Thursday, August 20, 2009

A Journalism Power Shift is Underway

Those of us who are freelancers and social media addicts know the one thing imperative to getting into and surviving in this business is building a personal brand. Is it going to happen overnight? No, of course not. Will you spend months working on it and still have little to show for it, quiet possibly. But like every idea it needs to start somewhere.

According to the State of the Media Report for 2009, which is put out by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, there is a power shift going on. The power is moving from institutions to individuals. The report states: “Through search, email, blogs, social media and more, consumers are gravitating to the work of individual writers and voices, and away somewhat from institutional brand. Journalists who have left legacy news organizations are attracting funding to create their own websites... It would be a mistake to overstate the movement at this point. But for a few journalists at least, there are signs of a new prospect: individual journalists, funded by a mix of sources, offering expert coverage to many places.”

With this in mind, we all need to spend a little time daily thinking about how we can grow our personal brand. What little thing can we do daily or what larger things can we try weekly? For each person it will be a different answer but no less important. What are you going to do?

I'm personally going to work on more frequent blog updates as well as more interaction with my fellow freelancers in the blogging community.

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