Week 5: Add portfolio materials and install plugins

This post is the fifth in a weekly series that will take journalists through how to set up a professional-looking portfolio Web site. Find out more about the series and read the first, second, third and fourth posts if you missed them. Check back next week for more.

It’s Week 5 of the blog series, and now that you’ve done some groundwork, it’s time to put up your clips. Luckily for you, the entire Wordpress community is going to be there to help you: They won’t write your articles or take your photos, but they will provide you with lots of plugins to make things easier.

So, gather up those articles, photos, audio slideshows, headlines, page designs, videos, podcasts and interactive graphics, and let’s get rolling.

How to upload your clips

You can do this one of two ways: Individually uploading them using the Upload/Insert tool on your WP Admin or by dragging and dropping them onto your server using your FTP program. (That’s the same one you used to install your theme.)

If you use the latter, just make sure you aren’t uploading files into your theme’s folder. That should be reserved for items that actually make up your site’s design.

For videos, I recommend Vimeo for hosting. There are some limits on how much you can upload per week for free accounts (paid “Plus” accounts with much higher limits are $60/year), but the quality is better than YouTube by leaps and bounds, as evidenced by this screen grab. (Watch the amazing video it’s from while you’re at it.)

For text stories, link to the online version on a news outlet’s site or post the text on your own site and provide a link to the original. What I’m trying to say: Don’t post loads and loads of PDFs of print stories if you can help it. They’re just not as reader-friendly online as they could be.

Granted for copy editing clips, there’s not really a way around the PDF issue when posting print clips, at least that I’ve found. Sorry.

For photographs and page designs, my guess is you’ll want to post a handful of your best photos and make them into a gallery of some sort. I’ll get back to how to do that in a second when we cover plugins.

(A general warning: Don’t rely on your former employer’s site to be the only source for your clips – especially if it’s a college outlet. If you’re simple going to link on a story on the DailyGazette.com’s Web site, I’d save a copy of the story on your server, too. When content management systems are updated, these can be lost or unpublished. I speak from first-hand experience.)

Read more

Register for journalism entrepreneurship workshop

Any student journalist with half a brain can see that things in the industry aren’t pretty right now.

Layoffs are turning colleagues into former colleagues, and the lucky ones who get to stick around are finding they have a week or so more free time thanks to furloughs. Bottom line: The business model is broken.

Fear and hand-wringing accomplishes nothing, though. I’d rather do something about it.

If my fellow students and I want to find jobs after graduation, we may just have to create our own opportunties.

To learn how, UNL’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications is offering us a little help.

The J-school is partnering the the Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship to host a one-day workshop in Andersen Hall.

The basics:

• What: Envision Your Own Endeavor: Entrepreneurship in Mass Communications
• When: Friday, April 24 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• Where: Andersen Hall on the UNL City Campus
• Cost: $15 for students, $25 for others
• Topics include:
  
  • “Own Your Future”
  • “Guts and Glory of Entrepreneurship”
  • “Nuts and Bolts of a Startup”
  • “What the Center for Entrepreneurship Can Do For You.”
• Registration forms are available online. (Turn in your forms soon, too! The registration deadline is Tuesday, April 21.)

One of the college’s newer professors, Carla Kimbrough, has been planning this event, and as a UNL student, I’m so happy to see someone spearheading this effort to bring the entrepreneurial spirit into the J-school.

Register now!

Twitter CEO Evan Williams is coming to UNL J-school

Next week will be – in a word – crazy.

On Wednesday, I’m giving what I hope will be a fun and lively talk on how student journalists should market themselves on the Web. As one of the few journalism and advertising double majors at UNL, I don’t understand why every student doesn’t have – at the very least – an online portfolio, resume and presence on social media.

Seriously.

And after Wednesday, you could know the basics of how to have all three.

The Wednesday event will also serve as sort of a crash course of sorts for what students need to know about the Web as they prepare for internships and the ever-tiring job hunt.

Plus, I promise to keep things fun.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on this by any means, but I figure that I’ve done enough trial and error on the Web that I should have some talking points worth a listen.

However, my talk is but an opening act for the main event that will take place Friday.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams (@ev) will be on at the J-School, and the College of Journalism and Mass Communications has planned a laid-back Q&A event for 3 p.m. in Andersen Hall.

If you’re a UNL journalism student, you do not want to miss this. But for student journalists who don’t call the Cornhusker State home, you’re still in luck.

The college will be livestreaming the Q&A on its Web site, and I will be moderating questions via Twitter.

Have a question about Twitter, or how it relates to journalism, or something else entirely? Send it to me at @emilyingram.

So, in short: Mark your calendars!

How to Market Yourself on the Web

Wednesday, April 8 at 5 p.m. in Andersen Hall (Room 15)

Q&A with Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter

Friday, April 10 at 3 p.m. in Andersen Hall (Room 15)

Douglas Rushkoff blows the roof off what you thought you knew

First off, don’t judge this video by its neon title slide. I promise it’s amazingly good and is unlike probably anything else you’ve run across lately on your RSS reader.

The official blurb about this keynote address:

Professor Douglas Rushkoff, Professor of Communications, NYU, provides insights into latest research on the transformative nature of the internet on the economic and social dynamics of consumers and users, and their commercial implications – vital information for regulators, industry and investors as they seek to remain relevant in this new ecology.

My translation:

Everything you think you know about how the Internet, economy and media intersect is wrong. Rushkoff explains what’s really going on.

(via Joey Baker over at CoPress)

It’s a long video and is pretty intense, but I assure you it’s well worth your time and brain strain.