Friday squibs

A few things to wrap up the week:

• Gear recommendations. Chuck Fadely opens up his gear bag and shows what’s inside, calling it “essential if you’re going to be doing video as your full-time job and you give a s__t about the results.” I added up the Canadian cost and got to $7,500.
• You need this to get a job in journalism. Lots of folks have pointed to Fiona Spruill, editor of the nytimes.com Web newsroom, and her Q&A at the Times site. Mindy McAdams pulled out the important bits as far as students are concerned: the skills needed to get a job in the online world.
• No. 5: Evergreen content. Ron Sylvester points out that dreaded “evergreen content” that has long been the bane of newsrooms is actually well suited as a source for stories to practice and develop multimedia chops.
• News reporting faces web challenge, warns New York Times editor. Bill Kellor sees peril, not from the ‘net but in the loss of faith of newspaper folks in what they are doing. Intriguing idea, worth giving some thought to.
• The 10 Best Books of 2007. The NY Times trots out its annual best-of-books list for the year (I’ve read two only two of them). The Times’s list which, like the National Book Critics’ Circle recommendations, is heavily American.