5 reasons you should join ONA Mizzou

By Rose McManus


Thinking of joining ONA? Come to one of our info sessions on Wednesday, August 31 and Thursday, September 1 at 6:45 in Fred Smith Forum. In the meantime, here's five reasons why you should join!


Ask the newsroom: 7 editors and reporters from The Los Angeles Times share tips for young journalists

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By Tessa Weinberg

We asked the question, “In the increasingly digital and changing landscape journalism finds itself in, what advice do you have for young people entering the industry?”







Ask the newsroom: 8 editors and reporters from The Kansas City Star share tips for young journalists

Photo courtesy of Flickr user James Cridland

By Rose McManus

From being unique in your writing, to finding your first real job, reporters and editors from The Kansas City Star offer up their best pieces of advice for aspiring journalists.





5 tips on creating your website portfolio



Photo courtesy of Flickr user India7 Network

By Kelsey Castulik 


So you’ve spent endless hours on creating some content.  Whether it be for an internship, summer class or as freelance, you want to display all your work as a growing professional. Where can you show off the effort you put in? An online portfolio.


No summer internship? No problem!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Jean Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier
By Casey Edwards

If you’re like me then you’re not spending your summer at an internship learning and creating amazing things, and that might have bummed you out a little bit. But if you don't have an internship, it doesn't mean you're going to fall behind. Here are some ways to “stay on top of it” during the summer.


3 Podcasts that Highlight Marginalized Voices

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Patrick Breitenbach
By Abby Ivory-Ganja

I love podcasts. Seriously, I could babble about them for days. One time our Membership Development Chair, Casey, started talking about pizza rat, and I found a way to make it about podcasts. (But I think about this episode of Reply All so often.) One of my favorite things about podcasts is how they can tell stories from marginalized identities.


6 ways to balance professionalism and personality on social media


Photo courtesy of Flickr user Jason Howie

By Rachel Radecki 

Are you using your social media platforms effectively? These 6 tips will help you refine your social media accounts in order to balance your online professionalism and personality. 






My week learning a new language: how to code



Photo courtesy of Flickr user Thibault J.
By Tessa Weinberg

Coding, HTML, CSS and JavaScript are just a few of the words that makes most traditional print journalists cringe. Just right-click and inspect the elements of any webpage and you can get a glimpse into the confusing strings of code that govern the site you’re using. One of the items on my summer bucket list is to grasp the basics of coding, in the hopes of one day building my own website. Over the course of a week I tried out two popular coding sites: Codecademy and Free Code Camp. Below I’ve included what I found to be some of the pros and cons of each as well as a little bit of what I learned along the way.

5 ways to build your best portfolio during your internship



Photo courtesy of Flickr user Anthony DiLaura 
By Rose McManus


The best part about having a summer internship is getting to create your own work outside of the classroom, and building a portfolio is the best way to showcase all of it. These 5 steps will help you create an impressive online portfolio to show your skills and wow future employers. 






Thanks for two great years

Photo by Mark Hinojosa
From the Board

It's hard to believe that it's been two years since we were first elected to serve on ONA Mizzou's executive board. In that time, we've flown drones, brought a world-class storyteller to campus, encouraged self-care and more. We hope that you all have gotten as much out of ONA Mizzou these past two years as we have, and as we move onto new jobs and experiences in new cities, we wanted to take this chance to say goodbye.

Six ways to stay on your game over the summer

Photo courtesy of Flickr user VirtualWolf
By Rose McManus

If you aren’t flying out to New York or Chicago this summer for an impressive internship or journalism gig, don’t fret. These six tools can help you stay up to date and keep your skill set sharp before classes reconvene. By August, you’ll be ahead of the game.


Meet the 2016-2017 Executive Board!

It is with great pleasure that we present to you the 2016-2017 ONA Mizzou executive board!

President: Rose McManus


@rosemcms
Hello, my name is Rose McManus, and I am the president of ONA Mizzou. I am an Ohio native currently pursuing a master's degree in convergence journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia. 

In the past, I have worked for the Kansas City Star, POLITICO Europe, and the Columbia Missourian. I am known for wearing lots of black and being a little obsessive about Instagram. In my free time, I can be found at a coffee shop or exploring the Midwest on my road bike.

Live Blog: Data Visualization with Tableau Public

by Emerald O'Brien

Ben Jones (@dataremixed) is the director of product marketing at Tableau and he is here to teach us how to use the data visualization software. Tableau offers a free trial for students that you can download here.

Keep checking in to see what we're learning, and check out our Periscope of the event here. Following along with the Periscope will be the most helpful. 

Three reasons to learn data visualization

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Eric Fischer
By Sarah Darby

As journalists and communicators, we all want to tell compelling stories. Although many of us specialize in a specific area of storytelling such as convergence, broadcast, print, photo or strategic communication, at some point, we will all be asked to tell stories using new tools and platforms.

As technology evolves, media professionals must also evolve in order to reach audiences. The concept of Computer Assisted Reporting has been around since the 50s, but use of technology in newsrooms looks a lot different than it did then.

Why ONA Mizzou


By ONA Mizzou Executive Board

Each year, ONA Mizzou elects new members to its executive board, and this year, all six executive board members are graduating seniors, which means we are looking for six fresh faces to lead the organization.

On Thursday, April 14 at 6 p.m. in Middlebush 13 we will elect a new executive board, and we encourage anyone interested to submit an application.

ONA Mizzou is a student club, but it means so much more than that to each of our executive board members. All six of us have served on the board for the past two years. During that time, we have held digital workshops on everything from FOIA requests to drone journalism to digital portfolios, and this spring we brought storyteller Jessica Abel to campus.

Event Recap: Jessica Abel

Jessica Abel talks to an event attendee at a book signing following 
her presentation on Wednesday, March 23. Photo by Sarah Darby
By Maria Davison

Master cartoonist and storyteller Jessica Abel traveled to the University of Missouri this week to teach attendees the art of telling amazing stories. 

Jessica's latest book, "Out on the Wire," is a graphic novel that explains how the biggest names in narrative radio (like Ira Glass of This American Life, Jad Abumrad of Radiolab and Alex Blumberg formerly of Planet Money) craft the most compelling stories on the air.

If you missed Jessica's talk, check out our recap to see what you missed. 

Jessica Abel: The perfect fit


By Emerald O'Brien

You may have heard that Jessica Abel is coming to Mizzou on Wednesday, March 23. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try checking out our TL;DR video about who she is and why she is coming here.

For those of you who have a little more time, I wanted to give you some insight into why the rest of the executive board of ONA Mizzou and I wanted to bring Jessica Abel here.
Last year, I had the opportunity to see Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich speak at Washington University in St. Louis. After the event, one of my first reactions (other than “OMG OMG OMG”) was, “why haven’t we had any podcasts or radio shows at Mizzou?”

It's that time of year—ONA Mizzou exec elections are here!


By Kara Tabor

If you've been anticipating a run at the ONA Mizzou executive board, the wait is almost over. On April 14, we will be hosting our annual elections to pick the 2016-2017 executive board.

Serving on this board is a wonderful opportunity to gain leadership experience related to your career field, while helping to contribute valuable digital journalism resources for other students.

Tips From the Wire: Three tips from Jessica Abel’s storytelling podcast


By Kara Tabor

If you haven’t heard by know, comic book artist, podcaster and all-around storyteller Jessica Abel will be coming to campus later this month to impart her storytelling wisdom to Mizzou’s eager students and faculty. Before she dives into the nitty-gritty of crafting great stories across mediums in person, let’s look at a few of the invaluable storytelling tips and tricks that she highlights in her podcast, Out of the Wire.

6 essential Chrome tools for bloggers



Screenshot of Inspect Element on the ONA Mizzou blog 
By Sarah Darby

Whether you're an experienced coder or beginner blogger, Chrome tools can make you life a whole lot easier. 


Chrome has a number of free extensions and built-in features that make it an ideal browser for all of your blogging needs. 


Using just a few Chrome tools will help you begin to think like a web designer and allow you to easily customize and enhance your blog, portfolio or website.


Here are six of my favorite free Chrome tools (most of which I use every day):

LIVE BLOG: Crack the Code: WordPress

By Kara Tabor

Hi everyone! We're beginning our latest event "Crack the Code: WordPress." Feel free to follow along on this live blog post or on Twitter at @ONAMizzou.

Our featured speaker is Madi Alexander, a journalism grad student and coding wizard who has interned for the New York Times and ProPublica. She's leading our event and introducing some invaluable hacks for getting started with WordPress.

Blogging the way to existential disrepair: Part two!


I think about this picture on the regular.
Photo courtesy of Mike Licht/Flickr
By Emerald O'Brien

Around this time last year, I dutifully shared my tips for successful blogging, tips which I learned through several disastrous years of blogging experiences.

A year later, I am finally through with my days of required academic blogging.

So, what have I learned on the other side? Pretty much nothing, but check out the amended version of my old blog for a few extra nuggets. New additions are in italics and a sassy but gracefully matured voice.  



3 easy hacks to amp up your WordPress site

Photo courtesy of Pixabay
By Madison Feller

You already know that your personal website is an essential part of your toolbox. It showcases who you are, what you're about and what you can do. But how do you personalize your Wordpress site to make it just a little bit more functional and creative? We have three quick hacks you can use to make it that much better.

Choosing the right portfolio site for you


Photo by The City College First-Year Writing Program
By Maria Davison

So you want to build a personal portfolio site, but you're not sure where to begin? Picking the right platform to best showcase your work can seem like a daunting task, if only slightly less daunting than coding it yourself. But an outstanding online portfolio will help you out when it comes to applying for everything from your first internship to your dream job. The key is picking one that showcases your work at its best and makes it shine.

I asked a few ONA Mizzou Exec members and some other friends of ONA Mizzou to share the pros and cons of several common portfolio sites. Here's what they had to say:

ONA Mizzou announces spring speaker

 
Jessica Abel | Photo by Alain Francois
From the Executive Board

Attention all storytellers, journalists, podcast lovers, and artists:

This semester, you have the opportunity to learn from storyteller, graphic novelist and podcaster
Jessica Abel.

Jessica Abel is an expert in storytelling. She has devoted her career to understanding and practicing the art of illustrated storytelling and, more recently, audio storytelling. And she is bringing all of her talent to Mizzou.

What break? The best in digital media from the last month



Photo courtesy of Takk/Wikipedia Commons
From the Executive Board

There's snow on the ground, near-zero temperatures in the air and the Columbia streets are suddenly much more crowded than they were a week ago. After four weeks off, spring semester is officially underway. In case you've tuned out a bit, here are a few of our favorite pieces of digital media that came out during break. Also, don't forget to come to our first general meeting of the semester on Thursday, January 28 at 6 pm. You can find more details and RSVP here.