One Writer's Journey From Print to Online News

How does someone go from mild-mannered print writer to multimedia maven?

It’s the question of the day given the direction the U.S. publishing industry is taking – and if you’re not asking it, you should be. That goes for freelancers as well as staff writers.

To shed some light on reporting and writing in the age of News 2.0, I turned to a pro who has transformed her own career. Michele Nicolosi is a long-time journalist and current assistant managing editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where she oversees the paper’s expanding stable of Web properties, including www.SeattlePI.com.

Way back when, Nicolosi was a run-of-the-mill reporter, working as a stringer or staff writer for papers such as the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Well, maybe not so run-of-the-mill. Nicolosi was on an Orange County Register news team that won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards in 1996 for uncovering fraud at a local fertility clinic. In 1999, after nine years at the Register, she heard the Internet’s siren song and jumped ship for a startup, and when that one went under, another. After that folded too, Nicolosi landed at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, where she ran the Online Journalism Review, started the Japan Media Review, taught classes and helped the school reshape its curriculum to embrace digital storytelling. The P-I hired her from there to be an investigative reporter, which led to her current position, which she’s held since 2005.

What motivated you to switch from working in print to online news?
After I’d been at the Orange County Register for nine years, it started to feel like all kinds of cool stuff was going on online and I was missing it. I felt the same way years before as I watched the Berlin Wall come down on TV. I felt like I should buy a ticket and fly to Berlin that night. I wanted to be there, in the middle of that incredible change. That’s how I was feeling about the Internet in August, 1999. I was burning to hop in and learn all about it. Luckily, a friend and former boss called and asked if I wanted a job at a startup. Perfect timing.

What responsibilities do you have related to online news?
I’m responsible for every aspect of running our Web sites: what’s on the front page right now, which 10 new online-only magazines and products we will launch this year, what the production schedule for that is going to be, and what the other things are that we need to do this year to help our site go from 16th most popular American newspaper site to 10th.

It’s a “Dream big, plan long-term” job, and it’s also a “Can you fix my headline?” job. The tasks I handle on a daily basis are non-stop and really varied. We’re constantly inventing new sections to spin off online and I love that work of thinking about who the audience is, what content and tools they want and how to put it all together.

I spend quite a bit of time talking to staff about changes in the industry, how we’re going to overcome those changes, why we do things the way we do online and seeking input on how we can get better. The word of the day in all newsrooms is Change and managing that change is a big task. I’m lucky to work with a great and understanding staff that really wants to play ball and figure out what success in today’s and tomorrow’s newsroom looks like. There are bumps along the way, but I’m so amazed at how far we’ve come and how much we have changed in the two years since the P-I went Web first.

The overarching goal for me is to grow the site’s popularity, readership and page views by providing more and better content – with a limited staff. The end goal of the push for more readers and page views is to make more money so we can afford to pay more journalists and support more journalism.

What new media skills should a a journalist have?
Laura Ruel posted a great set of recommendations in this column at Poynter Institute. I responded to her story with this comment:

When I’m screening multimedia interns, I look for people who know how to write, plus. The most important pluses, in some order of importance:
1. Can shoot photos and do basic Photoshop.
2. Can edit audio and create Soundslides.
3. Knows how to handle a video camera and can edit video.
4. Has good blogging style.
5. Can speak a foreign language in the community.

Overall, I’m not as interested in knowing that they’ve mastered any particular piece of software, but that they can learn new software quickly. People who have learned Blogger and WordPress and Soundslides and audio editing can certainly learn my site’s content management system. People with no tools under their belt will likely struggle to learn the CMS.

I screen differently for people applying for a reporting job. Skills I’m looking for there: audio and Soundslides for the occasional multimedia piece. Video camera and editing experience is a plus. I don’t really expect or need anyone coming in the door to know Flash. The fact is, most multimedia projects — video, audio, flash — take huge amounts of hours and are hardly looked at by the readers. I know it’s not a common view, but I think we should do less of this stuff if the readers are showing us they have low interest in them.

I wish all the candidates I see had more curiosity about what’s on the Web and more familiarity with trends in online news. Many journalists don’t feel any responsibility to familiarize themselves with the Web. I think everyone should have at least spent a couple hours each on MySpace, Facebook, etc., trying out the things that are sucking away our readers so they’ll understand this Brave New World a little better. It seems like it would be easier for everyone to compete if we were all a little more familiar with the competition.

Print newspapers jobs are getting cut left and right, what’s the job outlook for online journalists?
In the very near future, we will all be online journalists in some way or another. The outlook for online journalists — those that play well, learn about and care about the online publication as much as we all cared about the paper 15 years ago — is much, much better than it is for people who are dragging their feet, refusing to change the way they work to accommodate the new needs of the online product.

Why is it important for freelancers, bloggers and other journalists who work outside the traditional newsroom environment to have the same type of skills?
Any plus you can offer puts you at the front of the line in a very competitive field.

How can freelancers and independent writers get those skills?
You could take classes if you wanted, but they’re expensive. Why not sign up for Blogger, WordPress, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and play around in those sandboxes? Challenge yourself to start reading Paidcontent.org, EmediaTidbits and other publications that tell you about industry trends, new cool tools and ways of doing things. Month two: Download a trial of Photoshop, and take the tutorial that comes with it. I believe the program’s free for 30 days. Same for Dreamweaver. Get better at using Google and other search tools. If you spent an hour a day exploring and learning, you can get there on your own. Go to Webmonkey.com for lots of cool tutorials.

I’ve posted a tip sheet for people looking to gain new online skills.