© ktsimage, iStockphoto

If you are a member of the class of 2015, just entering college, you have already seen a lot of change. Consider:

If you were born in the mid ’90s, people still don’t agree on whether you are a ’90s kid or a new-century kid.

The CD-Rom (remember those?) was about 10 years old when you were born.

The World Wide Web was about five years old when you were born.

In 1994, a gallon of gasoline cost $1.11.

In 1994, there were 260,289,237 Americans.

In January, 1994, there were 30,000 internet domains.

In 1994, two students created Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web. They soon changed its name to Yahoo!

1994: Consumers began connecting digital cameras to home computers.

1994: The first spam (not the meat kind) was sent.

1995: eBay started.

1997: Netflix was created.

July, 1997: There were 1,301,000 web domains.

1998: Google set up workspace in a garage.

1999: The music file-sharing service Napster was created.

2001: The iPod went on sale.

2004: Facebook started.

2005: The internet-based music genome project Pandora started.

2006: We  began tweeting.

2007: The iPhone was released. We are now on generation four.

2007: The Android came out. Version four, the Ice Cream Sandwich, is coming soon.

2008: PCWorld named Hulu the best product of the year.

2010: Apple released the first iPad, selling 3 million in 80 days.

January 2011: Facebook had 750 million active users.

July 2011: Twitter had one million registered apps.

Aug. 31, 2011: On the day many colleges began classes, classes there were about 312,100,000 Americans.

And the changes have just begun …

This guide was created in 2000 to improve coverage of Arab Americans. It was intended to be provide some quick answers ant to be a quick reference to other resources.

On the morning after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, with the intense interest in information about Arabs, I posted this guide on the JobsPage, then part of the Detroit Free Press’ website.

During a revision of the Free Press’ website, the guide was taken down. This link will take you to the Library of Congress; copy of the Free Press guide.

Joe Grimm

LINKED TO MSU NOTE ON EMAIL ETIQUETTE

Snail mail has been on my mind lately.

One reason is that I have heard some complaints recently about the way colleagues at Michigan State University have been addressed, sometimes by people they don’t know, in emails, and the offhanded way those emails are written. One, a professor with a doctorate, was put off by a student who began a simple request for a favor this way, “Hi, Kevin.” Typos followed.

The other reason is that I walked into my reporting class with some boxes of thank-you notes and told the class we were all going to thank one of the sources who had helped us with the stories we had written on our beats.

It turned out to be a lesson for me.

I asked the students whether they were prepared to write a thank-you at all times, with a box of cards and a strip of stamps in a place where they could find them. A few of them were that prepared.

“Why am I having you write thank-yous?”

The answers spilled out: “To be nice.” “Because it is the right thing to do.” “So they will talk to us again.” “To get more clicks on our stories.”

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

We navigated the tricky waters of thank-you writing: Lousy handwriting, finding the right person to address the envelope to, making sure that we did not turn the envelope upside down before we addressed. The thoughtfulness of having someone else lick you envelope because you’ve been eating chips in class and don’t want the thank-you “to be all chippy.”

It was fun.

But there are some strategies:

THANK-YOU SALUTATION

Do I write, “Dear So and So?” That sounds too intimate. I think this is generational. My 50-plus generation is still used to “Dear” as a standard salutation and we don’t read anything into that. But letter writers must be comfortable with what they write, so we talked about surrogates like “Thank you, So and So” or just diving in with the name and a comma. Commas, we felt, were warmer than colons, but not too presumptuous.

I saw some beautiful lettering and some that showed a lot more care than what we put into emails.

One person had a Whiteout emergency. Who buys Whiteout these days?

THE STRUCTURE

A good thank-you need not be long. Three sentences are enough if they are specific.

Thank you, Ms. Source,

I appreciate the time you took to show me the library’s new swimming pool. I had never before seen a swimming pool in the library. The time you took to show me the pool and explain how it has helped with the low humidity in winter really helped me write a good story.

Sincerely,

Form-letter thank-yous, even if written by hand, are insincere.

Thank you, Aunt Janice for the lovely gift.

THE CLOSER

A simple “sincerely” can always get you out of a thank-you. If you’d like to be a little warmer, you can write, “Thanks again.” I love the numbers of up-and-coming adults who say “thank you so much” and really seem genuine about it. This is a great quality.

THE CARD

I brought in four kinds of cards. Because we are a class from Michigan State University, two were university cards and the other two kinds were pretty basic designs. One was blue and brown with “Thank you” on the outside; one was a business-style cream card with an embossed “Thank you” and no ink at all.

For the kinds of thank-yous we were writing, bunnies and kittens are out. They look childish for business thank-yous.

If you want to get carried away – and I suggest you do – invest a little money in personalized stationery that conveys the brand you are projecting. People will be sure to remember you in this post-snail-mail age.

One student asked, “May I have a second card to thank someone else?”

“Yes, you may.”

“Thank you.”

Changes in traditional work schedules could liberate workers from the clock. © Baris Simsek, iStockphoto

By JOE GRIMM
Michigan State University
School of Journalism

(In this JobsPage series, I describe seven emerging job trends and strategies for using them to your advantage.)

Seven emerging employment trends will affect the way journalists run their careers in the years ahead.

Not all the trends are to workers’ advantage.

Like them or not, however, the better you understand them, the better you can cope with them or plan strategies to take advantage of the new realities.

In the next seven posts, I will describe the trends I am seeing, based on more than 20 years of recruiting, and tell you what you can do to prepare to make the most of what is happening.

There was a time not long ago when a good job would last for 40 years and a standard workweek was 40 hours.

Not anymore.

Companies and whole industries are being made over so quickly that it will be a rare company that does not change fundamentally over and over again — and the ones that don’t change will not survive. This leads to rapid replacements of workers, even in thriving companies.

So, too, with the old 40-hour workweek. More and more companies have been opting for a variety of part-time, flex-time and short-term arrangements to trim payroll costs, remain flexible and avoid the expense of layoffs. Government and corporations are outsourcing jobs and using contract workers where before they used to use payrolls.

In many cases, employers are using short shifts and contracts to escape the costs of pensions and health benefits.

To be sure, the 40-hour-a-week job is not as endangered as the 40-year career, but many full-time jobs are being replaced by contract or part-time positions.

This will be hard for many traditional workers, but some workers will really like this trend. They will negotiate what they need and will be able to take leaves that were not possible before. They will be able to work for multiple employers and they will feel and be safer from layoffs and downsizing. They will like the security of having multiple income streams and they will like the flexibility and challenge. They will like choosing among projects.

Strategies

• Prepare for a portfolio career in which you have more than one employer. I solid arrangement can have an anchor employer who offers health benefits, but in which most compensation comes from the other employers. That way, if you lose even your largest employer, you still have most of your income. Couples should think of themselves as one wage-earning team and try this. If one partner has the insurance for both, the other can concentrate on compensation.
• Figure out your day rate. How much do you need to be paid in a day or a week to make your goal for the year? Negotiate for it and trade up from jobs or assignments that will use up your time at wages that don’t meet your needs.
• Even if you have a steady job, develop a second and a third stream of revenue by freelancing, doing side work or monetizing a hobby. You may need to grow those streams if your main source of income stops. Being prepared means getting a head start.
• Specialize and negotiate. Specialists with rare skills command more than generalists. It is the simple law of supply and demand. The more unique and valued your skills, the more you can demand. Differentiate to win.
• Save for retirement, starting now. Pensions may get added back in when the economy rises, but it is irresponsible to leave your future in the hands of employers and Social Security. Keep some money in cash. Advisers recommend as much as three months pay, even though that is difficult. If you are not used to spending everything you make, you can better manage a wage cut and will have a cushion.

7 job trends in this JobsPage series

1. 40/40 is over. Forty years with the same employer will be highly unusual and the 40-hour workweek with set daily hours will be increasingly rare.
2. The job market has a new topography.You need to have a brand.

Non-compete clauses restrict workers' opportunities.<br>© Martin Novak, iStockphotoASK THE RECRUITER

Q. A former coworker contacted me today because the newspaper company is having everyone sign a non-compete agreement which precludes pretty much any media-related activities (from multimedia to design and basic editing) while the employee is on the job and for one year after the person leaves.

This is a 20k(ish) circulation paper where people have had furloughs and no raises for three years. Employees were given one week to sign. The penalty for not signing is the possibility of being fired.

I find this a rather shocking turn of events — but perhaps it is more common nowadays?

A. It is unfair to threaten to fire people who try to maintain their livelihood after leaving an employer that has been cutting their compensation.

This may be one of the most abusive cases I have heard of for a non-compete clause, though I don’t have any more details than you have given me.

Non-compete clauses come in different flavors. Some reasonably protect the newsroom’s local news franchise, but extreme agreements seem almost paranoid.

The world is changing. As collaboration supplants competition, some non-competes are anachronistic. Agreeing to let journalists work for more than one kind of outlet in a community can be a win-win.

With the advent of the internet, though, some companies went beyond the bounds of logic. On the one hand, they described anyone else who was also on the internet as a competitor and off limits. On the other hand, they said that any work produced by their staffs could be used on any platform that existed without additional compensation. Talk about holding all the cards.

Non-compete clauses are commonplace in television. Situations like the one you describe, where they are suddenly introduced, usually arise when the employer fears that a new competitor will hire staff members away and acquire their expertise.

One editor I know who worked for a newspaper in the Twin Cities when the newspaper war was hot and heavy was told to sign a contract saying he would not work for competitors after he left. He argued that this would hurt his ability to earn an income if he stayed in town, as he planned, and he insisted that he be compensated for signing, which would be a change in conditions. He got some money.

Your 20,000-circulation newspaper is using the stick rather than the carrot. No checks will be cut.

The situation you have described, which would require a year of silence on that market, is orange on my Workplace Security Non-Compete Clause Threat Scale.

Here is how I rate others non-compete agreements:

HIGH: You are not allowed to perform any sort of journalism — writing, artwork, design photography or editing — for anyone else anywhere on the basis that anyone who posts on the Web is our competition.

ELEVATED: You cannot do the kind of work you do for us for them — whoever they might be — though you could edit if you are a writer and vise versa if the other place is not in our market area.

GUARDED: No working for our neighboring competitors. If you can write something for a national magazine, please get them to say you work for us, OK? And include a link. We need the eyeballs.

LOW: You are encouraged to work for non-competing media in the market, but you have to identify yourself as our person. This policy lets the columnist or critic appear regularly on local radio or TV, extending the newsroom’s brand and their own, as well.

FOLLOW: A journalist wrote to say that the TV station she works at has a non-compete clause that forbids her for six months after she leaves from working for any newsroom in the United States that puts news on the Web. It feels to her like a career stopper. Have any ideas? Leave a comment.