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Dean's
Digital World
Untangling the Web -- A Guide
to By Dean Tudor
In one of my last articles about convergence, I mentioned the "converging communications" research going on at Ryerson's School of Radio and Television Arts. In March 2001, Ryerson's Faculty of Communication and Design (where RTA is located) received a $2.5 million research endowment from CTV as a result of a deal that smoothed a takeover of the television network last year, and that ultimately led to a Bell Globemedia converger of Bell, CTV and the Globe and Mail. The Bell Globemedia Chair in Convergence and the Creative Use of Advanced Technology will involve such things as digital television and Internet broadcasting. York, Laval and UBC also got some funding. With convergence now on its merry way, now would be a good time to list and comment on the better journalism (non-publication specific) Web sites on the Internet. WWW Virtual Library Journalism <www.trainer.com/vlj.html> has been around since at least 1995. Founded by journalism ace trainer John Makulowich, the site contains what he calls "awesome lists" to finding things fast, with hundreds of links. Some of the more journalism-related ones include associations, news bureaus, awards and grants, conferences and papers, research, and news services. Good Canadian sources include Julian Sher's JournalismNet <www.journalismnet.com>, noted for its strong television and radio content (plus their archives!). Here you can find people, find quick facts fast, find jobs, and find beats. He notes the leading search tools, especially for video and audio sources. Hal Doran's Internet Resources for Journalists and Broadcasters <www.synapse.net/~radio/welcome.html> also has a hefty chunk of good journalism sources in Canada. Robin Rowland's Homepage <robinrowland.com> deals with the problems of the Canadian approach to the Internet vis-a-vis journalism, with notes on search engines and strategies. Kirk LaPointe's J-Home <members.tripod.com/~klapointe/>, Pierre Bourque <www.bourque.com>, and my own MegaSources <www.ryerson.ca/~dtudor/megasources.htm> are useful beginning points, since they are mainly one line lists with URLs. One strategy would be to simply download the source document for LaPointe, Bourque or Tudor, and make it a bookmark file on your hard drive. Do this once a month so you'd pick up any changes made by the creators. Strangely, all of these webmasters (except me) are currently in broadcasting! Academic sites usually provide copious materials about journalism, as well as links for their students to pursue. Ryerson, King's and Carleton generally do the best job in this situation, but you have to visit the American campus in order to get a wider scope. Journalist's Compass <www.scat.temple.edu/jcompass> is from Temple University's j-program. It has over 3500 global links to journalism sites, think tanks, writing sites, research sources, and online journalism. Another academic site is Journalism Resources from the University of Iowa's j-program <bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/journalism/> with much data and links to sites dealing with diversity, media law, teaching resources, online newsletters, citation guides, discussion groups. It is mostly American. The WWW Library of Communications and Telecommunications Resources is at <www.uky.edu/Subject/communication.html>; the WWW Library of Broadcasting and Media Resources is at <www.uky.edu/Subject/broadcasting.html>. The Poynter Institute for Media Studies <www.poynter.org> is a non-profit media think tank, with courses and resources. There are plenty of links here to online journalism, news resources, media concerns, journalism organizations, and courses. Some good American "beat" sources are Barbara Shapiro's News Researcher Graffiti Pages <www.gate.net/~barbara/index.html> based in Florida, and James Derk's Cybersleuth <scoop.evansville.net> from the Evansville, Indiana, Courier. A massive site is Power Reporting <powerreporting.com>, award-winning reporter Bill Dedman's work. It has many lists of top sites, beats, people finders, company research, government information, and a reference shelf of quick resource tools. A good place to begin looking for indexes/gateways to journalism sites is through the Journalism and Research Web Ring <www.mav.net/guidelines/webring.html> a device that hooks up many personal pages of journalists, as well as academic sites, sources, employment news, industry gossip, writing links, publications. Known as "Hacks", the webring puts you in contact with over 40 sites including the Online Journalism site at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, The Working Reporter (from Los Angeles TV reporter Ron Olsen), FACSNET, Needle in a CyberStack, Disability-Related News Sources. Personal pages include Basil's Bookmarks, Finley's Newsstand, Franson's Research Page, Newell's Internet News Room. Sites can be in any language, including Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German. "Hacks" is now hosted by Yahoo, where you can find similar circles of sites for other topics <dir.webring.yahoo.com> A new site is <headlinespot.com> one of a series of sites called the StartSpot Network, specializing in news and links. Others are <bookspot.com>, <cinemaspot.com>, <libraryspot.com>, <museumspot.com>, <peoplespot.com> and at least a dozen more. Headlinespot, in addition to headlines, has category links to beats -- environment, finance, food, sports, travel, etc. -- as well as opinion pages, columnists, critics, op-ed, polls and letters to editor. Of value are the links to media associations, awards, watchdogs, resources for journalists (such as photojournalism, investigative, copy editor), job banks, j-schools, media commentary publications, and at <libraryspot.com> some fast fact sources. There are also many sites that will give you URLs for publications. MetaGrid is a newspaper and magazine locator <www.metagrid.com> arranged by subject. But my first pick here is the Library of Congress's lists of newspapers, periodicals, and news resources online <lcweb.loc.gov/rr/news/lists.html> with all links constantly being updated by librarians and researchers. Deeper research is available from the Newspaper Division of the Special Libraries Association, with its citations and links for US newspaper archives on the web <sunsite.unc.edu/slanews/internet/archives.html>. International newspapers can be accessed through <www.mediainfo.com/edpub/ e-papers.links.html>. A newer site is <www.magomania.com/english> dealing with just Canadian magazines. Writing? Try <www.humberc.on.ca/~coleman/cw-ref.html> for references and resources for writers and multimedia for writers. Jack Lynch has his excellent grammar and style notes as part of an extensive list of online writers' resources <andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing>. A good index/listing to all the online writing labs on the Internet can be found at <owl.english.purdue.edu/lab/index.html>. Karla's guide to citation style guides is at <bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/journalism/cite.html>. An alternative source to MLA and APA electronic citation formats is at <www.cc.emory.edu/WHSCL/citation.formats.html>. For "online" journalism, these are the better ones to begin with --
Other obvious Web sites would include:
A good example of using the Internet for journalistic matters is checking out the latest jobs, whether you are actively looking or not... Here are some Web sites that have job boards for journalists. The easiest way to find out what exists is to go to google.com, and type in a search query with the words (no quotes) "jobs" "journalism" "Canada" Here I got 186,000 hits. But Google ranks them, and the top ten were enough to produce the major sites. 1) www.jeffgaulin.com/jobs.htm This is an index (or gateway) to other sites, arranged by journalism stream. Under broadcasting and wire services, there is CBC, CTV, Bloomberg, Reuters, Jobs@Rogers. Under newspapers, there are links to Canadian Newspaper Association, Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Canadian Magazine Publishers' Association. Other links are to the University of Western Ontario job board, the Canadian Association of Journalists, Concordia University job board, New Media BC, Canadian Media Guild, various PR and communications societies, governments, Internet, and a great section on journalism jobs outside of Canada. Forty strong links in all... 2) usnewspapers.about.com/cs/jobsinjournalism/index.htm Another portal, this time to mainly U.S. jobs, through American Journalism Review/Newslink's JobLink (largest j-job list on the Internet, searchable, instant E-mail notification of new ads, free for journalists to post); Editor and Publisher Classifieds (mostly print journalism jobs, free to search); Jobsearch.about.com (communications and media section); Newspaper Association of America's Employlink; National Diversity Newspaper Job Bank (requires a password). 3) www.journalism.berkeley.edu/jobs This is the home of J-JOBS Digest, a free source for posting and searching, and available weekly. It covers jobs, internships, Internet opportunities, and freelance work. You must go to the site every Monday AM for the material, but it also posted on JOURNET (see below). Of particular value at this site is the link for "Journalism Job Banks on the Internet", through which you can get almost 100 names and links of other sites, such as all the major U.S. media conglomerates, reporter societies (eg. IRE), Online Journalism Review, Knight Ridder, plus a variety of internships and freelance. 4) www.journalism-jobs.com These offer a good search engine by topic and country, allowing you to post your resume. JournalismJobs.com is through the Columbia Journalism Review, free to post and search, and also includes a list of upcoming media conferences so you can see where the employers are going. I even found a story from Editor & Publisher, Oct 20, 1999, which describes the *WORST* jobs in journalism: mid-level managers caught in a tug-of-war between their subordinates and top editors. Why? Middle managers are stuck in survival mode, focusing on putting out fires instead of seeking ways to reduce their overall burden. Sounds like the sandwich generation... Three E-mail sources include the J-JOBS digest from JOURNET (subscribe listserv@ cmich.edu), the caj-list from CAJ (subscribe majordomo@eagle.ca) which posts immediate jobs, and ShopTalk (subscribe listserv@listserv.syr.edu) which posts North American broadcasting jobs daily. Next I searched Google for "general job boards" "Canada", and got a list of 210,000 hits, all ranked. These included www.careerowl.ca, Many, but not all, have some added value in presenting resume writing advice, experts, relocating tips, salary surveys and calculators, networking opportunities, training and testing tools.
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