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CASE

At the Hotter ’N Hell Hundred Race, a 48-year-old male walks into the medical tent with his buddies who state the patient is not feeling will. He is “sick all over” and has a general feeling of malaise. Initial vitals are within normal limits and stable. Temperature is reasonably normal and the patient states he has had access to fluids and has been drinking copious amounts of liquid.

Patient denies any previous medical history, is taking no medications and has no known drug allergies.

Patient sits down in one of the patient beds in the medical tent where he appears to be resting comfortably, conversing with his friends.

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CLICK HERE for published version in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services

Journal of Emergency Medical Services

Even at the starting line, it is evident that providing pre-hospital healthcare is not a goal of organizers of the Hotter ’N Hell Hundred race in Wichita Falls, Texas, the largest sanctioned century bicycle ride in the United States. For the nearly 14,000 riders, Executive Director Ben “Chip” Filer said the goal is to eliminate the need for any hospital care at all.

“One of our primary goals is to ensure that everyone who comes to the race goes home vertical,” he said. With more than 1,000 medical volunteers at 15 stops along the 100-mile route, he said the medical staff, doctors, EMS personnel, nurses and others “can do a lot of stuff out there that would normally send people to the hospital.”

Their efforts paid off. Although medical staff saw some 900 people throughout the day, only 14 ended up in local emergency departments.

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I helped to write these guidelines for the Journalism Education Association’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission. I invested time helping to revise the guidelines JEA originally adopted a statement on digital manipulation more than a decade ago because, quite simply — it’s outdated. It refers to darkroom skills that few students have any more and only longtime advisers remember.

And to be honest, I’m tired of judging newspapers and yearbooks from all over the country with photo credits such as “Photo by Google” or “Photo courtesy Flickr.” This just isn’t acceptable and advisers need to put a stop to it. But first we have to educate advisers. Neither Google nor Flickr own images. They simply serve as repositories for the images. As such, it is as inappropriate to credit Google or Flickr just as it is inappropriate to credit YouTube or Vimeo for video.

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For eight times this past summer, I had the pleasure and honor of working with some of the nation’s finest students at summer workshops. In five states, at various hotels, universities and high schools we designed pages, took pictures, produced websites, developed ethical policies and reviewed media law.

Check out this website from the Dallas County Gloria Shields All-American workshop. Almost three dozen stories, photo galleries, video stories, sound clips, timelines and other material produced on site from scratch using free utilities. Except for a $15 utility to convert WMV files to MP3 files, it didn’t cost us anything. (And I’m sure I could have found a free utility to convert those files if I had time, which I didn’t.)

Check out these photos from the Yearbook NV workshop at Westfield High School in Centreville, Virginia. The students in this class brought in chocolate chip cookies and cupcakes. They knew how to have fun and, I hope, learned how to improve not only their yearbook photography and color correction skills, but how to better manage their staff.

If you want to see some really impressive examples of editing and design, check out the work produced by the Dow Jones News Fund interns at the Center for Editing Excellence workshop at the University of Texas at Austin. For more than a decade, Griff Singer, Amy Zerba and Beth Butler and I have had fun — and learned a lot ourselves — while working with these most-talented interns. CLICK HERE

Anyone who doubts that there are quality students coming out of modern high schools and college should look at their work and observe the passion they show for doing quality reporting, writing quality stories, taking high-quality, photojournalistic images, producing top-notch designs or engaging in online appropriately.

In Miami this year, we revamped our strategy. Lori, Randy and I took the students out to South Beach first — after a briefing — and got them to start reporting early. Then we went back and produces yearbook / magazine spreads. The students developed their leadership skills, learned about working in new teams and struggled, as all journalists do, to meet deadlines.

In all, I’d say it was a good summer. I hope the dozens and dozens of students I worked with learned something. I know I did. At every workshop, with every staff, even working with the students, I learned new ways to teach, new techniques and new software. That’s what summers are for, after all — learning.

TSA agent at left doing nothing with four other long lines. Notice four other TSA agents standing around doing nothing.

There are few organizations that are as mis-managed as the airlines that fly the skies, the skies formerly known as “friendly.” Well, the Transportation Security Administration is just as mis-managed. It’s just that the TSA agents that interact with customers are generally inconsistent and inept while the flight attendants, flight crews and some counter personnel with the airlines are (generally) customer-focused and competent.

Despite government intervention into a Passenger Bill of Rights, flying has gotten more uncomfortable and customer satisfaction continues to decline. Even on Southwest Airlines, historically one of the top airlines for customer service, the bottom line now governs the management as corporate leaders squeeze more seats on their plans, cram more people on their airlines and fly into cities that are already jammed.

But the misery for flying doesn’t stop with the people who work for the airlines. Part of the responsibility for making flying tolerable belongs with the passengers, those same people crammed into seats with their knees crammed into the backs of the people sitting in front of them. So, here are my thoughts for airline passengers.

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CLICK this link or the slide above to see the top entries from this winter’s conference.

At this winter’s Association of Texas Photography Instructors conference at the University of Texas at Arlington, some 300 photography students, photojournalists and artists alike, spent three days competing in contests and attending classes on everything from making a cyanotype to shooting sports. As it has been for the last 25 years, it was one of the best educational experiences out there for the instructors and students alike.

This year, I taught a new class, one designed to help students (and instructors) understand the difference between

Editing: outcome is the best images
Judging: outcome is a winner
Grading: outcome is a grade
Critiquing: outcome is to give feedback

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As I was sitting around with some friends last night crunching some numbers, it dawned on me how boring pouring through databases as part of the content analysis section of my dissertation looked. Now, however, I’m pretty much done with the data-gathering section and now move on to the data-analysis section. Some of this too will seem boring and repetitious, but even some of the early results using just the descriptive data point out continued cause for concern for those in the newspaper industry. Indeed, this new data shows that printed newspapers will cease to exist by 2050.

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Since the spring of 1998, for the last 14 years, I have had the honor of editing the magazine for the national Journalism Education Association — Communication: Journalism Education Today. But to be realistic, as with any project of this magnitude, this isn’t a one-person show. People like Connie Fulkerson and Howard Spanogle have been instrumental to the magazine’s success almost since day one.

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The College Media Advisers, Associated Collegiate Press and College Broadcasters all met in Orlando this week. It was an intensive week for the students, advisers and Texas Rangers. At least two of the groups came out ahead.

Each fall and spring as part of the convention, we host an on-site photography “shoot out.” It’s a point of pride to have the class favorite. And this fall, that recognition goes to Christopher Correa-Ortega, Valencia College (Ken Carpenter, adviser). In second place for class favorite was Ashton Bowles, Pepperdine University (Elizabeth Smith, Courtney Stallings, advisers). All 23 students who submitted work into the show collectively painted a picture of “The City Beautiful — Orlando.”

Special thanks to Jim Michalowski who helped to critique the work for the students.

Photo by Carmen Taylor/AP

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, everyone is taking some time for reflection. Towns are honoring their first responders. Survivors, family members and friends of those killed and thousands of others are visiting the new memorials around the country. And journalists too are spending time reflecting.

For 9/11 was one of those moments that served as a reminder the power and the importance of quality, timely journalism in a time before Facebook, before Twitter and before Flickr.

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