Welcome to NU Media People

Dear friends and colleagues:

Some of you I talk to every day. Some of you I haven’t seen in more than year. But I think you’ll all like this idea and will want to participate.

The idea: an informal networking site for NU students and alums interested in the media. What does that mean? It means a place to share job information, interesting articles, observations about the working world, or reflections on how the current media world connects with your NU experience.

Why? I have a few reasons myself. The first is that if there’s one thing I’ve discovered in my five months in the “real world,” it’s that one must network or die. Just about any job worth getting or opportunity worth pursuing is discovered through a friend or colleague of some sort — or can be exploited much more efficiently is one has that sort of connection. I hate the slick, superficial, elevator friendships that usually accomplish this sort of goal, so I thought this might be a good way to accomplish the same goals while also staying in touch with a bunch of people I like.

It may seem odd that I am starting such a site when I no longer work in any sort of obvious media job. There are two answers to that. First, my job is about to expand to include a bit of something like journalism, which I’ll explain in a later post. But the more fundamental answer is that there are many of us who were either journalism students or media people of some sort who, for whatever reason, aren’t anymore. Yet if you’re like me, you still get a kick out of awful headlines or unapologetic bias or ombud columns. You want to be a part of the discussion. And who knows, if you find the right opportunity, you might want to get back in. So even if you’re not a writer or reporter or editor or designer anymore, please join anyway.

If you are one of those things, as many of my friends still are, you must have also observed what I have, even as an outsider: reporting is a lonely profession. Erin Ailworth and I once had a conversation about how most journalists seem to be secretly antisocial. Even if you didn’t come into the reporting life that way, it might make you so; you have to move to a town where you don’t know a soul just to get a job; your profession is one of the least trusted in the United States; you witness awful things each day and are expected to maintain a straight face; even when you produce a decent bit of copy, it’s likely to get hacked up or poorly packaged; and though you might have lots of friends to drink and go out with, if they’ve never had a byline, they probably don’t understand. Fundamentally, this site is a small way to fight that sort of despair, which has infected too many of us and our friends.

So I hope you give the site a try. If it fails, well, it was worth a shot.

A few rules and guidelines:

* This site is not designed to be any sort of in-club or private network. At the same time, it is not the Medill career office. Attempting to join just to find a job or the like will be frowned upon; new members should have some previous connection to a member of the group.

* All the information posted will be public. Don’t be an idiot and post about how much you hate your editor and all your co-workers. If I’m worried that a post will get us in legal trouble, I’ll take it down.

* Membership and posting privileges will be extended to anyone a current member vouches for (as long as they spent some time at NU). If this gets out of hand, we’ll develop something better.

* Being a firm believer in the First Amendment, I don’t want to discourage anyone from speaking their minds. However, I’d ask everyone to keep in mind the purpose of the site.

* That being said, it seems prudent to add that current NU students probably shouldn’t post about current issues at Medill, the Daily, etc., unless the other members can be engaged in some way. So “new dean of Medill,” yes; “don’t forget the bagels for this week’s city desk meeting,” no.

* Finally, don’t be a jerk. Malicious gossip or flamewars could ruin the site for everyone.

* Feel free to suggest other sensible rules.

I hope everyone enjoys the site. Just let me know if you think there's anything I should change.

By the way, the list of people I invited to the site this morning was not intended to be exclusive at all... please invite anyone you'd like.