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Naomi Cohn is a job seeker and an author on the Brian Lehrer Show Facebook forum, Help Wanted. She writes:

This week I attended a job fair at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan that was sponsored by several Jewish organizations and synagogues. I didn’t see any employers that were interested in hiring attorneys. However, I met several interesting job-seekers. I asked some of them whether they had found the fair useful and how it could have been improved.

Here is a quick look at some of the people she talked to (you can learn about their job searches in full screen mode by clicking “show info” to see captions):

Everyone’s paying attention to Avatar and Up, but all this week at the Brian Lehrer Show we’re highlighting some of the documentaries up for a 2010 Oscar. They may not get the hype, but they still deserve to be seen. Hear the BL Show segments and watch the trailers below.

+ Monday: The Most Dangerous Man in America with subject Daniel Ellsberg and filmmakers Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith.

+ Tuesday: The Cove with Director Louie Psihoyos.

+ Wednesday: Burma VJ with Director Anders Østergaard.

+ Thursday: Food, Inc. with co-producer Eric Schlosser, author of the book Fast Food Nation.

+ Friday: Oscar Preview Special! Slate film critic Dana Stevens and Manohla Dargis of the NYTimes preview this year’s Oscars and offer their predictions.

It’s almost time for our “10 Questions That Count” site to launch officially! As promised, we’re going to ask you for your participation as we tackle the ten questions on the Census form.

First up is a 10 Questions photo project, taking place on our 10 Questions Flickr Page.

The first question is: “How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010?”

While it may be fun to just pencil a number into the box, wouldn’t it be extra fun to capture everyone who lives under your roof in a portrait? That’s what we’re asking you to do.

We want you to submit a photo including everyone who calls your place home. Instructions at the bottom of this post.

You can follow the example of the Huxtables and the Simpsons and take a portrait indoors, or do like the Tenenbaums and assemble outside. Make sure to include roommates, boarders, and anybody else who is calls your house home – the census form says that “if someone who has no permanent place to stay is staying here on April 1, 2010, count that person. Otherwise, he or she may be missed in the census.”

How to participate in the 10 Questions Flickr Family Portrait Project:

1) Join the 10 Questions That Count Flickr Pool Here. (Don’t have a flickr account? Sign up here!)

2) Upload your picture and tag it with “blcensusportrait” (Instructions on how to tag here.)

3) Add it to the 10 Questions that Count Group. Instructions here.

4) That’s it! Check out the other submissions here, and thanks for participating!

As we gather materials for our upcoming “10 Questions that Count” website, WNYC Archivist Andy Lanset is dusting off some fabulous census-themed clips and newsreels.

This 1950 soundtrack from the U.S Census Bureau accompanied an instructional film strip for census “enumerators.” This first clip, “The Big Count,” describes the types of people the Census counted way back in 1790.

And this clip, “Where and How Many,” explains the different types of places enumerators may find themselves when they go a’countin’:

The reporter in this 1950 WNYC interview with Roy V. Peal, the Director of the Census, asks about the biggest challenge census-takers faced. Peal’s response? Finding people at home, since women were entering the workforce.

This newsreel from April 1, 1947 announced the postwar infant population boom. The Census Bureau predicted that by 1990, there would be 165 million Americans. But the 1990 Census proved that they’d underestimated. The real total? 248,709,873.

This excerpt from “Casey Taking the Census” 1905 Columbia comic monologue by John Kaiser comes from the Donald C. Davidson Library at UC Santa Barbara. Casey Taking the Census is what they call a ‘comic monolog,’ a vaudville-style routine typical of the day, “playing on ethnic stereotypes and being very corny,” as Andy Lanset puts it. Kind of like The Daily Show a hundred years ago!

It’s a snow day, it’s cold outside, and it’s time to listen to some good winter music. We want your ideas for your favorite snow or winter songs – tracks that are good for curling up inside or trudging through the slush. We’ve created a mix on our 8tracks page, and will update it as we get your suggestions. (See the playlist here. We’ll update it as we get more suggestions and every once in a while shuffle the order of the mix.)

And, you can listen right here to the first ever BL Show mixtape. Just press play…

Lawrence Levy, executive director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, has been the weekly guest for the month of February. Each week, we’ve delved into different issues affecting life and politics in the New York area suburbs. Each segment generated a lot of discussion, so we’ve compiled the segments here.

Politics and the Suburbs: The Big Picture
We talked about how the suburbs are influencing national politics and the 2010 elections.

Politics and the Suburbs: A Plot of One’s Own
We talked about why the lure of property and low-density is such a compelling and contentious part of suburban life and politics.

Politics and the Suburbs: Changing Demographics
We took a look at who’s moving into the suburbs and how the changing demographics are transforming life in the ‘burbs.

The 2010 Senatorial race in Connecticut to replace Chris Dodd’s seat is one we’ll be watching closely. Already we’ve interviewed all four major candidates. Listen here and judge for yourself.

+ Democratic Candidates

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (2/10)

+ Republican Candidates

Former U.S. Representative Rob Simmons (1/21)

Former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment Linda McMahon (2/16)

Financial analyst Peter Schiff (2/23)

In early March we’ll officially launch our “10 Questions that Count” census project, but for now we’re getting ready, blogging about some of the preparations and doing a few on-air segments. Here are the census-related conversations that have already aired.

+Series: Five Census Myths Each day during the first week of March, William Frey, Demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution clears up a myth about the U.S. Census.

+ Why the Census Divides Us (2/23/10) Why is the census such a politically contentious endeavor? Amy Sullivan, contributing writer for Time magazine answers that question.


Original Segment Page

+ Selling the Census (2/9/10) New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliot discusses the media blitz – and the large amounts of funding – that drives census awareness.

Original Segment Page

+ Alaska First (1/7/10) Valerie Lapinski, the BL Show’s census editor, is in Alaska where polling begins ahead of the rest of the country. She checks in from Sitka to discuss the early counting and preview the 10 Questions that Count project.

Original Segment Page

The Brian Lehrer Show team is plugging away behind the scenes to get the 10 Questions that Count census project up and running. We’ve done some programming already, the website will be launched in the next few weeks, and the project begins in earnest in mid-March, around the time that you should be receiving your census form. And, now, we have a logo!

Thanks to the WNYC marketing team for helping design it. Stay tuned for lots more…

Well, they did it! Each of our first five Help Wanted Facebook Forum contributors spent some time getting to know Brian Lehrer and our listeners on-air. You can hear them, as well as some stories we did about the job market, by following the links to each day below.

We say hello and goodbye to Ginger, our first graduate. We’ll soon have another job seeker take her place. We always welcome more people to apply for one of the author positions here, but anyone is welcome to post comments, advice or questions on our Facebook page. Even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you can visit the site and see what’s being talked about.

• Meet Naomi and listen to Help Wanted: Staying Nimble with guest Andrea McCarren, who started Project Bounce Back after losing her job.
• Meet Maryli and listen to Help Wanted: Greening Your Next Job with Bronx high school teacher Steve Ritz.
• Meet Alyson and listen to Help Wanted: Job Skills Recession with Julian Alssid of the Workforce Strategy Center and Jonathan Bowles of the Center for an Urban Future.
• Meet Ginger and listen to Help Wanted: Interview Strategies with Scott Peek. Scott has added his own Discussion, listing the parts of his Two-Minute Resume. Thanks Scott!
• Meet Jim and listen to Help Wanted: The Advertising Industry with Dow Jones reporter Ty McMahan, who explains the growth of online advertising in niche markets.