Summer training opportunities for student journalists

Long time no post. Work and family responsibilities have drawn me away from the blogger's chair, but I'm back with some news.

Summer is a great time for student journalists to take a break from the publishing grind and learn new skills. Several organizations sponsor training opportunities for student journalists. Among them:

National Youth Journalism Conference
July 9, 2008
Washington D.C.
Campus Progress, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing progressive leaders, and The Nation magazine are co-sponsoring a National Youth Journalism Conference.

The daylong conference will offer workshops, panel discussions and networking opportunities for young journalists. Confirmed speakers include:

• Eugene Robinson, columnist and associate editor, The Washington Post
  
• Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher, The Nation
  
• Asra Nomani, former reporter, The Wall Street Journal; author, "Standing Alone in Mecca"
  
• Chris Hayes, Washington editor, The Nation
  
• Mathew Yglesias, associate editor, The Atlantic Monthly
  

The conference is free, including breakfast and lunch, but attendees are responsible for their own travel and lodging costs. A limited number of travel stipends are available to attendees planning to attend the Campus Progress National Conference on July 8. The application procedure for a travel grant is part of the application for the National Conference.

Applications for the journalism conference will be accepted until June 30 or whenever spaces fill up. Applications for the journalism conference will be accepted until June 30, 2008, or until spaces fill up.

People who have already applied for the Campus Progress National Conference can apply for the journalism conference by filling out the short application here. Those who just want to apply for the journalism conference can apply here.

Management Seminar for College Newspaper Editors
July 20-26, 2008
The University of Georgia, Athens
Each summer, more than 50 top college editors from the United States and Canada sharpen their leadership and management skills at the Management Seminar for College Newspaper Editors, sponsored by the James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The cost for the seminar is $300, which includes six nights lodging for student editors in Athens and Atlanta, most meals, and five full days of intense training at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Applications are available here.

Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers Summer Journalism Workshops
July 31-Aug. 3, 2008
Washington, D.C.
Associated Collegiate Press and College Media Advisers will offer a series of workshops this summer for advisers, editors and other students working in college media. Among them:

• Advising Today's College Media (July 31-Aug. 1)
  
• Student Newspaper Workshop (Aug. 1-3)
  
• Student Magazine Workshop (Aug. 1-3)
  
• Short Courses in Newsroom Management for Newspaper Editors, Newspaper Ad Sales and Marketing, Print Newspaper Design, Advanced Reporting and Magazine Essentials. (Aug. 1)
  

You can download a brochure, which includes the registration form, here.

Columbia Scholastic Press Association Summer Journalism Workshop
June 22-27, 2008
Columbia University, New York City
This annual workshop for high school students and advisers offers sequences in writing, editing, management or advanced design for either newspapers or yearbooks.

Registration for this five-day intensive program is limited to 325 participants, with a waiting list to be maintained once the limit has been reached.

If you know of other summer training opportunities that still have slots available, post a comment here or email collegenewspaper at gmail.com.

Breaking news right now

NEW YORK -- How do you write breaking news for the Web?

Follow the Bloomberg model, said Paul Conley, a media consultant who co-led a workshop on Multimedia Storytelling today sponsored by College Media Advisers.

Conley noted that reporting breaking news on the Web is all about speed and updates. When a news story breaks, Bloomberg starts by posting a headline, usually within seconds of the news happening.

Next, a reporter will write a two-paragraph story, which will be posted within minutes. Then comes a four-paragraph story, which will generally follow this format:

Paragraph 1: Theme – what happened and why
Paragraph 2: Authority – a quote
Paragraph 3: Details – more information
Paragraph 4: Why it matters, what’s at stake

“This is the fastest and easiest way to move to 24/7 publishing,” Conley said. “It’s possible to impose this system tomorrow on your Web site.”

Breaking news should be edited quickly, even with the editor looking over the shoulder of the reporter writing.

“It’s not quite publish first, edit later, but almost,” Conley said. “Since it’s the Web, it’s not permanent.”

Jennifer Ward, assistant managing editor, interactive media, for the Fresno Bee, said her paper covers breaking news with updates of three to four paragraphs posted throughout the day.

“Then we do a write-through at the end of the day or as the story is closing,” she said.

Reporters often file news updates and even photos by cell phone, posting material as an event unfolds. “We just had someone filing text message updates from a funeral,” she said.

Sportswriters provide brief play-by-play reports on games and update a scoreboard on the newspaper’s Web site every time a team scores.

Ward noted that Fresno Bee reporters also use their cell phones to take video on breaking news stories and are often able to post before television reporters can. Two new Web sites, Qik.com and Flixwagon.com, allow reporters to post video from their cell phones within seconds.

“It’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in a decade,” Ward said. “It’s totally changing the way we do things. We’re beating TV. We don’t need a $30,000 video truck to do live video.”

Seventeen student journalists and college newspaper advisers attended today’s workshop, one of 27 “Media Pro” workshops sponsored this week by College Media Advisers.

Some resources for learning multimedia:

J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism
An organization that "helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life with projects on innovations in journalism, citizen media, interactive news stories, entrepreneurship, training and research and publications."

J-Learning
A how-to site for community journalism

Journalism 2.0 How to Survive and Thrive
A digital literacy guide for the information age by Mark Briggs, Assistant Managing Editor for Interactive News, The News Tribune

Soundslides
A cheap, easy-to-use program for putting together audio slideshows created by photographer Joe Weiss.

Audacity
A free, easy audio editing program

WordPress
A free content management system. Some newspapers, including The Temple News at Temple University, have started to use WordPress to publish online.
(You can read about The Temple News' move from College Publisher to WordPress here.)

Drupal
Another free content management system

For College Media Advisers: Avoiding Burnout

Advising student publications can be challenging, exhilarating and fun. It can also be repetitive, time consuming and exhausting. Let’s face it, the staff may be new each year, but the problems get old after awhile--the inevitable reporter-editor squabbles, the embarrassing typos, the ups and downs of advertising revenue, the complaints from faculty who claim they were misquoted. And how many times can you explain the difference between its and it’s without wanting to scream?

If you feel you’re stuck in the doldrums of teaching and advising, here are some tips for reigniting the flame:

• Get involved. Organizations of journalism educators provide support, camaraderie and -- let’s face it -- opportunities to vent. Join the board or chair a committee for College Media Advisers, Society of Professional Journalists, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, your state student media organization or one of the ethnic media organizations, such as National Association of Black Journalists or National Association of Hispanic Journalists. If there isn’t a group to meet your interests, consider forming your own. When California was lacking a state student media organization, a bunch of us advisers got together and created one. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun, and we created a enduring network of colleagues.

• Set themes. For each semester or term create a theme for what you and your staff will focus on. Maybe you’ll decide to emphasize design one semester, planning special training workshops and inviting guest speakers to address your staff. Another semester you may highlight multimedia or investigative reporting or breaking news or computer-assisted reporting. Make sure your themes are in line with the interests of your staff. Establish goals related to your theme, such as “Organize three multimedia workshops for the staff” or “Train the whole staff in InDesign CS3.” Encourage your editors to come up with their own goals, such as “Post a breaking news story at least four times a week” or “Publish two investigative stories.”

•Attend professional meetings. Conferences and conventions are a great way to recharge your batteries and “meet other people who share your challenges, struggles, frustrations, and also just as importantly successes,” says Mathew Cantore, adjunct instructor and co-adviser to The Hudsonian at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y. “Hearing from other people, in person, the same things you're going through is worth its weight in gold when it comes to avoiding burnout.” If you’re tired of going to the same conventions year after year, skip those and spend your travel money on a different professional meeting. You’ll meet new people and expand your professional connections.

• Network with the pros. Speaking of conferences, don’t limit yourself to gatherings of journalism educators; sign up for a meeting with the pros. Most organizations of news professionals – Society of Professional Journalists, National Press Photographers Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Radio-Television News Directors Association, state publishers associations – welcome journalism educators to their meetings. These offer opportunities to keep up with changes in the industry, meet potential guest speakers for your classes and break out of your usual circle of acquaintances.

• Retool. There’s nothing like learning something new to invigorate a career and with all the recent changes in journalism there’s a lot of new stuff to learn. Go teach yourself podcasting, video editing or design. Or take a course at your university or from a professional organization. The Center for Innovation in College Media, the Knight Digital Media Center, The Media Center at the American Press Institute, and The Poynter Institute all offer training opportunities for journalism educators. The Poynter Institute’s News University offers free and low-cost online courses in everything from Telling Stories with Sound and Writing Headlines for the Web to Handling Race and Ethnicity and Math for Journalists.

• Watch your colleagues teach. We all get into ruts, teaching the same things the same way, semester after semester. To break out of that groove, go see how someone else teaches. Make arrangements to spend a day or two shadowing a colleague at another school. Watch how that person teaches classes, critiques the paper, meets with students. Ask for copies of contracts, employment forms, assessment forms and other materials. Chances are, you’ll come back brimming with new ideas.

• Make time to read. Ever feel like those stacks of student papers to grade mean you can’t do more than scan the morning newspaper and flip through the latest issue of People magazine while you’re on the treadmill at the gym? Resist! Make sure you always have a book for fun, whether it’s the latest Sue Grafton mystery or a 19th century Russian novel. It may take two months to finish, but you should always have a book on your bedside table.

• Keep a feedback file. Jane Pope, director of student publications at the University of Tennessee, keeps files of thank-you notes and letters she receives from students and alumni who worked on student publications. When she’s feeling down, she rereads some of the letters. “Hearing feedback in the students' ‘voices’ and knowing they took time out of their schedules to express gratitude for their experience always gives me a great lift,” says Pope, now in her 35th year at the university and her 22nd advising student publications.

• Don’t just teach journalism, do it. Sure, you’re busy, but try to find time to work as a journalist, even if it’s just during summer and winter breaks. Peddle your services as a freelance writer, photographer, editor or online producer. See if you can write a regular column or occasional op-ed piece for your local newspaper. Offer to work a night or weekend shift at a newspaper, television station or news Web site or see if you can line up a summer “internship.” Working in the field will not only keep you fresh, it will give you entertaining stories to tell your students.

• Take a break. One of the great things about working in academia is the opportunities for getting out of it for awhile. See if you can arrange a professional exchange with a professor in another state or country. Look into taking a sabbatical or leave. Apply for a Fulbright. Taking a vacation from the job you once loved may be the best way of rekindling that romance.

This piece was originally published in The Community College Journalist, the magazine of the Community College Journalism Association.

Covering Suicide

An adviser on the College Media Advisers listserv recently posed a question about how student newspapers should treat suicide.

This passage is taken from The Student Newspaper Survival Guide

Deciding whether and how to cover a suicide is one of the most common and most poignant ethical dilemmas a student editor may face. And unlike with many other ethical issues, looking to the professional press isn’t necessarily instructive. Most professional newspapers don’t cover suicide unless:
• it causes a public spectacle (a jump onto a freeway streaming with cars, for example, or after a standoff with police)
• it’s committed in connection with a homicide, kidnapping or other serious crime
• it involves a public figure

Student newspapers, however, frequently do cover suicides of students or faculty, particularly if they happen on campus. Why? For one thing, the suicide of a member of the campus community often has significant impact on a large segment of the school--an entire academic department or a whole dorm may feel traumatized by the event.

For another, suicide is a major social problem among college students (it’s the third leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds, after accidents and homicide, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), and many student newspapers use a suicidal incident as a news peg for an educational piece about the problem.

A year after a freshman at Northwestern University killed himself in his dorm room, for example, The Daily Northwestern ran a seven-part series on mental health. The series, “State of Mind,” looked at eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders and mental health care, as well as depression and suicide.

“There were all these issues that didn’t find a place in our regular news coverage,” says Elaine Helm, who worked on the series in the fall of 2003 and became editor-in-chief of the newspaper the following year. “We wanted to find an appropriate way to reflect on those issues and find a context for this one incident that touched so many lives.” The series won several awards, including one from the National Mental Health Association.

When deciding whether to cover a suicide in your own paper, ask yourself these questions:
• Was the suicide committed on campus?
• Was the suicide committed in a public place, such as a park or downtown street?
• Was the student or faculty member prominent on your campus?
• Does the suicide appear to be part of a trend?
• Will coverage of the suicide help the campus community in any way?
If the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, your newspaper may decide it’s important to run a story.

Some newspapers also consider the family’s wishes when deciding whether to write about a suicide. Journalists rarely contemplate the impact their stories will have on family members, but in the case of a suicide, editors may want to take into account how open the family is to talking about the circumstances of the death.

Another factor to consider is the risk of “suicide contagion” or copycat suicides. Researchers have found that suicides tend to increase when a particular incident gets a lot of media play. This copycat phenomenon is particularly evident when coverage is sensational and when media stories highlight the mode of suicide. For example, in the year after a student fell to his death at New York University, four other students there took their lives the same way.

The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma offers these guidelines for covering suicide.

Snap shots

I've been wondering for awhile about those cool little pop-up windows that appear on some Web sites and blogs like the Center for Innovation in College Media and College Media Advisers Web sites.

Well, now I know how to do it and I've added the feature to The Student Newspaper Survival Blog. It's a snap! Literally. Snap.com offers these little visual previews of sites you link to. It's easy to put the feature on a blog or Web site; just follow the directions at the company's Web site.

My question for you readers is this: Do you like Snap Shots or do you find them annoying? Do they enhance your experience of this blog and others? Post a comment and let me know.

Another new development for The Student Newspaper Survival Blog: We've been added to the College Media Advisers site. Now you can read the six most recent headlines from the CMA site and instantly link to our blog. Thanks to Bill Neville and the folks at CMA for including our blog on the Web site.

Remember that you can also subscribe to the blog by email and get updates sent directly to your computer. Just type your email address in the box to the right.