Interesting Name, Interesting Guy

Ivan Lajara is a young journalist who knows all about what it takes to make in today's dwindling field of journalism.
A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, Lajara not only studied journalism, but was also the editor of the school's paper, The Oracle, which gave him plenty of experience before graduating. At this time, newspapers were still the entrance point for young journalists to break into the field and find jobs. The Freeman, a well known, established newspaper is where he got his first job out of college, where he started as a copy editor. Although he found this job to be boring, after four years he was moved to open the life section of the paper where he was able to start a blog and write about pretty much anything; books, movies, food, etc. Lajara admits he really had no idea what he was doing, but that when it comes to blogging as long as you write about something that interests you it makes it easier, and enjoyable. 



However today, print media is being out shined by digital media, and social networking sites such as Twitter, and Facebook. Lajara shared with our class that by carefully choosing who to follow and finding what interests you, Twitter can lead to valuable knowledge and interesting articles. Lajara also advises that if you are going to make a Twitter, putting an image of yourself, a short bio, and links to any other blogs is a way to validate your page and make people interested in what you have to say. Also, he says making your Twitter private pretty much defeats the purpose, so just don't put any information that you wouldn't want others to know. Even though Lajara admits some tweeters may be full of nonsense, Twitter has been an extremely valuable source, and can help broaden not only a journalist's interests and knowledge on social networking, but can also help them gain experience in blogging, which may overtake print media altogether.