Get yourself online

From the first day you walk into Scripps Hall and in most days thereafter, somebody’s going to tell you “online is everywhere.” I’m here to tell you they’re right. After I made a purchase at The Front Room, a hub of student traffic housed on Baker Center’s fourth floor, I retreated to The Post newsroom to enjoy my Tazo peach iced tea over some reading.

I’m the managing editor at The Post, the independent student-run newspaper, where I started more than two years ago as a copy editor. The job comes with long hours, big-time responsibility, a host of good experience and a desk.

When I cracked open my Tazo, the satisfying pop reminded me of the tradition established on the tea’s cap – tea leaf wisdom. I was, however, surprised to find that my daily wisdom had been replaced by a new message.

“Visit tazo.com for your complimentary tea leaf reading.”

When the Internet has found its way to the bottom of my tea cap, I need no more proof that “online is everywhere.”

That phrase is the reason media on campus is making a clear push to the Internet. In 2005, Speakeasy, a “student-produced alternative Web zine,” launched as one of Athens’ first online-only publications. Even at The Post, a newspaper that publishes five days a week, we have re-launched our Web site to accommodate multimedia elements.

The truth is that your time at Ohio University is the time to learn, to experiment and to make yourself more marketable as a future journalist. Don’t think of yourself as a reporter or an editor or a multimedia guru or a columnist – you are working to become a journalist in a job market that demands you are all of the above.

And you will not get all of that in the classroom.

You will learn a lot in Scripps Hall, but you need more than an A in Precision Language to get an internship or job. You need the experience of working a conference room, of writing a story on deadline, of operating a camera, digital voice recorder and taking notes at the same time.

Student media is more than willing to give you those opportunities, too, even if you don’t know which way is up on a Mac or which five states aren’t abbreviated in AP style.

At The Post, interested students begin in a three to four week orientation program called General Assignment. At GA, future Posties will learn the bare bones basics of working at The Post, whether you’re interested in reporting, copy editing, designing, working on the Web team or any other editorial department.

The Post’s Web team is new and inviting new ideas. For the first time, The Post’s Web site supports multimedia such as slideshows, video and podcasting, and editors are willing to teach new journalists to use the equipment and software.

The story isn’t much different at Speakeasy.

Susannah Elliott, Speakeasy’s managing editor, said her staff is willing to teach newbies their way around a camcorder to produce content for their growing multimedia staff.

The news industry is in a world of hurt right now, and the best we can do as students is make ourselves the most marketable candidate for a job. Students who get the multimedia experience will not be those who narrowly define themselves as reporter or editor or videographer, but rather those who understand the difference between those titles and what it means to be a journalist. Rick Rouan