A role model for blogging journalism students

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 June 2007 at 10:26
Tags: Journalism, blogging, education

Contrary to the common assumption among some journalists, most bloggers are not wannabe hacks. But some are. And those journalism students who blog should pay careful attention to the story of Brian Stelter.

Just a few week weeks since graduating with his undergraduate mass communications degree from Towson University in Maryland, 21-year-old has landed his first job — as a media reporter for the New York Times’ business section.

Stelter made his name in the US media world while still an undergraduate by becoming a leading blogger covering television news business.

Stelter’s blog, TVNewser, is a perfect example of how aspiring journalists can use blogging tools to establish their reputations as respected and knowledgable correspondents.

Stelter didn’t use his blog to write about his cat, or to opine about disparate world events. Instead, he picked a niche patch and patrolled it like a specialist correspondent. He aggregated all the available nuggets of information about the TV news business and broke stories about that corner of the news business.

In an internal New York Times memo reported by the New York Observer, business editor Larry Ingrassia quoted from a 1,400-word, front-page feature that the paper had written about Stelter and his blog a few weeks before hiring him:

Brian’s blog, as Julie Bosman reported in that page one story, “is read religiously by network presidents, media executives, producers and publicists.” He started the blog in 2004 during winter break, and soon was hired by Mediabistro.com to keep writing it. He made it a must read by getting scoops about the comings and goings in the business. So dedicated was Brian to his blog that he updated it – posting an item about NBC News – between interviews with Times editors in our building recently.

His hiring underscores the expansion of our efforts to integrate what we do online and in the print edition.

I’ve written before that student journalists need to recognise that their professional blogs are journalistic tools, not toys like their MySpace pages or Facebook profiles. As Jeff Jarvis avised journalism students when he beat me to this post overnight: “When I suggest that you blog, this is what I’m talking about.”