Wannabe Hacks

Agony Uncle column (25 May)

Read More

The US-based Twitter accounts you should be following

The United States is all the rage these days. Everyone is doing it. The Daily Mail and the Guardian included.

We’ve got an election coming up, Laurie Penny nearly got hit by a car (and saved by Ryan Gosling OMG SWOON), there’s a row going on in Florida about Trayvon and we’re still in a war abroad.

Twitter’s got a funny way of making you feel connected to somewhere even if you’re an ocean away, so if you’re a budding hack and amerophile - these accounts are for you to follow! You can also follow for other reasons such as:

• wanting to see tweets which don’t add unnecessary letters
• a general interest journalism in the states
• looking to even out your follower/following ratio
• you’re bored

Here are my suggestions (and their Twitter page descriptions). They range from useful to generally stupid. @muckrack is especially useful. @romenesko is great as well, especially for media gossip and industry news.

@IRE_NICAR

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting.

@wjchat

#wjchat is a chat for web journalists on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. PDT. We talk about all things content, technology, ethics, & business of journalism on the web.

@TweetsofOld

We attempt to reveal the lives of our predecessors through the tweets of yesteryear: Real one-line brevities from old newspapers, as they appeared—or close.

@muckrack

Following journalists on Twitter since 2009.
For journalists:http://muckrack.com/journalists
For PR:http://muckrack.com/pros

@romenesko (great for media gossip and industry news)

Visit JimRomenesko.com
http://jimromenesko.com

@NiemanLab

The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University: Trying to figure out the future of news.

@jayrosen_nyu

I teach journalism at NYU, direct the Studio 20 program there, critique the press and try to grok new media. I don’t do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter.

@foiaproject (DO YOU LIKE PUBLIC DOCUMENTS?! I DO!!)

Freeing information through public accountability
http://foiaproject.org

@beakeringnews

@BreakingNews meep meeeeeeep meep meeeeeeeep meeeeeep meeeep. Meeeeep meep @pgengler

@ethanklapper

Social Media Editor, @HuffPostPol at @HuffingtonPost. Formerly at@nationaljournal and @10000Words. @AmericanU alumnus.

The life of a sub

Last week I had possibly the craziest week of my life. I was working with some other students on my course to create a 16 page tabloid newspaper to promote Pits n Pots, a local politics website in Stoke-on-Trent.

It all started when Charlie Burgess of The Journalism Foundation came in to do one our lectures. At the end, he said he had an opportunity for us to create this newspaper and anyone who was interested should come along to a meeting after the lecture.

Knowing how insanely busy my life is at the moment with Wannabe Hacks, dissertation work, other uni work and trying to have something of a social life, I decided to go along to the meeting and offer to design a page or two and that would be that. It would look good on my CV without me having to do too much or it taking up too much of my time. Things never go quite as you expect though, and by the end of the meeting I’d become the chief sub editor. I don’t think I’ll ever know quite how that happened.

Life as a sub was absolutely mental. It was very stressful and I feel like I spent most of the week wanting to strangle reporters. This wasn’t helped by the fact that our strong team of about 15 fell to a team of four for most of the week. 

I spent hours making decisions on font styles and sizes, a colour theme and generally what we wanted to make the paper look like. And then I spent hours going through pages that other people had created making sure they had followed the style.

When we eventually got copy in I had to trawl through it, correct any grammar or spelling mistakes and make sure nothing we said would get us into legal trouble. And then I had to cut it down to make it fit into the hole we had on the page. 

And then came the real challenge. I had to make sure we didn’t have any widows or orphans within the text. This is where you have a paragraph that ends on the first line of a column or starts on the last line of a column. Anyone who has ever done any form of subbing will tell you what a nightmare this can be. Especially when to get rid of one widow or orphan causes you to create two more. There is genuinely no joy that comes close to matching the joy of getting all the copy to fit into the page properly.

One of my least favourite things about being a sub was writing headlines. Trying to find something that is witty and intelligent but also tells the story in a few words and fits into the gap you have at the top of the story is no mean feat.

So, after a week as a chief sub, I have a new found respect for all subs everywhere. I think they do an amazing job that’s definitely not easy to do. In fact, it’s bloody hard. So, to subs everywhere, I doff my cap.

Oh, and in case you’re interested, here’s the front page from the newspaper. Let me know what you think on twitter @wannabehacks

Top tips for your journalism Masters interview

It’s interview season with lots of wannabe hacks setting off to City, Cardiff, Goldsmiths and beyond nervously clutching their portfolios. If you’re not sure how to prepare for your journalism MA interview, never fear because we have some tips.

On Monday we asked current journalism postgrads to tweet us the questions they were asked at interview. For the full collection of #interviewQs check our Storify:

5 top tips for preparation:

1. Read the papers and watch the news THAT MORNING. You will get quizzed on current events, from global politics to pop culture.
2. They are going to ask you what newspapers and magazines you read, and who your favourite journalists are. Make sure you have answers.
3. Similarly, they will ask you why you want to do a journalism masters. Make sure you can answer that convincingly and realistically.
4. Get a friend or relative to help you pick apart your CV and portfolio with a critical eye. Think of how you will explain any holes or contradictions.
5. It sounds cheesy, but be yourself. Be the best version of yourself, yes, but don’t say anything you don’t believe. You will be interviewed by journalists – they can sniff out inauthenticity.

And for a final word of advice from Hannah, check out the video. Best of luck!

Website update

So that big fancy launch didn’t go exactly as we had hoped.

Due to various problems our new site has been having trouble loading and often crashing as we’re sure many of you will have noticed.

For that we apologise but assure you that no one is more frustrated about it than we are.

We want our new site to have all the great features we promised you and to facilitate debate more than ever but until it’s working properly we have decided it is best to take the new site down.

That DOES NOT mean we are disappearing.

We will still be operating as normal, publishing content, producing a newsletter and chatting on Twitter and Facebook. The only difference will be the site.

So we hope you will continue to be patient with us, your support is always appreciated.

We hope it won’t be long until we can give you the site we wanted.

In the meantime keeping reading and commenting on the content, chatting with us on Twitter, sending in all those brilliant guest posts and treating Wannabe Hacks in the same way as you have always done.

The site might be down, but we’re not going anywhere.

Thanks,

The Hacks

View high resolution

futurejournalismproject:

The US ranks 47 on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index

Coming in at the top two spots are Finland and Norway.

Coming just before the US: Tawain, Comoros and South Korea.

Just after: Argentina, Romania and Latvia.

Via Reporters Without Borders:

The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.

@jonoffredo talks about the classifieds and looking for an apartment

View high resolution

There will be a few journalism related prizes on offer for the winners in our Guest Post awards too but this prize makes it worth nominating your guest post surely? A brilliant hoody courtesy of http://www.tekkers.co.uk - should come in handy what with all those windy winter weeks ahead of us… 

Send your nominations to hacks@wannabehacks.co.uk and we’ll be making a shortlist for both categories next week. 

If newspapers were run like CDBaby.com « Adam Westbrook :: online video & entrepreneurial journalism →

Why Digital Talent Doesn’t Want To Work At Your Company | Fast Company →

I couldn’t agree with this more