review): Somewhere during the course of the week, it was suggested that this chapter of the new report on digital journalism from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism would be particularly eye-opening. And it is. Consider this

When job postings baffle

2011-05-20T09:53:00.069-04:00

I've seen an occasional oddball posting as I've trolled various company and journalism job boards, but never one like this with a list of "physical demands": (Click to enlarge) It's for a job as a digital content creator at a radio station, and many of the requirements sought of candidates include the usual variety: 3-5 years reporting/writing/editing experience Proficiency in Photoshop,

On creating a first-class news experience

2011-05-15T21:24:00.092-04:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Here are a couple of end-of-the-weekend quick hits: "Business Class: Freemium for News?" (Information Architects): In the how-do-we-fund-the-news discussion comes this idea: offer a user experience comparable to flying first class vs. coach. That means visually attractive web pages and additional perks that enhance the experience enough that people will pay for it.

77 cents: Recession spreads pay-gap pain

2011-05-08T21:03:00.144-04:00

Chart from Center for American Progress report,"Not Working: Unemployment Among Married Couples" (click to enlarge) The 2007-09 Great Recession often has been referred to as a "mancession" due to the cutbacks and job losses seen in industries populated by men. But now comes word that we all soon could be paying a price for the wage gap that long has plagued women in the workplace because the

Of souvenirs, PR and Twitter: Read!

2011-05-07T20:57:00.172-04:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Time to catch up on some weekend reading: "Newspapers as Souvenirs" (Huffington Post): You gotta love the sentiment here of the newspaper as witness to history. The big, big story, of course, was the death of Osama bin Laden, and -- once more -- newspapers were in demand: as souvenirs of the day's heart-thumping news. (If only that were the case for print every day.

Jobs picture: Still tough out there

2011-05-06T19:27:00.168-04:00

Career-help display, Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield, Mass. (via library's Flickr account) Today's uptick in the April jobs number notwithstanding, it's interesting to note that this Forbes career how-to on cover letters, posted in late March, is still gaining clicks. When I first stumbled on it Wednesday, the clicks were just above 12,700; today it's up another 500 to more than

No room for paid journalists in hyperlocal space?

2011-04-18T23:14:00.002-04:00

An exchange on the website Street Fight (click to enlarge). So there I was, reading through what looked to be a promising interview about the evolution of a hyperlocal site, when this question was offered: Does it make sense to spend money on professional journalists to create hyperlocal content? And this was the answer: "Well, we’re definitely pegging the needle on the other side of that.

Mobile, hyperlocal, Twitter: Read!

2011-04-15T22:24:00.001-04:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Hooray for the weekend! Time to read. "Ready for the Mobile Ad Revolution?" (Reflections of a Newsosaur): Alan Mutter, in a piece for Editor & Publisher, offers a look at some of the mobile technology that currently seems so very Buck Rogers. Yet for all the gee-whiz, "the true power of mobile advertising is its ability to put the right ad in front of the right

When "staff" writing really isn't

2011-04-14T10:29:00.003-04:00

One of the Johnny Depp pirate movies. AARRGGGGHH!! It's the sound of my frustration and irritation, not my inner pirate, at the job listings I continue to see that devalue professional writers. Take this one posted the other day on a LinkedIn writers' group under the headline "Staff Writing Positions Available." A weblink takes you to the Staff Writer Application, which lists these "minimum

Women score a few jobs in shrinking newsrooms

2011-04-11T14:05:00.003-04:00

(Click to enlarge) I wrote around this time last year about the annual newsroom census released by the American Society of News Editors and how women had fared over the decade. This year, the ASNE numbers show, women gained a few jobs (180) over 2010, but are still way off the totals seen in 2001. In fact, the number of women in the newsroom (15,360) is down some 27 percent (5,702) from a

Weekend read: Don't forget the journalism

2011-04-10T21:45:00.001-04:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Time to squeeze in a quick end-of-weekend reading list: "Product First!" ((Re)- Structuring Journalism): I like the caution flag waved here by longtime journalist Reg Chua at the new slogan "Digital First," as championed by John Paton of Journal Register Co.: If it's just shorthand "for posting news faster and faster to the Web," says Chua, "it doesn’t really

Infographic: the writing process

2011-03-31T20:45:00.002-04:00

Here's a fun graphic posted by British science writer Ed Yong to his Not Exactly Rocket Science blog that explains how he goes about writing a feature story (click on it to enlarge): (By Ed Yong, Not Exactly Rocket Science) Yong says he plotted his level of "enjoyment" in the task on the vertical axis; time is along the horizontal. Can you relate to it? Although Yong has a day job and does

'Bloodletting' may be done, but newspaper hiring still slow

2011-03-28T17:53:00.002-04:00

I haven't made my way through the full "State of the News Media 2011" report, but was buoyed by this sentence: "In newspapers, the bloodletting seemed to have eased somewhat." Yet here's an accompanying graphic from the report, released this month by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (click to enlarge): Yes, that sentence had more to it: "After losing close to a

Weekend read: Journalism, economy better or worse?

2011-03-20T20:53:00.000-04:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Items you don't want to have missed: "The State of the News Media 2011" (Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism): In its latest findings on the news industry, Pew says things are looking up a bit: revenue is recovering somewhat and layoffs have lessened. But Pew detects "a more fundamental challenge to journalism": that with each iteration of

Can't get a job? Then you must not have one already

2011-03-07T17:08:00.001-05:00

Let's hear a "Hallelujah!" from the congregation on this one: that employers seeking only currently employed applicants for advertised openings may need to rethink that strategy. You probably know this as the need-a-job-to-get-a-job maxim. By any name, it stinks. But whether it's illegal is not so black and white, as you'll see from this segment that aired today on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street":

Weekend reading: Can hyperlocal work?

2011-03-06T22:14:00.000-05:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Here's the latest installment of things worth reading: "Hyperlocal Heartbreak: Why Haven't Neighborhood News Technologies Worked Out?" (ReadWriteWeb): With Aol's deal to acquire neighborhood news aggregator Outside.in as a backdrop, author Marshall Kirkpatrick tries to figure out why various attempts to develop sites in this niche have yet to work. Is it an idea

Economy's improvement in eye of beholder

2011-03-04T21:07:00.000-05:00

The friendly folks at the state Labor Department sent a letter my way that offers this encouraging assessment: that I have been unemployed for so long (nearly, gulp, 20 months) that "your prospects for finding work in your customary occupation are classified as 'not good'." (Sigh!) The boldface, which is theirs, then continues to inform me that I now must look for suitable work, which is defined

Two years later, stories of survival from 'The Rocky'

2011-02-27T17:47:00.000-05:00

It's a video that still leaves me choked up: the farewell to the Rocky Mountain News: Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo. It's now two years since the Denver paper closed -- a casualty of the Great Recession and the demise of publishing's traditional revenue model (ads on a printed page to reach the masses). To mark the anniversary, John Temple, who was The Rocky's editor and

Weekend reading: Experiments in journalism

2011-02-26T20:30:00.007-05:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Let's get right to it: "As TBD Staff Tweet News of their Layoffs, a Look at the Rise & Fall of Innovative D.C. News Site" (Poynter): Poynter's Mallary Jean Tenore offers a timeline on the unexpected and surprising reorganization of TBD, a Web-only news site in Washington, D.C., that had been hailed as a new-models-for-journalism experiment. Launched by the folks who

Weekend read: looking back, ahead on journalism

2011-02-20T16:58:00.000-05:00

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423) Time to catch-up on worthwhile reading: "Historic Changes in the News Business" (The Atlantic): Former foreign affairs journalist Peter Osnos uses the announcement of the Aol-Huffington Post merger to take inventory of the past couple of years in journalism -- the bankruptcies, the nonprofit initiatives, the "fire sales" -- and concludes that "history, I predict,