Tips on landing freelancing jobs at newspapers

(This post first appeared in The Independent Journalist, the freelancing blog of the Society for Professional Journalists.)

Thanks to the economy — or maybe no thanks to it — the market for freelance writers has grown exponentially this past year. America spent much of 2010 pulling itself out of recession, and though that offered hope for a broad rebound entering 2011 publications and corporations that once had large writing staffs still opted to downsize and turn to contract work to save money.

What many freelancers may not realize is that newspapers are among the top enterprises making this turn. Newspapers, of course, suffered through substantial layoffs in 2010 and may yet in the new year. Still, they have print and electronic pages to fill and the pressure is great on the few people remaining in the industry to continue doing that job. What's more, veteran print journalists are under other pressure from non-profit and "hyper local" journalism models to remain relevant, vibrant and competitive despite diminishing resources.So, while looking around for new markets, consider calling the local newspaper to ask if it's willing to farm out one or two or more writing assignments. But before calling or writing an editor, do a few things:

Expect to start small — Any aspirations of uncovering another Watergate-size scandal should stay in a drawer; rarely do first-time newspaper contributors receive a big investigative project to start, regardless of experience. The early assignments will be small — low-level government meetings, high school sporting events, etc. — to help editors determine a freelancer's dependability, writing skill and ability to accept criticism. Believe me, not even seasoned journalists shine in all of these areas, but being amenable is key to getting more assignments.

Expect the pay to be small, if at all — Typical pay ranges between $25 and $50 per story, with three-digit sums possible for feature pieces after a freelancer has a body of work under the newspaper's masthead. Sometimes, however, newspapers will propose first-time assignments without compensation but dangle a contract if they are impressed with the results. Keep in mind that assignments may not be frequent or fulsome enough to constitute steady income.

Know the value of deadlines — Newspaper and online journalism are a fast-paced, get-it-done-now businesses that do not suffer people who miss deadlines. If an editor says a story has to be completed and on his desk or in his e-mail inbox by a certain time, get it in well before that time if possible. And if that's not possible, stay in touch with the editor to explain the situation and ask for guidance; they can be understanding when the situation calls for it. But missing a deadline — just one, even — can undermine a writer's credibility and make it that much harder to receive additional assignments.

Read the newspaper — This may sound like a no-brainer, but in fact newspapers often hear from hopeful writers pitching ideas that lack a local story peg, ideas that already were printed in some form, or ideas that amount to writers talking about themselves instead of talking to other people. Take time to carefully read either the print or online version of the newspaper (preferably both) and study several editions. Newspapers, like magazines, have writing styles and subjects of particular interest to their audiences; know what these are to have intelligent conversations with assignment editors.

David Sheets is a sports editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com, and president of SPJ's St. Louis Pro chapter. Reach him by e-mail at dsheets@post-dispatch.com, on Twitter at @DKSheets, or on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Crowdsourcing: What it is, how it works

(This entry first appeared on Net Worked, the digital media blog of the Society for Professional Journalists.)

Technology's impact on American society the past decade has been tremendous. We can communicate and interact with each other easier than ever — technically speaking. Amid this progress, however, is a heap of new terminology some of us are only now beginning to understand.

The burgeoning list of terms is too long to dwell on here in one post, but elements of that list are poised to become day-to-day jargon during the next decade, and one of them is "crowdsourcing," a word believed to have appeared first in Wired magazine almost five years ago and now readily on the lips of anyone who spends much time building social networks.

Crowdsourcing amounts to what's called a portmanteau — two distinct terms blended in form and meaning to create a third. In this case, the words "crowd" and "outsource" were combined to underscore the narrowing gap between amateurs and professionals due to shared, inexpensive technology. Now, thanks largely to the ubiquity of non-wired and portable networks, professionals in assorted fields can solicit answers to problems from whole groups of people at once and maybe tap a collective wisdom not easily discerned by questioning one person at a time.

A form of crowdsourcing has been used to try solving complex math problems, troubleshoot software, edit literature, search for missing persons, monitor international borders and fund a Broadway play. One blogger even tried it to drum up paint color selections for the inside of her mother's house.

Journalists, too, are warming to the idea of crowdsourcing to help them report the news. As reported in Editor & Publisher, the technique was applied by the Washington Post at the rally by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert last month by having rally participants connect through a beta website to share information. The nonprofit, Minnesota-based MinnPost.com has used crowdsourcing to sift for government fraud, among other things.

Meanwhile, the Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer and the online-only ProPublica and St. Louis Beacon are among the news-gathering organizations using something called the Public Insight Network, a sourcing service affiliated with American Public Media that maintains a large network of experts on a variety of subjects.

Of course, two heads, or for that matter 2,000, are not always better than one, what with the potential for inaccuracy or unreliability inherent in an uncontrolled group. Thus comes the distinction between "bounded" crowdsourcing and "unbounded" crowdsourcing. With the first kind, as exemplified by the Public Insight Network, the "crowd" possesses defined boundaries and its members have specific professional skills. The second kind relies mainly on opinion and the emotion of the moment — good for collecting random YouTube videos of a rally at the National Mall, for example.

Crowdsourcing, as a word and an approach to gathering news, gained considerable traction in 2010. Expect to hear it a lot more — and use it a lot more — in 2011.

My mother, my grandparents, and Pearl Harbor

On a bright Sunday morning 69 years ago, my mother looked out her parents' kitchen window and saw black smoke rising in the distance.

Then she saw planes soar out of the smoke, and the whole world was forever altered.

That morning, my mother watched the attack on Pearl Harbor from her home. She was a child, living across the harbor from the U.S. Navy yard. My grandparents' house sat on a hill slope, their back yard overlooking the battleships moored in port a couple miles away, and on this Sunday morning in December my mother and grandparents saw the smoke, heard loud bangs coming from the same direction, left their unfinished breakfast sitting on the kitchen table, and went outside for a better look.

They heard the planes before seeing them. A whining roar, as if from a million large, angry mosquitoes, echoed across the hillside, gaining in volume, until the planes appeared as black darts flung across the bright sky. My grandmother remarked how unusual it was to see military maneuvers on a Sunday. My grandfather noticed these planes were unlike any he had seen parked on the airfields.

The planes came closer at incredible speed, and there were more of them each passing moment. It occurred to my grandparents that they should move back closer to the house when one plane, so close now the Rising Sun emblem on its fuselage was clearly visible, wagged its wings on approach to the slope, pitched starboard and with the tip of one wing carried off my grandmother's clothes line.

My mother recalls seeing the pilot's face. She says that given enough artistic talent, she could draw it now, 69 years later, from memory.

Everybody ran back into the house to watch the black smoke and noise intensify across the harbor, and it was at about this point when they saw a bright flash followed by the swelling bubble of an intense shock wave envelop the harbor and race up the hillside to rattle the kitchen windows. The USS Arizona, already critically wounded, burst nearly in two as the ammunition magazine ignited.

At that, the event became profoundly personal: What should we do? Where should we go? Neighbors were walking out into the streets crying, shouting, comforting each other, even as the planes continued to zip overhead. My grandfather, who had joined an all-volunteer civilian defense corps a year earlier as tensions heightened between Japan and the United States, expected he would be called to do … something. But no word came; the few phone lines around the island were jammed.

Hours later, a Jeep came down the street. The military police officer behind the wheel was going around asking every able-bodied male, particularly those who had guns, to meet in the town center for further instructions. My grandfather expressed concern about leaving my grandmother and mother alone, to which the Jeep driver responded, "Look, we're expecting an invasion by the Japanese. If you don't get down to the beach now to try stopping them, we're all screwed anyway."

So, my grandfather packed his only gun, a small-caliber pistol, and boarded a truck en route to a long shallow beach a few miles past Honolulu where Japanese landing craft loaded with troops were expected to appear overnight. Dozens of civilians in several trucks made the trip with him, including one man who brought the only weapon at his disposal: a pitchfork.

Upon arrival, the men busied themselves initially by digging shallow trenches and building defensive positions behind rocks and trees. Then they waited, the only sounds coming from the surf, the only light from the moon. And waited.

And waited.

By daybreak, the threat of invasion had subsided, though the intensity wrought from the previous morning never did. Thereafter until the war ended, the Hawaiian islands, not yet one among the United States, were under U.S. martial law. The rationing and blackouts common elsewhere in the nation during this period were many times more constraining in Hawaii because of difficulty protecting the islands' supply line to the mainland. And the happiest times of my mother's childhood ended as the freedom she had to play with friends and roam was curtailed by stringent rules on civilian movement except for essential needs such as school, work and hospital visits.

The onset of war ended my grandfather's job, servicing the pineapple harvesting equipment owned by Dole foods, as many industries on the islands shuttered during wartime. About a year later, my grandparents and mother left for California, riding a cargo ship under destroyer escort.

There was one humorous moment out of it all. When my grandfather returned from his beach patrol early on the morning after the attack, he went to put his gun away and noticed a box of bullets sitting open on the bedroom dresser. That's when he remembered …

He had forgotten to load the gun.

SMO: What it means and why it matters

(This entry was first published in NetWorked, the digital media blog for the Society of Professional Journalists.)

The Internet may be omnipresent in our lives but it's becoming more friendly. Credit SMO for that.

SMO is short for "social media optimization," a somewhat new and evolving concept employing social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote content on websites, blogs or across other social media.

Until recently, the top tool for spreading the word online was SEO, or search engine optimization, in which words themselves are used to increase Web traffic by serving as online road signs of a sort for search engines to stop, read and announce to everyone else.

SMO, however, assumes that people, not search engines, are better at doing that. It relies on the notion that ideas are more important than individual words and that like-minded individuals will increase the publicity those ideas receive by sharing them with their family, friends and colleagues.

SMO's origins go back to the mid-1990s when audio and video were gaining traction online and the public realized the Internet was destined to become a kind of clearinghouse for people's whole Web identities, not just individual words. Marketing strategist Rohit Bhargava coined the term and proposed a five-point guide for it to increase one's virtual visibility.

In time, the guide grew to accommodate the Web's evolution and its audience's increasing media savvy, so that now the overall strategy for effective SMO encompasses several key considerations for Web content producers:

Linking — It's one thing to have a blog; it's another to have people read it. Adding links that point to other blog or social media content provide attribution and illustrate depth of research. Other sites in turn may link back, thus increasing everyone's visibility.

Tagging and bookmarking — Tags help describe content and simplify online searches. Embedded buttons for bookmarking services such as del.icio.us also point first-time visitors to specific content that they may want to use frequently.

Making portable content — PDFs and video and audio clips, for example, can be carried by other sites and help drive traffic back to the original source.

Encouraging mashups — A mashup borrows bits of content from several sources to produce new information in a unique way, much as human-interest interviews  can be combined to create a news story. Mashups often incorporate audio, video and mapping elements to tell stories.

Becoming a user resource — Posting interesting information, including information from rival publications, can turn occasional readers into devotees. They'll see the information is always useful, accurate, and devoid of fluff and promotion.

Rewarding users — Giving credit to other information sources enhances credibility and distinguishes those sources as credible as well. It's also a way of saying thanks to people trying hard to get their message across.

Participating — Speaking out, engaging in online conversations and sharing one's knowledge or perspective in forums and other Web-based interaction advance ideas in ways mere words on a page cannot.

Targeting the audience — Location matters in real estate; the same can be said about the Web and its vast, ethereal landscape. Finding a niche is essential in an environment where being vague or general invites indifference.

Creating fresh, original content — Inside that niche, original content has a greater chance of getting noticed. That's not to say though that old ideas should be ignored; even just a slight twist, either thoughtful or humorous, can put them in new and interesting light.

Being honest, staying true to one's beliefs — Tricks and gimmicks intended to drive up Web traffic often have the opposite effect and damage audience loyalty. It's better to be honest with the audience and remain focused and on message.

Thinking about SMO always — SMO should not be applied randomly but be used a tool of constant content creation the way notepads and pens have been for news reporters. It should be at the forefront of planning, at the forefront of organization, and include tactics and strategy.

The skinny on Microsoft's new Kinect

For those of you who didn't know the world of gaming had changed in a big way recently, or didn't care, here's the skinny on what you missed.

* Microsoft released its long-awaited Kinect controller-less gaming experience last week. The infrared webcam for Xbox 360 allows body movement, including facial gestures, and spoken commands to direct action on the screen, making Kinect — formerly Project Natal — a major improvement over the wand controllers available with Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move.

* Kinect costs $150 by itself, $400 if bundled with a new Xbox 360. The games designed to highlight Kinect's capabilities cost $40 to $70, before discounts.

* The name is an amalgam of the words "kinetic" and "connect."

* Microsoft expects to sell 5 million Kinects this year alone.

* The debut of Kinect today in Europe has been hampered by demand in the United States.

* Key technology for Kinect came from a lab at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

* Kinect translates movement in part by measuring light reflection from 48 points on a player's body.

* You can stand or sit while playing with Kinect.

* An alleged $2,000 bounty for hacking Kinect to use it on PCs may already have been met.

* Rumors that Kinect does not respond well to players with dark skin appear to have been disproved.

* Electronics manufacturer LG is offering a free Kinect with purchase of a television.

* Gamers have been slow to test Kinect's voice-recognition capabilities.

* Speaking of slowness, Kinect has a bit of a lag time responding to player movements. Individual players should stand at least six feet from the webcam, further if two people are playing.

* With Kinect, Microsoft may have taken a step closer to controlling your living room.

* And speaking of living rooms, Kinect may require you to rearrange furniture before playing any games.

* To that end, interior lighting, your clothes and your pets may adversely affect Kinect's performance.

* Expect Kinect to launch a new fitness revolution, just like Wii did.

* If you thought I was at least as impressed with "Call of Duty: Black Ops" as Kinect, guess again.

Olbermann Agonistes

America's brief national pundocratic nightmare appears over. Keith Olbermann, doyen of television's liberal-leaning wordsmiths and current poster child for media ethics, has been given a green flag to resume table-pounding on MSNBC, ostensibly to help square the media's sails against the starboard tack of neighboring Fox News.

All that remains is for Olbermann on Tuesday to don a hairshirt matching one of his shiny ties and with humility aforethought navigate the rough passage between the media's own Scylla and Carybdis: respectability and ratings.

Recall that Olbermann's hands were summarily slapped last week when Politico pried into a batch of campaign contribution records and found his name among those media mavens who reach from beneath their shroud of self-proclaimed journalistic integrity to pad a few candidates' finances, ahead of the just-ended elections. Recall also the berating he received by MSNBC in the name of company policy and the subsequent silence by rival Fox News, who could have joined the flagellation in response to Olbermann's constant harangues but didn't at the risk of turning unwanted attention to Fox's own policies.

We've had a weekend to mull the media quandary Olbermann brought into focus, a predicament long stewing in the mingled juices of outrage and obligation squeezed from journalists striving for objectivity in the employ of an industry driven by market forces. The responses to his behavior have been predictable. Less so are the pronouncements regarding MSNBC's obligation in the matter.

When Olbermann's "Coundown" launched in 2003, its debut portended analysis from a broadcast professional brandishing wit, insight and, it seemed, a ready copy of Roget's Thesaurus, all of which had been apparent in Olbermann's banter with co-sportscaster Dan Patrick during their turn on ESPN's "SportsCenter" through much of the 1990s. Over time however, "Countdown," which examined five timely events in reverse order, morphed into a kind of counterpoise, with Olbermann devoting more time to commentary that skewered official statements made by the Bush Administration. MSNBC's tacit approval of this transition was clarified by the addition to its programming calendar of "The Rachel Maddow Show," whose host has adopted an unbashed liberal stance on issues, and more recently "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," a political analyst who, if viewed at certain angles, can be seen tilting perceptibly to the left.

One wonders then what all the fuss was about at MSNBC, company policy against overt politicking notwithstanding, after Politico revealed Olbermann's contributions worth about $7,500 to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona congressional candidates Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, all three campaigning as Democrats. MSNBC president Phil Griffin said in defense of Olbermann's suspension that the broadcaster violated a specific policy requiring network employees to state their political proclivities "before" writing endorsement checks, this defense suggesting Olbermann's behavior was justified had he filled out the proper paperwork in advance.

The precondition, if any exists, surely is not that simple. However, the solution is overtly so, and it would require that MSNBC balance its scale of ethical behavior in reality and not in a reality-TV kind of way. Olbermann's show is ratings gold for the network (though Fox News is mining platinum, at present) because its host chooses positions, takes stands, tries to be the last and loudest voice in the room, and does not attempt to sneak his behavior or his politics past the network. If this evolution of "Countdown" to support this was a mistake, an aberration of some sort, then MSNBC should at least admit that much; otherwise, the network should give its cash cow more grazing space, well away from other real journalists in the field.

Don't make me move, Google

I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to move.
Move from my house, that is.

The reasons are, I think, fairly acceptable to most people: My wife and I just put the mortgage to bed — a prodigious accomplishment in this economic climate.

We recently rehabilitated the house's federalist-style facade, giving our 126-year-old abode the look of something worth saving through the 21st century.

And, with other urban renewal inching forward again around the neighborhood, I finally feel confident about walking to the grocery store and not see someone pull a gun on me before I get there (Yes, this has happened to me once already).

The one thing I'm not so confident about is Google appearing to prowl around like a stalker, snapping photos of me while I'm bending over the begonias or picking up the dogs' latest expression of intestinal relief. I have seen the Great Aggregator traipse through here twice, quietly, snapping pictures like a tourist on a two-day trip through 10 cities, and leaving me to wonder whether the photographer got my good side.

But then I go back to what I was doing, unabashed and accepting of the scratch Google just made on the patina of my privacy. I mean, it's not as though Google knocked on my front door and asked if I wore matching socks.

However, I also accept that not everyone takes Google's passing picture-taking with similar grace and indifference. For some people, the sight of themselves or their property in a satellite photo via Google Street View compares to getting caught with their pants around their ankles. They didn't ask to have their picture taken and nobody sought their permission, and so they rail against the slightly surreptitious photography as if the camera operators performed an invasive procedure with the snap of a shutter — like removing a person's spleen without first asking the patient to sign a waiver.

Besides, there's an ethereal sense of presence borne by seeing the results of one's personal space captured by satellite — the creation of a connection that our innate sense of individuality needs time and attuned perspective to process.

This is why an offhanded statement by Google CEO Eric Schmidt this week rubbed all these concerned citizens the wrong way. On CNN's "Parker Spitzer" show Monday, he suggested, with humorous intent, these people "just move" after his company comes through with their Street View cameras. He insisted the shooters pass through neighborhoods once only, that this is not a "monitoring situation," thus making it impossible for Google to track comings and goings from homes and businesses and perhaps allaying the concern voiced by CNN's Kathleen Parker that Google can show others when her car is parked in front of her house.

"They cannot" see that, Schmidt told Parker. "The (image) resolution does not allow it."

In fact, it does, as my own experience demonstrates. After Schmidt spoke, I reviewed Google's visual accounting of my own house, and my car shown parked in front. The photos depicted the same blue car I have driven for years, and though apparent care was taken to distort the image just over my license plates I had no problem making out the bag of groceries sitting in the passenger's seat. Google's Street View shutterbugs passed by that day as I was unloading from a trip to the supermarket.

As for Schmidt's insistence that Google makes just one pass, a screen capture I grabbed about one year ago from the result of a previous Street View photograph proves otherwise. In that image, my other car is on display, and there is evidence for everyone including my mother to see that my yard can indeed look better than it does right now.

If I were I on the lam, or if I knew for certain that my mother had been checking the condition of my yard, this revelation might unnerve me. To a lesser extent, I feel uneasy regarding Google's ability to put faces with places, or connect real with virtual addresses and read license plates, unlike anything we have seen in public record-keeping to date.

In Germany, this ability has fostered outrage and prompted more than 200,000 citizens, or about 2 percent of the total population, to request their places of home and work be obscured ahead of Street View's debut in that country, where history has cultivated a delicate sense of individuality that's difficult to comprehend among self-aggrandizing cultures.

Schmidt told CNN his company acts responsibly at all times with the information at its disposal, but that's not what worries me. The people unaffiliated with Google who view the same photos cannot all be similarly responsible. And that kind of makes me want to just move.