I talked with a team of six journalism students today about the idea of branding and I’m feeling very optimistic.

Village Voice Media, in conjunction with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, is running this team through an intensive, 10-week, paid summer fellowship for minority students concentrating on Web and digital media.

These are my new friends: @Victor314, @Ujohnny, @AudioPathos, @adelehampton, @kholoodeid, and @BryScottD.

It was fun to think about branding as I prepared. I’ve talked a lot about journalists and their image on the web and the need to be consistent across different tools, but I’ve never focused on creating a brand. What I learned:

You can tell this tale short: Figure out who you are and be it.
A little longer: People have an image of you whether you like it or not, so take control.
Or in 27 slides: See below.

Beyond the basic message about Being You Online, I packed the presentation with examples of how nine other young journalists present themselves (their BRAND) online.

The Village Voice fellows could do far worse than emulating the professional images of:

Lauren M. Rabaino – @laurenmichell
Mukhtar M. Ibrahim – @mukhtaryare
Heather Billings – @hbillings
Monica Guzman – @moniguzman
Rebekah Monson – @RebekahMonson
Robert Hernandez – @webjournalist
Matt Thompson – @mthomps
Maxine Park – @maxinepark
Benet Wilson – @benetwilson

The Village Voice team members are all doing journalism and building their online images already (see slide 8). But they had great questions and were very thoughtful about what more they can do.

If you want to follow their progress this summer, they are using this hashtag on
Twitter: #vvmfellows.

With young journalists like the six fellows and the nine professionals I held up as examples all forging new ground, I’m feeling great about our future. Let’s follow them all.