Part of the Package   

Meranda Watling had no intention of hiding her personal blog when she started as an education reporter at Indiana's Lafayette Journal & Courier in January 2007.

To Watling, 22, her blog was "part of the package deal they got when they hired me."

A former student newspaper editor at Kent State University, Watling started her blog in November 2006 — a month before graduating — after talking to an editor at a job fair who asked why her résumé was "carbon based" and not digital, especially considering her interest in HTML and Web design. The question got her thinking.

"I realized that if I wanted to get a job in journalism doing the stuff that I wanted to do, with what I was interested in, I had to present myself in the way I was capable of," Watling says. That meant digitally.

During her subsequent journalism job hunt, Watling says she included her blog's URL (merandawrites.com) on her résumé and in her cover letters; it wasn't a potential blemish on her digital footprint, she says, but a way for editors to see her new-media skills.

When she started at the Journal & Courier, though, she was still unsure of whether her editors knew of her blog. So, after finding no mention of personal blogs in the employee handbook, she took it upon herself to talk to them about it.

They didn't mind, Watling says, which made her happy. "I wouldn't want to work for an organization that didn't see the value in having 'wired' employees interested in extending their new media skills," she wrote in a January 2008 blog post. "Fortunately, I don't."