Deciding what to leave out isn’t always easy, but you can start by following the excellent advice of Jennifer Nicole Sullivan, a copywriter for Real Simple magazine. On SPJ’s First Draft blog, Sullivan offers 12 edits to make everything fit.

Among her top tips:

Move information from your resume to your cover letter. Your job objectives and personal traits belong in the letter. Save room in the resume to summarize what you’ve done.

Leave information out, especially hobbies (unless they’re really relevant), anything from high school, and your grade point average. “Unless you have a 3.8 or higher, do not list your GPA,” Sullivan advises. “After your first professional job, omit it altogether.”

Don’t create a separate section for awards; list them with the job where you received them. And for goodness’ sake, write tight:

Use sentence fragments that begin with strong action verbs (no gerunds) to eliminate excess words and articles such as “the.” “I” is never needed.

Sullivan also suggests saving room by leaving references off your resume. Personally, I like seeing references listed, but if you can’t fit them in without spilling over to a second page, I suppose it’s OK to let them go.

From writing to sourcing news to using video more effectively, that’s what seemed to resonate with all of you.

We hope you’ll check out any that you may have missed and keep reading in 2012.  Happy New Year!

Top 10 Topics

1. Structuring a multimedia story

2. Getting freelance journalism jobs

3. 10 things journalists need to know

4. Finding news on Twitter

5. Online writing tip sheet

6. How to write a compelling TV news story

7. Why journalists should learn to love data

8. Handy rules for journalists

9. Get creative with your video storytelling

10. Writing for social media

Here’s how it works:

Beginning at midnight on Dec. 15, students ages 14 to 22 can tweet their support for the First Amendment with the hash tag #freetotweet, which will enter them in the “Free to Tweet” scholarship competition. Students are encouraged to freely express themselves in their entries, which can be posted on any publicly viewable social media platform, including blogs.

The goal is to spread the word that a free press and free speech matter, so even non-student journalists are encouraged to take part.

Sign up for an email reminder, so you won’t forget.

“I wish I would have been more hands-on earlier in my undergraduate studies,” says Croghan, who is a reporter for KSN/KODE in Joplin, Mo.  ”I wish I would have started writing/editing my freshman year.”

Croghan says she didn’t start doing much on camera until her senior year.

“When I was meeting with potential employers before graduation, a lot of them told me I just needed ‘more reps’,” Croghan says.

She had a chance to do a two-week intensive reporting class at Ole Miss before she left school, and she thinks that made a big difference.

“I think all journalism students need to have a course like that — just a couple weeks of solid reporting every day– you’ll quickly learn what you can do,” says Croghan.

Whether or not that class is an option, Croghan recommends getting involved in student media opportunities and registering for multiple internships.

She also has some solid  job-hunting advice.

“I met with news directors during my senior year spring break, brought them a copy of my DVD and watched it with them,” says Croghan. “I took notes about what they liked, what they didn’t like.”

She used what she learned to create a portfolio website and found that many places she applied asked for an online link to her work.  Croghan says the news directors had definite ideas about how they wanted a reporter’s work showcased.

“All of them liked the round robin of stand ups in the beginning (and stressed the importance of making sure they are quick hits, about 5 seconds each with no more than 30-45 seconds of stand ups). Then I had two packages. My resume tape was less than 5 minutes.”

It’s good to know that, in the midst of all the change in journalism, the tried and true format for a resume’ reel hasn’t changed much at all.

From “Classroom to Newsroom” is part of an occasional series we will post about recent graduates making their way in the news business.

Here are the top four tips from Jennifer Nicole Sullivan:

1. Print business cards: Vistaprint offers nice and inexpensive cards. Include your website and Twitter handle (if appropriate).

2. Create a one-page resume: Nobody wants to read more than that! Check out “One-Page Resumes – 12 Edits to Make Everything Fit.”

3. Create an online portfolio: Include your best clips, multimedia samples, resume (sans address) and bio. Have an online presence. Check out “Portfolio Websites for Journalists: Where to Begin.”

4. Get active on LinkedIn: Keep up with contacts, peers and news sources. Make new connections. It’s your online Rolodex. You might even get a job through LinkedIn (I did!).

Good for her for taking advantage of LinkedIn–it’s a site that I find to be under-appreciated by most students but widely used by professionals.

Among Sullivan’s other suggestions are a few you’d better have acted on already if you happen to be a senior: Get several internships. Publish/broadcast as much as you can for professional outlets. Learn as much about technology as you possibly can. And finally, one tip that is absolutely essential:

13. Google yourself: What pops up? If it’s undesirable, fix it before future employers see it.

Don’t leave this step until the end. If you’ve been on Facebook since it opened up to high school students six years ago, you probably have a lot of history on the site. It may take more than a few hours to “fix,” so get cracking!

A big chunk of the 30-minute video is devoted to the newish “subscribe” function on Facebook.  Lavrusik says Facebook was very intentional with the word subscribe.  He says it’s all about sharing content, not whether you “like” someone or not.

“It allows you to use your profile in a very professional way,” says Lavrusik.

So, what do you think? Does this end the debate on whether you need to have a professional and a personal Facebook presence? I think yes, one is all you need. But how about you?

The vast majority of the postings promoted the organizations’ own work and sent users back to their websites. On the main news feeds studied, fully 93% of the postings over the course of the week offered a link to a news story on the organization’s own website.

The researchers point out that this is reminiscent of the first news organization websites.

Initially, news organizations, worried about losing audience, rarely linked to content outside their own web domain.

Obviously, social media is a valuable promotional tool, but my belief is that social media 2.0 will emphasize the sharing nature of Twitter and other social networks, and the organizations that figure out how to do that most effectively will profit from audiences that feel they have more of a relationship with their news providers.

“Social media are definitely a time suck,” says Cutler. “They are shiny and fun and they can waste your time.”

But journalists need these tools because they let you be “where your stories are being discussed,” and they “extend the reach of your traditional communication” says Cutler.

Cutler also warns of getting too caught up in your own social networks. He has what he calls the “Joe Francis Rule.”

“Joe Francis is the guy who created the Girls Gone Wild DVDs,” Cutler says. “His productions are not created for young women to enjoy, they are created for the exact opposite audience than those who appear in his films.”

Cutler’s point?

“Don’t produce content just for the small percentage of the audience that participates in your social media circle. Create content for the biggest, broadest audience you can.”

Speaking at the Journalism Interactive conference, Cutler also shared a few of his favorite tools for working with social media:

• Addict-o-matic — allows you to instantly create a page with the latest social media buzz on any topic.
• Muuter – allows you to hide the tweets of people making too much “noise” on Twitter.
• KnowEm — allows you to “own” your name in social media.

At the same time they”re pushing content out to mobile devices, newsrooms are increasingly focused on how mobile devices can help in the news reporting process.

For those using smartphones as a reporting tool, speakers at the Journalism Interactive Conference offered some concrete advice on gathering good audio and video.  Using some of the apps we talked about previously – Audio Boo and Qik — the University of Maryland’s Ron Yaros shared best practices for each.

Using AudioBoo

1. LISTEN to the environment — your phone can’t cancel out distracting background noises, so you have to manage the recording and move your interview, if necessary.

2. ARMS LENGTH to the source (including amplified speakers) — with these small recording devices and no external mic in most cases, you have to get close.

3. EDITING (pause, resume, publish) — you can do “in-phone edits” by using the pause button between responses, and you can publish immediately to Twitter or elsewhere on the Web.  The automatically-generated embed code makes it easy to share as well.

In using the app, we also discovered that you can download the file for editing by simply add .mp3 to the end of the “boo’s” URL on the web and then import it into any audio editing system.

Another point to remember?

“You need short clips when you’re working with a mobile phone,” says Yaros.  He suggests you prepare your interview subject by telling that that you will begin to nod your head when they’ve provided enough information.

For mobile video, Yaros says he’s had good luck with Qik and offers his Top 5 tips and tricks.

Using Qik

1.   ARMS LENGTH — yes, the same rules apply as for audio — you have to get close.

2.  WATCH  THE LIGHT — keep it behind you and look for distracting shadows.

3.  CLOSE-UP — you’re most likely publishing this for a small screen, so wide shots may not work well.

4.  EDITING — try to do as much in-phone editing as possible by shooting short interview clips and in b-roll sequences, if possible

5.  HOLD STILL — small cameras magnify movement, so find a way to keep the camera steady — brace it against something or invest in some of the products designed to make this easier.

If much of this sounds familiar to broadcasters, there’s a reason why.  Bob McCall, a producer for the Associated Press, says that mobile video produced by journalists still relies on the best practices of broadcast.

“Right now, it’s still TV sent to cell phones.”

Starting Friday, the J/i website will feature live streaming of sessions with folks like Mashable’s Adam Ostrow, Amy Webb and Jeff Jarvis.  Deborah Potter and I will also be presenting or moderating topics such as free Web tools you can use to build interactivity into your stories and how journalism schools should adjust curricula to better prepare students for the profession today.

You can also follow @Jiconf on Twitter and join the conversation with #jiconf.  And feel free to add your own questions to the mix — conference staff will be monitoring #jconf and @jiconf for questions addressed to our more than 60 presenters.

Four hundred journalists, educators and students are attending the conference at the University of Maryland.  Sessions run through Saturday, so be sure to log on and check out the ideas, tools and best practices featured at the J/i conference.