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.

Stretching Your Skill Set

As writers, sure we write. Most days, we write, edit, write, write and then write some more. But as the journalism field changes, it's important to think outside the writing box and develop new skills.

I'm talked about the importance of learning social media before. I still think that's crucial. But the more I think about where we're headed the more I think video is going to be another must for the journalist. Several months ago, one of my clients surprised me with a request to interview a couple sources while being filmed. The video, much to my chagrin, landed on the homepage for an entire day. I avoided the homepage as much as possible.

Truth be told it wasn't so horrible. I supposed it could have been a lot worse. But I couldn't help but think if I had filmed even one YouTube video before that interview, things would have gone a lot more smoothly for me.

My goal this week... I plan on spending the rest of the working week and the weekend filming some videos and then figuring out how to splice them, move parts around and get an acceptable final project. To help me laugh at myself and this project I've decided to wear a goofy hat while doing this. At least it will give me a chuckle if all I end up doing is talking into a camera for a couple hours. And then in the future if a client asks am I comfortable with video I can honestly say yes.

What other things are you doing to expand your skill set and make yourself more marketable as a writer and a freelancer?