Thursday, March 22, 2007
Clips
George Beetham advices budding journalists to build a clip file for job applications. I know having a large number of clips from which to choose and show future employers is important; but, as Claire and I touched on last class, what if your published stories have been mangled by the editors? The mistakes the Ka Leo editors put in stories are, frankly, embarrassing. My friends and I agree that we don't want to send in our stories because when they are published with stupid errors, we end up looking like the fools. But sometimes a school publication is the only avenue for student journalists to get published. In these situations, is it better to have many published, poor quality clips or unpublished, better quality stories?
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Here are some alternatives:
1. Try to get your work in online journals. Ka Lamakua would be a good place to begin.
2. Start your own blog or website and showcase your work there. Print out the pages you create, and put them in your portfolio.
3. Do work for nonprofit organizations like the ones I talked about in class; you should be able to produce things that can go in your portfolio. (At my personal website, I have examples of the volunteer work I've done for The Actors' Group.)
I happened to open to a page in The Brief Thomson Handbook (Thomson & Wadsworth, 2007)—a book I'm considering using next semester—with some good advice:
Designing a Multimedia Portfolio
Multimedia or digital portfolios are quickly becoming an important means of featuring the work of students, artists, graphic designers, engineers—anyone who has samples to share with peers, potential employers, or the general public. A professional portfolio can serve as a repository where students archive class projects, essays, and any other work that illustrates the scope of their endeavors.
Elements That Might Be Included in a Professional Portfolio
• Background information: a short narrative about who you are and what you do. In professional portfolios, it's often best not to share too much specific and sensitive information about yourself.…
• Resume or vita: a printable document stored as a PDF file, created with Adobe Acrobat or a PDF conversion plug-in such as PDF Maker for Microsoft Word.…
• Sample publications and projects: PDF versions of your printed work, screenshots of websites, video projects, scanned artwork, links to your work on the Web.
• Weblog: your running commentary on current events in your field of interest, discussions of the work of others, etc.
• Links and resources: a storehouse of links to websites that you find useful in your own work and that others might benefit from, a collection of documents that you have authored and that you can share with others, or a news aggregate.
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