Blogs are also a useful way to present a kind of online portfolio to future employers by providing links to a collection of work that can be quickly emailed with a resume.
Slate editor Jacob Weisberg recently spoke at the City University of New York's CUNY Graduate School of Journalism's annual journalism conference and advised journalism students to start a blog to distinguish themselves creatively and attract future employers.
''It's creating a big opportunity; if you're interesting, good, have something others don't have, and can attract an audience…you can come to the attention of editors at conventional publications,” he said, according to the school's website.
Greg Linch, a journalism major at the University of Miami, past editor in chief of the Miami Hurricane student newspaper, and current intern at the Miami Herald, writes his own blog, the Linchpen, about online journalism. A blog from January presented his top ten tips for journalism students, including becoming web savvy, especially with such popular sites as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Flickr, and Twitter, along with reading online journalism blogs to get an idea about what peers are writing. Linch also strongly advised starting a blog and gave his tips on creating one with a creative but professional tone.
''[The blog] could be on any topic you're interested in, but be sure it's something you'd be able to write about at least once a day. A blog is a great way to keep writing. Use images and hyperlinks. Be careful about the tone and content of the blog because it's going to be part of your digital legacy, something future employers will see. You want to avoid being too opinionated about a subject you may one day cover, because it could create problems later. Also, avoid writing a rancorous partisan blog — that probably won't help you either,” Linch wrote.
There are issues of liability and defamation and concerns about legitimacy and professionalism with blogging, especially with people who blog but have no formal background in journalism.
Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, spoke last year to journalism students at New York University about the surge in new online media and its impact on traditional media.
''You're going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I'm up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn't left the efficiency apartment in two years,” Williams said.
Williams is not against blogs; he has his own, the Daily Nightly. His concern is that ''the explosion of opinion-driven amateur media might distract the public from big stories or important writers' work,” according to Bullpen, the NYU Department of Journalism's online magazine that covers lectures about the news business by leading journalists.
Yet for student journalists, blogging can be a journalistic experience that, when combined with networking — whether online through blog comments and emails or in person at job conferences and fairs — can open the door to great opportunities in the field of journalism.
