If you want a career in interactive media, you’ll have to be interactive and proactive. Daisy Whitney tells you how to build your media career by building your brand. More importantly, she shows how hard work and dedication lead to success. And for those scoring at home, Daisy is the second expert this month to advise not just meeting … but beating deadlines.

DAISY WHITNEY is a new media rock star. She’s omnipresent, and she’s everywhere with quality content. In her answers below, she credits some of her success to luck, but it’s clear that hard work, dedication, and talent led to her success. Daisy earned a degree in Art History from Brown University, making her path to new media the road less traveled.

She is the new media reporter for TVWeek and produces the New Media Minute (featured above) and an audio podcast. In addition she regularly writes for numerous other publications, including Advertising Age.

Her predictions for 2009 caught my eye, and thankfully she shared her time and advice with us:

1) One of your predictions for 2009 is an increase in mobile marketing. How do you think consumers will react to this increase? Isn’t it the one place left free of advertising clutter?

DAISY: I expect ads on mobile phones to be non-intrusive (think simple overlays on a small part of the screen) and will likely be super-targeted to you and even your location so the hope is you’d want the deals being offered!

2) You make a prediction of consumers dropping traditional cable TV and satellite services for online viewing. After the Internet killed newspapers and with the advent of satellite radio, is television simply the last old medium to die?

DAISY: I’m not convinced TV is going to die just as I’m not convinced papers are either. I think cable operators will be challenged to make their services relevant, and in time they will be forced to evolve and base their business models on being dumb pipes for broadband service. Broadband will reign supreme, and cable operators can deliver that. They will find creative ways to tier their broadband price offerings to make money in the future.

And TV won’t die! We as people love entertainment. Networks and studios are being forced to evolve and offer their programs in new ways and find new ways to make money on their shows. But we will always want content. The smart networks and studios who are nimble and fast will make it.

3) You make a prediction about Grey’s Anatomy. Hasn’t that show just about “jumped the shark”? Seriously, don’t you think that Denny needs to go away?

DAISY: I’m a Grey’s apologist, so it hasn’t jumped the shark for me! Many people think it has, but I love the show as crazy and weird as it is this season. I was loving the Denny storyline at first because I LOVE LOVE LOVE Denny, but now it’s time to do something with it. But I don’t have a problem with Ghost Love in general! I am all about the suspension of a disbelief and never have I expected a hospital drama to be realistic. Remember, this is a show where people get impaled on a regular basis and where doctors perform never been done before brain surgeries after a patient checks in that morning! So realism isn’t what Grey’s is about.

4) You seem to be a renaissance media expert. What advice do you have for college students today who want media careers?

DAISY: If you want a career in media you need a plan to become a brand. Don’t confine yourself to one medium. Develop skills for print, audio and visual. You need to be conversant in all three and you need to smartly promote and propagate your own stories across media. No one else is going to look out for you, so make yourself an indispensable industry resource.

Seek out speaking engagements, post comments on like-minded sites, get involved in social media relentlessly. Never miss a deadline, and in fact, make a commitment to file all your stories early as this will impress your bosses and enhance your job security.

5) How did your multi-platform career get started?

DAISY: Like most things in life I was in the right place at the right time. I was covering technology for TVWeek before it became sexy, back when it was racks and servers and traffic systems. That served me well when the iPod revolutionized video entertainment in 2005 with the iTunes-Disney deal. As I covered new media more I made a decision to actually use the services I wrote about and to write about the usage. Readers enjoyed those reports, knowing that I walked the walk and talked the talk. Because I was covering the transformation of entertainment, it only made sense to do the same with my own career and to also embody the changes I was writing about. I had been actively speaking at conferences for four years, so when my husband suggesting launching a video podcast in Sept. 2007, it made perfect sense.

My first few episodes were awkward, and my delivery was stiff, but I learned on the job and quickly was able to refine my on-camera skills. One thing led to another and I also actively pursued new opportunities, so now I produce on-air reports for KNTV’s “Tech Now,” host and produce the New Media Minute and host an audio podcast This Week in Media.

Links

• Learn more about Daisy on her Web site.
• Follow Daisy on Twitter.

The Oct. 25, 2005, story ran under the headline, “Franchisees turn on Crispin’s King.”

The problem is that BK is the No. 2 burger chain in the country, distantly trailing No. 1 McDonald’s and barely leading No. 3. Wendy’s.

Burger King goes well with their target market: young males. And although the King played well with that audience, he was not bringing in new customers.

Burger King is “highly effective with a very narrow target so the strategy is working, but is it the right strategy?” said one fast-food industry executive. “From a traffic perspective … the answer is no. They’re selling higher-priced products to fewer people, and that’s where McDonald’s understands that it’s a volume-driven business.”

This tension continued for more than two months:

Until now, the two sides would clash, but generally come to some form of compromise. But franchisees have recently balked at corporate plans with increasing frequency, with some criticizing the fast-feeder’s focus on young males at the expense of women and families, a strategy forged in conjunction with its agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami. (Advertising Age, January 9, 2006, Peace breaks out: BK quells franchisee feud; Franchisee board renews relations after fights over chain’s marketing tack).

Somehow these King ads managed to persist and even elicit imitations:

We can only imagine what the Burger King suits — to say nothing of the entire creative department at BK’s ad agency of record, Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami — must be thinking every time they see one of a new collection of McDonald’s spots featuring various kids and a plastic statue of the iconic Ronald McDonald seated on a bench. (Chicago Sun-Times, March 1, 2006, McDonald’s serves BK leftovers)

Now more than three years later, the King persists. Clearly Burger King has access to proprietary data that I do not share. However, almost universally my discussions confirm the original franchisee concern: the ads play well to the target market are irritate almost everyone else.

Let’s put it this way, since that original ad appeared, I have not once heard my wife suggest going to Burger King for a salad.

Fast forward to this week, and I see a Tweet by a former Tech Student @humbearto that read:

The Round Up is/was/will forever be the best job that I ever had.

When I left NMSU with diploma-in-hand in 1997, I was as “print” as you could be. Man, did I love newspapering.

Read about how cult members become completely devoted to their cause, and that is how I felt about the institution of the daily newspaper.

It was my calling.

Veteran newsman Mack Lundstrom only intensified that love during my Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internship boot camp at San José State that summer. If you ever wanted to love a newspaper, just spend a few hours talking to Mack. He’s still my hero.

Many fluke events led me away from the daily newspaper, but I have missed it nearly every day. And it has been especially sad to watch the industry die as the business model implodes.

But I have to admit that I wasn’t ready for what I saw today on Twitter, posted by @MarketingProfs:

Detroit newspapers quit print home delivery: http://tinyurl.com/5k4vxj

What? How is that even possible? What? OK, maybe in 2018, but 2008? Twenty-bleeping-oh-eight?

It read like a headline from the Onion. But it was painful nonfiction.

According to the Wall Street Journal story:

The Free Press and the News would be the first dailies in a major metropolitan market to curtail home delivery and drastically scale back their print editions. Other newspapers are contemplating similar moves in response to the erosion of advertising and the rising costs of printing and delivery. In October the Christian Science Monitor said it will stop printing a daily newspaper in April and move instead to an online version with a weekly print product.

Insane. Just insane.

I get it — and I’m even part of the problem with this blog, my Facebook and Twitter pages (follow me on Twitter). And I subscribe to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal only on Sundays. But I just cannot explain the gravitas with which this hits me.

Being in my mid-30’s makes me feel antiquated and irrelevant, but this makes me feel as if I have one foot in the grave.

No home delivery — even on most days — is a white flag of irreversible consequence.

Internet, I love you. But you took just 14 years to deliver a coup de grâce to my first love. And for that I can never forgive you.

Say it ain’t so.

I got the inspiration from Bob Schaller, who writes a number of “20 questions” features. Since Bob writes much faster than me, I decided to stick to 5. I also found it appropriate for him to be the first featured individual.

Bob Schaller is an accomplished author, educator, and journalist. He has published more than 35 books, including a recent biography on Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps titled, Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion (available at Amazon.com, $6.29). He is a staff writer for SwimNetwork.com. Currently a doctoral student in mass communications at Texas Tech, Schaller has worked at newspapers in Nebraska, Colorado and California. He also writes for Splash Magazine, published by USA Swimming.

1) What’s the most important characteristic for a writer?

Schaller: To respond to criticism well, to apply it, and always get better. The best experiences I have had always involve editors who take me out to the proverbial woodshed. My talent is marginal, but my work ethic is exceptional. I like that feedback because it makes me better. Also, write across different genres, not just one or two. If you want to make a living at it, that’s essential, and it’s also a great way to get better. There’s a narrative arc even to explicating a technical writing project like explaining a digital camera. Though that’s different from a biography, it involves a lot of the same critical-thinking and writing skills. Passion is awesome, and people should have that in whatever they do. But a lot of people who love to write simply aren’t that good at it. It’s tough, because writing is so personal — we can all do it at the basic level. But to do it professionally is a whole new skill set. Hey, I can hit a running 12-footer, maybe even more often than Kobe, but the Lakers haven’t called. Still.

2) You’ve taught print journalism and are writing a text on online communication. What must journalism students know today that wasn’t taught 10 years ago?

Schaller: There has been a move away from teaching — in my brief experience — storytelling skills. The new media present new challenges, and they require different skill sets to tell a story well across media. There are some basic components to journalism and storytelling that ring true across media — get it right, be clear and concise, etc. — but doing it on video, print, or audio are different skill sets. It’d be hard to be good in all three, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of developing and honing one’s skills. Being a jack of all trades and master of none means a small market, or limited opportunities. Or at least get good at one before moving onto the others. I like the idea of the multi-media journalist, but a lot more thought, planning and better learning outcomes are going to have to be developed before the new media journalist is part of the working world — and curriculum. A big part of that is a lot of the good folks in academia left the “real world” before the Internet. It’d be hard for anyone to teach something they never experienced. The real-time news cycle is a foreign term to those who left the field before they had the pressure of which story to post, or hold, and when to update a Web site, how the news cycle changes fact checking and editing. Knowing how to use the bells and whistles on this new engine is awesome, but not if you are spinning your wheels. Everyone can produce media — that’s awesome — but not everyone wants to read or hear what EVERYONE else to say. That was the big myth with the citizen journalist, that anyone would care about what others have to say. All the “interactivity” is nasty comments appended at the end of story and below YouTube videos. People want to express themselves — cool — but a rant or vulgar diatribe is not a form of journalism whatsoever. Now, if they have rhetoric skills, it’s a different conversation — speaking of which, those should be taught, too.

3) What do you wish that more freelance writers knew?

Schaller: That you are a contractor as much as a writer. You’d better market yourself if you are going to put food on the table. You can’t believe in writer’s block and be a real writer. Sometimes the words find you, but sometimes you have to find them — I have repeated that several times teaching, because it’s a craft. Someone goes out in the real world and Joe’s PR Firm needs a release written by 5 p.m., and you say, “I can’t do it, writer’s block.” Goodbye. Next.

Being a freelance writer is a great life, a life of dreams. But your name is your brand, so you’d better attach it to projects you are committed to do, and do well. Also, there’s this myth about freelancing that you have no boss. Anyone who signs a paycheck to you is your boss, and if you make them mad once, you run the risk of never writing for that Web site or magazine again — worse, it might extend to ALL the editors in that person’s network, because we all know that word travels fast in these times. Also, don’t ever miss a deadline. I try to “comically” beat deadlines — to get the assignment done well and turned in as quickly as possible, so fast that the editor laughs because she or he “can’t believe how fast” I turned it in. Because when they need something under the gun in the future, they will remember you for that. And usually, with we-need-this-fast assignments, the pay is correspondingly higher because of the urgency.

4) You have amazing networking skills. What is the biggest mistake that recent graduates make in networking?

Schaller: Thinking people owe them something. I tried to help someone here, and they were so mad they didn’t have an answer that week, that person stopped talking to me even when we passed in the hall. Think I will help that person again? Not likely. Also, remember that everything you do is an opportunity to network. Even if you are working for a poverty-level wage at a nonprofit (which is awesome, that’s just not me), you are going to deal with big companies. Make connections, send a thank you — send a resume and work sample. No is going to move you up unless you move yourself up. A lot of people love filling out applications online, and that’s cool if it is asked for, but that’s just getting you in line — I want my students and friends at the front of the line so they get a shot, and what happens from there is up to them. Another important thing is that people think the opportunities are endless. They are, but if you get an interview, don’t give it anything other than your best. You have a million arrows in your sheaf, but you only get one shot at most targets. Miss once, and that often is it. Also, don’t ever react to a perceived (or even real) disrespect if there’s a networking opportunity. Sometimes, people don’t mean what they say, or they are having a bad day and take it out on you — they’ll remember the person who took the high road for all the right reasons, and you might get a job, and an apology, down the road. If you react, you just got to feel good for a second, and doors have closed. I’d rather chug a gallon of pride than throw away a five-figure freelance gig over ego.

5) If someone were to write a biography on Bob Schaller, what should the title be?

Schaller: Dumb luck uncovered: How do these things happen?

Thanks, Bob!