But neither WNYC nor the Gates Foundation has acknowledged that the show has actually received a grant.

Several recent episodes of On the Media credit the Gates Foundation, among other groups, with supporting the show. You can hear the message on the July 22 show at around 11 minutes. “Support for On the Media also comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live healthy productive lives,” the announcer states.

When I first heard the sponsorship message a few weeks ago, I searched On the Media’s website to learn more about the Gates Foundation funding. But I didn’t find information or acknowledgement of it anywhere. The show does not appear to put all its sponsorship information on the website. Apart from a sentence in the footer, I could not find mentions of other sponsors mentioned in the same podcast, such as Reputation.com and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I put a question out on Twitter about the nature of the Gates Foundation’s support for the show. John Keefe, WNYC’s news director, responded almost immediately. He didn’t know the answer, but he referred me to WNYC’s press relations staff who have not gotten back to me yet (question was posed about two weeks ago).

After coming up empty on the Gates Foundation’s website, I reached out to their press people. In an email response  to my inquiry, a member of their media team wrote, “We do not have a grant to ‘On the Media’ or WNYC, but we have long supported NPR generally.” The media team rep. suggested I might have heard the general underwriting credit.

Hmm.

Recently, I was looking into a story about new global health developments in the Houston area (it didn’t quite pan out and I ended up doing an editorialized blog post on it for UN Dispatch). I did some Googling and found contact information for a guy who used to blog about global health in Houston. I emailed him and appreciated that he was “chatty” in our correspondence.

But when I asked him followup questions in one email, I was quite taken aback with his defensive responses and incorrect assumptions. Here is part of his email:

You mentioned something about global health, which is a jargon term that does not mean the same as international health. And your confusing of the two terms is the sort of sloppy thinking that makes life difficult for those of us interested in addressing the social conditions that determine most of a person’s health potential (a cornerstone of global health efforts). Notably health care delivery and technology (foci of international health) play only a very small part in this.

There’s a fine commentary in Lancet from a couple years back called something like “What is global health” that I encourage you to read.

So to me your questions seem off point.

For the record, I have read the Lancet piece he mentioned (it was great and thought-provoking!). But that’s beside the point. It’s nice that this guy has the luxury of staying cloistered in academia where he can nitpick what we call things. But that attitude doesn’t really bode well for communicating with journalists or any non-expert audiences.

I guess this guy just wasn’t interested in taking his message beyond our email exchange, and that’s fine. That’s not everyone’s goal. But for expert sources who do want to use media to reach larger audiences, there’s a lesson here: don’t let your expertise prevent you from being accessible.

And being a little nice can’t hurt either.

Follow the golden rule of social media — tailor content to the platform where it will appear. Tumblr is not WordPress or Blogger. It’s not Twitter and it’s not a Facebook status update. Simply put, Tumblr is best used as a platform to share media.

Flickr/cHopan

Here are three tips and examples of what content works on Tumblr:

• Video clips that make you want to hit replay

Sometimes I’ll scroll through my RSS reader and see a new post from a favorite blog that hasn’t been updated in a while. But there’s almost nothing more disappointing in RSS land than discovering that the new post is a video the blogger came across and simply had to share (read: not original). Yeah, maybe I find the video funny  or interesting, but on a blog I expect to hear the blogger’s voice. On Tumblr, I expect to find videos that I feel compelled to share with others.

• Images that scream, “Have you seen this?”

Tumblr is a flexible and visually-oriented platform. It really lends itself to stories that are told through images rather than words (think infographics, photo journalism etc.). I learned this first-hand when I stumbled upon a picture of trees wrapped in spiderwebs in Pakistan. I’d never seen anything like it and found it fascinating that it was actually helping with malaria control in the area (my Tumblr deals with global health and foreign news mostly). I posted it and so far, 50 people couldn’t believe their eyes either.

There are also several categories on Tumblr’s Explore page that are focused on images: GIF, Tattoos, Illustration and Art.

• Under-covered stories

Tumblr is becoming increasingly popular in the journalism world. There’s a lot of smart curation happening, especially with stories that don’t traditionally get massive attention from mainstream sources.In an interview I did for Mediaite, Ernie Smith of Short Form Blog talked about how the community helped shed light on the story of Jennifer Ruxford, who experienced health issues because of the Gulf oil spill.

“I think that’s where sites like Tumblr can get a real advantage on news stories. We can find opportunities like this to tell others about things that are getting underplayed in the press, and by telling people about them, can make people in our circle care, Smith said.

As for things that certainly don’t work, there really aren’t hard-and-fast rules. For the most part, I’d caution against text-heavy posts, but there are exceptions, such as this humorous piece about New York Times headlines (310 notes and counting) and some posts that appear under the popular long reads tag.

The site has two main goals: 1. to help people enhance their worldview or perspective of global events; 2. to increase dialogue about international news and make the world smaller through conversation and interaction, both on this site and on Twitter.

The philosophy behind the site is “hyperlocal gone global.” There is an emphasis on what is happening in a specific place at a specific time and looks at how people are reacting to that event(s) in the area.

Barbara Iverson recently wrote about the site–which launched at the beginning of this year–for Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits:

[Breaking Tweets] is associated with the account Twitter.com/breakingtweets, but it takes Twitter messages to a new level. The site has just added Breaking Tweets Entertainment and Breaking Tweets Sports, and will soon add Breaking Tweets Chicago…

Breaking Tweets has human editors who manually select messages for inclusion in their stories. Furthermore, the editors treat the Tweets like quotes, weaving the 140 character missives into a comprehensive story on a news topic.From a “virtual newsroom,” the team keeps connected via e-mail and online.

Last month, BeatBlogging.org’s Lily Q interviewed BreakingTweets.com founder Craig Kanalley, a journalism grad student at DePaul University (the staff listed on the Breaking Tweet’s site mostly consists of journalism students).

Kanalley tells Lily that he first got the idea for the site after he “saw the amount of people twittering about Election Day and how Twitter can serve as a place for breaking news, very personal feelings and eyewitness accounts.”

A few more snippets from Kanalley:

Tweets are great because they are short, quick and, in many ways, they are just like quotes that journalists would often use anyway. They are instantaneous and, as a result, they work well with news in general, also across a wide geographic scope.

Breaking Tweets changes the practice because it focuses on editing the Web. There is so much clutter out there but it takes it all and seeks to make sense of it. I think a well done Breaking Tweets story can be just as valuable as a longer form traditional news story on the same subject. It gives a different glimpse into the story.

See the full interview here.

Don’t let the name fool you though, Breaking Tweets is not intended to “break the news.” In a blog post, Kanalley writes, “The point of the site I put together is to chronicle the biggest news around the world each day and put a Twitter spin on it by personalizing the news through tweets.”

But the site actually did scoop the BBC and CNN last week.  Read more about that here.

Breaking Tweets logo/BreakingTweets.com

You know these wannabe theater or movie star types. It’s that kid who had the lead in his or her high school play, who got bitten by the acting bug and just couldn’t shake it. After college, they find their way to Los Angeles or New York set on pursuing their passion, waiting tables or doing some other type of work that gives them the opportunity to hunt and hustle in the hopes of landing that big break.

Here’s what led me to think about the new commonalities between journalists and actors:

Both actors and journalists are frustrated that there are lots of people who are untrained in their lines of work and often willing to do it for free.

I recently attended a taping of The Kalb Report . This specific episode, titled “Down to the Wire: Journalism in Crisis,” featured a panel of news executives from CNN, NPR, the AP and the Knight Foundation. Discussion focused on the future of journalism, the impact of the economic crisis on journalism and other current uncertainties (transcript here). During the question and answer session, a Medill graduate said he feels a “little bit like an actor who’s watched reality stars take over prime time TV. They don’t do it as well as [professional actors] do, but they do it for free.”

Photo: gruntzooki/Flickr

Ultimately he asked the panel for advice for people who are trying to to break into journalism. The NPR executive’s response made journalism sound even more like acting, alluding to images of the “starving artist.” Vivian Schiller, the president and CEO of NPR, said, “Well, don’t give up. I mean, the good news– I mean, the bad news is you’re going to have trouble eating, as Tom said, for the next few years.”

It’s becoming more common to see journalists taking flexible or part-time jobs that allow them to pay the bills while they pursue their passion.

A friend who would like to work in journalism started following me on Twitter. This friend is also a Medill graduate — an interesting coincidence because it says a lot if graduates of one of the best and most well-known journalism schools in the country aren’t finding jobs in the industry. When I clicked on her Twitter page , I was taken aback by the blunt characterization of her professional activities in her bio. It reads, “Journalist in theory…Barista in practice.”

Her story certainly isn’t unique — just read this recent “Ask the Recruiter” question about transitioning from waiting tables to reporting on politics. In the answer, Joe Grim, notices the same thing I’m writing about here. “You sound like an actor on his way to Hollywood — not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he writes. Others are doing things differently in an effort to get them closer to securing a journalism job.

Regardless of the route, many journalists, like actors, are holding out for that dream of getting full-time work in their desired field. Of course, some have decided to leave journalism altogether to pursue other career paths. The creator of angryjournalist.com — Kiyoshi Martinez, a brilliant journalist now working in public affairs — is one such example. But that’s the subject of a separate post.

As millennials come of age, they’re infiltrating the work force in all areas and all industries. Many, like me, are becoming journalists. And some, like me, are continually re-evaluating this career decision. While I think you can find recovering journalists in almost every generation (I’ve chatted with way too many people who seem to have concluded that being a journalist was more appealing on paper than in practice), there are some unique reasons why the news room can be a toxic place for millennials. At the same time, the digitalization of news is providing opportunities that mesh really well with the Gen Y mentality.

Keen observers of Gen Y know that this generation craves work-life balance. For us, sacrificing a personal life to climb the ranks at work isn’t a reasonable trade-off. We want jobs that can accommodate life, not a life that has to accommodate the job – an aspiration that is often at odds with the status quo in many work places. It is an especially lofty goal when it comes to journalism, a career that often requires late hours and weekend work to meet deadlines.

Al Jazeera English newsroom. Photo: jdebner/Flickr

Predictably, millennials in journalism aren’t happy about those long hours. According to a 2005 Poynter survey, journalists between 20 and 34 years old were most likely to say they had considered leaving journalism because of work-life balance issues. And newsroom vets generally aren’t getting it. Danna Walker, an adjunct journalism professor at American University who also works as an editor and producer at CBS, says that “the older generation didn’t know what to think” when millennials first showed up in newsrooms. “The assumption is that millennials aren’t as willing to pay their dues,” she says. In fact, the whole “pay your dues” mentality is “worn out,” according to Bea Fields, author of “Millennial Leaders.” Control tactics do nothing to attract and retain Gen Y employees, as Fields explains over at Y Blog.

Newsrooms also rarely meet Gen Y’s mentorship and training expectations. A young journalist recently submitted a question to “Ask the Recruiter” columnist Joe Grimm, a well-know recruitment and development editor for the Detroit Free Press. The recent graduate wrote that he got “minimal feedback” from the editors at his paper, leaving him with “no idea” whether he was doing a good job or a bad job. “If misery loves company, you have plenty of both,” Grimm writes in response, citing a survey that found that lack of training is the number one complaint that journalists have about the profession.

But millennials aren’t totally doomed to an otherwise unhappy or non-existent future in journalism. The Internet and multimedia news can add a “wonderful dynamic” to newsrooms, says Jill Geisler, a journalism leadership and management specialist at Poynter. Young journalists with technical skills are in big demand to staff news Web sites. As a result, many new hires are commanding respect from day one because they’re often the only person in the newsroom with the multimedia know-how to perform certain tasks. “As editors realize they need new approaches and people with new media skills, younger folks are becoming more valued,” Walker writes in an e-mail. A Gen Y friend who works for NBC in Washington, D.C. tells me that she and some of her other colleagues are sought after by their older newsroom counterparts who are hoping that the millennials can teach them a thing or two about the computer programs they learned in journalism school. In many situations, multimedia is not only allowing Gen Yers to get a foot in the door, but it’s immediately positioning them in roles where they are taken seriously from the start.

In addition, the expansion of online news is also catering to Gen Y’s job-hopping tendencies. New positions are popping up in many companies that are launching or expanding Web sites to complement print work. Job-hopping within the industry is common, observes Meg Martin, a multimedia producer for the Roanoke Times. “There’s a lot of crossover and a lot of news organizations are encouraging people to explore different positions,” Martin says.

The news industry is facing a moment of significant challenges and prospects in terms of recruitment of Gen Y journalists. Will digital news be journalism’s proverbial “knight in shining armor” when it comes to recruiting millennials and then retaining them for longer than five minutes? Could it set journalism apart from other industries in the quest to adapt to Gen Y? The answer will certainly depend on how individual newsrooms resolve work-life balance concerns, training needs and other issues that matter to millennials. But for me and the thousands of other millennials with notoriously high student loan payments, the bottom line might just end up getting the largest say.