LedeObserver

Aspiring journalists used to use clips from print media to impress prospective employers. And many print publications like the Boston Globe and the St. Petersburg Times still solicit — or at least, solicited from this year’s internship applicants — published clips. But bylines may be losing their edge in the search for employment.

According to a post on The Next Web, blogging may be the newest, hippest way to secure a job in journalism. “I think students entering the marketplace who have never run their own news website are at an increasing disadvantage,” Paul Bradshaw, a visiting professor at the City University of London and a journalism teacher at Birmingham city University, told TNW. “Pretty much every employer I talk to says that they would ask serious questions about why an applicant was not already doing their journalism on some sort of online platform. There’s also a new opportunity for students to build assets – a URL, a network, a reputation – that employers will be looking for.”

And if Brian Stelter, the New York Times media reporter who seems to have filed more bylines than anyone else ever, is any proof (he started the blog TVNewser in 2004 and was hired by the Times in 2007), maybe blogging is the key to maybe getting paid maybe someday in journalism.

A wise journalist once told Observer: “Don’t say you want to be writing for a paper. Think about what it will mean to be a journalist. You want to be read and seen. Be Google-able, be YouTube-able. Print media may not even exist.” Ten points to the person who can guess who it was, and one million points to the reporter himself. Thank you.

But only after it learns that ‘awesomer’ isn’t a word.

And after its readers stop throwing papers at innocent bystanders.

Americké Listy (Glen Cove, N.Y.)
Aurora Sentinel (Aurora, Co.)
Batavia Sun (Batavia, Ill.)
Bolingbrook Sun (Bolingbrook, Ill.)
Clinton News (Clinton, Mass.)
Door Reminder (Sturgeon Bay, Wisc.)
Downers Grove Sun (Downers Grove, Ill.)
Farmer City Journal (Farmer City, Ill.)
Geneva Sun (Geneva, Ill.)
Glen Ellyn Sun (Glen Ellyn, Ill.)
Heyworth Star (Heyworth, Ill.)
Homer Sun (Homer, Ill.)
Kewaunee County News (Kewaunee County, Wisc.)
Kewaunee County Snapshops (Kewaunee County, Wisc.)
Kewaunee County Star (Kewaunee County, Wisc.)
La Palma (West Palm Beach, Fla.)
LeRoy Journal (LeRoy, Ill.)
Lincoln-Way Sun (Plainfield, Ill.)
Lisle Sun (Lisle, Ill.)
New Mexico Independent (Albuquerque, N.M.)
Olive Press (Phoenicia, N.Y.)
Phoenicia Times (Phoenicia, N.Y.)
Plainfield Sun (Plainfield, Ill.)
Resorter Reporter (Ephraim, Wisc.)
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, Co.)
Sparta News-Plaindealer (Sparta, Ill.)
St. Charles Sun (St. Charles, Ill.)
Washington Independent (Washington, D.C.)
Wheaton Sun (Wheaton, Ill.)
Vacation Guide (Kewaunee County, Wisc.)

If you know other newspapers that stopped printing between June 2010 and June 2011, let Observer know, too!

Though Tuesday’s midterm elections swept a swarm of Republicans into Washington and threw a wrench in Democratic power, there may still be hope. Despite the flurry of blog posts and the headline frenzy on the homepages of newspaper websites during the election, print held its own.

On Wednesday, when the nation, hungover from the night’s political binge, finally exhaled, it turned to the front page. Said Paul Sparrow, senior vice president for broadcasting at Washington’s Newseum, to the New York Times, “There is an enormous public interest in front pages.” And he would know, too. Newseum publishes over 1,000 PDFs of front pages from around the world on its website. He said his site traffic can jump by a factor of five to about 500,000 views on a day when there is important news, like election results.

“Front pages are a snapshot in time that have a historical relevance and a permanence that’s lacking in our electronic age,” he told the Times. But when Gawker can generate a half-million page views merely by humiliating a political candidate , maybe what’s really lacking in our electronic age is a sense of dignity.

David Weigel, the former Washington Post blogger who resigned after he “lashed out” to members of the listserv Journolist last month, will join NYU professor Jay Rosen in a live chat on Poynter today at 1 p.m.

The conversation, titled, “What’s the future of ‘objective’ journalism after David Weigel’s departure from the Post?” is particularly relevant given the recent firing of CNN Middle Eastern affairs senior editor Octavia Nasr for her poor Twitter judgement.

In an interview on CNBC yesterday, Sam Zell did nothing to alleviate anxiety over the future of the print industry. The chairman and former CEO of the bankrupt Tribune Co. proposed that survival of the printed newspaper rests on the “elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it by PDF’s.”

The assertion seemed to be his own response to questions he indirectly posed during the interview about the direction of the newspaper industry. After making excuses for his company’s inability to emerge from bankruptcy — “All bankruptcy scenarios are difficult,” he said — Zell addressed the industry itself: “There’s a lot of questions because the severity of the downturn in the media business in the beginning of ’08 kind of changed the calculus and raises the whole question to any potential investor as to what’s the future, and how is the media and particularly the newspaper side of the business going to change in the future.”

Zell’s proposal revealed little hope for the industry, though this sense of resignation is hardly surprising considering the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings that have left his own newspapers (the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant and others) in shambles. And despite Zell’s depressing outlook, he did seem to offer an alternate delivery system: “The iPad is certainly the first real example of almost replicating a newspaper on an instrument,” he said.

Kind of like how his company “almost” emerged from bankruptcy last spring.