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.

During the last nine years, the average newspaper staff size has dropped 28 percent – a one-third loss in newspaper employees.

For anyone employed by local newspapers ranging in size from the Florida Keys Keynoter and Havelock News, both with circulations below 3,000/issue, to the Contra Costa Times and Columbus Dispatch, this probably doesn’t come as shocking news. Even here in the Raleigh area, the News & Observer staff is but a fraction of its former strength.

It's generally well accepted that newspaper circulation has been declining in the last decade. But, as this chart shows, so has market saturation — the portion of the population that reads the newspaper.

But there is more news is all this — especially for all the naysayers who say newspapers will be dead by the turn of the century, which turned out not to be true, by the end of the decade, which turned out not to be true, or by some arbitrary date in the future. If printed newspapers keep declining at the same rate they are now declining, they will cease to exist about 2050.

As I have told hundreds of students over the years, this does, in no way, mean that journalism or the need for well-trained journalists will cease to exist. I firmly believe that through news magazines, niche publications, online media and other media outlets there will continue to be a high demand for high-quality news reporting. However, for students entering J schools all over the world planning to enter the exciting world of newspaper journalism, that they need to diversify their skills ensuring that they have a broad-based knowledge of reporting that will be valuable no matter the medium.

Now I’ve got the challenge of incorporating this relatively superficial data into my much more complex dissertation.

For those who care to know a few more details, the circulation and staff size information was obtained either from the newspaper directly or from the Editor & Publisher International Year Book for 144 United States newspapers selected as part of the bigger study, effectively randomly. The population data through 2010 was obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau.

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.

Of course, people like Linda Puntney and H.L. Hall, who was on the magazine’s first editorial board back in 1967 and who appointed me as editor back in 1997, have helped to ensure the magazine’s success.

But the real credit for the success of the magazine has to go to the contributors. There have been 234 major authors and 433 other contributors along with countless students who have contributed photographs, cartoons, stories and designs for the magazine in the last decade. When people flip through the magazine, that is now four-color from cover to cover, it’s the work of those contributors they see. And when they ask for reprints it’s because of the quality work of those reporters, writers, photographers, designers and advisers.

The magazine has a budget of more than $30,000. Now, about one-third of that is funded through advertising sales by Pam Boller in the Manhattan, Kan., office. The other two-thirds comes from membership dues. And JEA members repeatedly support the magazine not only by contributing but through their comments, feedback and requests for reprints. Indeed, they cite it as one of the primary benefits of JEA membership.

The magazine has certainly provided coverage on demand from the association’s 2,800 members, including features on everything from Newsies to how to choose a college. We have certainly covered topics of discussion in the industry from bidding the yearbook to the values of critique services. And we cover topics of interest to JEA leadership from diversity to mentoring to certification to media law.

So, I thought it would be fun to compile all the covers of the last 56 issues into the slideshow above. It’s just a neat way to look back at some of the cool stuff the association is doing. Enjoy.

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.

As a photojournalist, in my lifetime, I can think of two other events that have made photojournalists stop in their tracks and think about the impact of their work — the very public suicide of Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bud Dywer in 1987 and the Oklahoma City bombing.

I was in Manhattan on Sept. 11. Not New York City. Kansas. And of course the photojournalism students — some of the most talented photojournalists I’ve ever worked with — scrambled to cover the local angles of the attacks. Over the next few days we spent a considerable amount of time discussing the impact of some of the images. It was one of the most documented few hours in American history, no doubt. CLICK HERE to see a slideshow of some of their work.

I remember walking into the JEA office and hearing that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I left to go over to the college newspaper newsroom to see how I could help. Watching live news coverage of the second plane hitting the tower and the billowing black smoke, we knew our lives had changed. As journalists, everyone got to work. Photojournalists went over to the local military base where folks were already on high alert. They went to the student union to capture the campus reaction. They went out into the community.

While they, and dozens of reporters, were out in the field, we watched from Kedzie Hall on television as events unfolded. We knew our lives had changed forever. Just as we were in the newsroom, the hallways and our classrooms that day and the days immediately after, editors, designers and photojournalists were having heated discussions about what photos to should have been published as they struggled to document a new, unexpected war on the homefront.

Like this image by Gulnara Samoilova/AP, the haunting photos, in black-and-white, that looked like something out of a movie scene and the aftermath of a nuclear we documented the terror of the people in New York City.

And we all cheered at Thomas E. Franklin’s photo published in the The Bergen Record of firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero.

Images of jumpers resonate

Then we watched the photos the wire services were transmitting, photos of a building in flames, the buildings collapsing, the aftermath at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. And we watched in horror as publications and wire services began releasing photos of people jumping or falling from the top floors of the World Trade Center. In real time, live on television and the Web, people were dying. Not just one convicted criminal committing suicide or one baby, dozens or hundreds people in their final moments.

As Dennis Cauchon and Martha Moore wrote in their USA Today article, “The story of the victims who jumped to their deaths is the most sensitive aspect of the Sept. 11 tragedy. Photographs of people falling to their deaths shocked the nation. Most newspapers and magazines ran only one or two photos, then published no more. USA Today ran one photo Nov. 16.

“Still, the images resonate. Many who survived or witnessed the attack say the sight of victims jumping is their most haunting memory of that day.”

Photo by Richard Drew/AP

Richard Drew’s photo now entitled “The Falling Man” became iconic in this genre. Five years after the attacks, The Falling Man was identified as Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old employee of the Windows on the World restaurant.

It was as controversial as the images of Bud Dwyer. Or the baby after the Oklahoma City bombing. It, and simliar images, promoted discussions in newsrooms from San Jose, where the Mercury News ran a nearly full-page photo of the jumpers, to West Palm Beach, Fla. where the Palm Beach Post ran “The Falling Man” as part of a photo page, to page A7 of the New York Times. These photos not only should have been published, they MUST have been published, and any criticism of their publication is unwarranted. This was part of the story, a dreadful part to be sure, but a part of the human experience that made events like 9/11 something to avoid.

As Howell Raines said, while they were concerned for the family, that man “seemed to perfectly capture the tragedy of the day. That man in a sense was all of New York that day.”

It was a continuation of the ongoing discussion about whether or not to publish such controversial images. But these images and the thousands and thousands of others, including the thousands submitted to the ongoing exhibit Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs, something that started as a spontaneous outlet for anyone with a camera and became an exhibit of professional and amateur photographs from the World Trade Center disaster, help us realize the true horror of that day in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Stonycreek Township, Penn.

Like the photos that take us to other worlds, to other countries and to other places and times that we could never visit ourselves, the photos from 9/11 help us remember, not only remember what happened that beautiful fall morning, but remember the freedoms that we need to fight for. We should never take those freedoms for granted.

Sometimes journalists doubt the power they have as gatekeepers and as the people who tell us the stories we need and want to hear. The anniversary of Sept. 11, 2011 should also be a reminder of the power of the visual image and how these images, words, videos and audio brought people from all over the world together to watch events unfold. They brought, for a few fleeting second sometimes, the lives of the people experiencing those events onto our computers and into our family rooms and helped us share the experience. As horrifying as it was, thanks to the photojournalists, reporters, designers and editors, it is true, we will never forget.

How are we different?

So, today as we go about our business documenting the lives of people standing in unemployment lines, government officials bickering over useless legislation, kids playing in the park, a many guilty of killing his daughter and all the other things that we document on a daily basis, we have some perspective. Without the words, the pictures, the audio and the video — whether published on a blog, a website, a printed newspaper, a newsmagazine or the evening news — we would have no idea what’s going on in the world.

Of course the media set the agenda for public opinion. Without the media we wouldn’t have a clue what those businessmen making millions of dollars are doing with our money or what animals the family next door is really keeping inside their house. Indeed, without the media we really wouldn’t know much about what’s going on in the world at all. We certainly wouldn’t have nearly as good of a grasp of what happened on Sept. 11 as we do.

While Sept. 11 helps us keep our daily coverage in perspective, it makes it no less important. Without the media, we would have little to remember. As others have said, “Photojournalism got its job back that day.”

MORE THOUGHTS

• Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs
• Kratzer, Renee Martin. “How Newspapers Decided to Run Disturbing 9/11 Photos.” Newspaper Research Journal. FindArticles.com. 09 Sep, 2011.
• Antoni Norman. “Images That Changed The World.”
• Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.”

Cary Area EMS celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The reason for the organization’s existence is legacy around the station. In 1971, a furniture truck struck a 4-year-old boy in Cary. Tragically, he died after waiting 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive from Raleigh. That fall, a group of  citizens met to form the Cary Area Rescue Squad, a non-profit organization designed to be independent of the local fire department, the Town of Cary and Wake County.

Brent Miller, chair of the Cary Area EMS Board of Directors, said it’s extraordinary that the organization has existed for 40 years. “We’re still orange, and we’re still providing service and have been every day, every single minute for the last 40 years.”

THE FOUNDATION

Jerry Adams

As one of the founders of the organization, Jerry Adams, reminded the group of about 200 current members, alumni and family members at the 40th Anniversary celebration, the original committee members, met to set forth seven principles for the organization, principles that, in general, guide the organization still today.

1. The squad would be autonomous, not a part of the Town of Cary.
2. Squad members would be fully trained with “advanced first aid.”
3. Squad members would project a professional image.
4. Squad members would pull duty from the station, not respond from home.
5. Instead of using a city-wide siren, squad members would use electronic pagers to be notified of emergencies.
6. Instead of getting equipment sold by other organizations, the squad would start with new equipment.
7. The squad would not use fundraisers to raise funds but would instead use grant money, donations or billing monies to pay for equipment and personnel.

Adams said  “Most rescue squads (of the time) spent more time raising funds than they did providing service.” He said the organizers didn’t want to fall into that trap. Instead, they insisted on getting new, state-of-the-art equipment, properly training their field personnel and getting funding from the Town of Cary, Wake County and other groups.

He said it took less than a month to write the charter and by October of 1971, the organization was born. The first class of 15 members all became Certified Ambulance Attendants. In the second class, Adams recognized Avery Little, as the only person to make 25 plus years with the squad as an active member. Adams said he was actively involved for about two and one-half years but then “was totally burned out.”

But he said he felt good that those original members “built a very firm foundation.”

“We were and you are number one in providing pre-hospital medical service in this area,” Adams said.

CARY FIRSTS

Since that time, Cary Area EMS has grown into one of the largest EMS agencies in the area, running three ambulances 24/7/365 and another ambulance 12 hours a day. With more than 40 full-time members, 14 volunteers, and as many part-timers, Cary Area EMS continues to thrive and to grow. Since that first call, Cary has set the standard for pre-hospital care in Central North Carolina with a series of “firsts,” choosing to lead rather than follow in the Central North Carolina area. For example, Cary EMS was the first

• Volunteer agency in the state to require its members to remain at the building while on duty;
• Volunteer agency in the state to purchase vehicle extrication equipment — the “jaws of life”;
• Volunteer agency in the state to have a certified Emergency Medical Technician (Jerry Adams)
• Agency to use pagers to alert members about calls;
• Agency in the area to have a command post;
• Volunteer agency in Wake County to have paramedics;
• Volunteer department in Wake County to hire a full-time, paid chief;
• Agency in Wake County to use 12-lead EKG monitors in the field;
• Agency in Wake County to have a Bicycle Emergency Response Team;
• Volunteer agency in the country to receive accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services;
• Agency in Wake County to initiate a Citizens’ Academy where people can learn important first-aid and life-saving techniques;
• Agency in Wake County to host a flu shot clinic.

The citizens of the Town of Cary and surrounding areas — Cary Area EMS is part of the Wake County EMS System — are lucky to have such a dedicated group of people who know the area and who care to provide prompt, compassionate and clinically excellent care to whomever calls 911. But the volunteers and paid staff members (most of them, most of the time) do more than that.

ON EMS VOLUNTEERS

In my 11 or so years with Cary Area EMS, I’ve worked with a lot of full-time staff members. Some have come and gone. Same with the volunteers. We still maintain and train a full cadre of volunteers, something few other urban EMS systems in the nation take the time to do. Volunteers are time-consuming to train. And often they don’t stick around long as they’re building a resume to go to medical school or learning skills that will benefit them no matter their profession.The staff members realize that the volunteers will someday be the lawyers, politicians and doctors making decisions. So the time invested in training them is worth it in the long run.

The volunteers also bring another strength to the organization — a variety of viewpoints. Our volunteers are engineers, nurses, administrators, computer programmers. They bring new ideas and fresh ways of looking at things that individuals who have grown up in an EMS environment may not think about.

Indeed, I believe the volunteers are worthy of the time investment for another reason — they are the future of the profession. After 20-some years of working in EMS, I see students go take their EMT-Basic class, maybe go straight on to EMT-Intermediate, get their Paramedic certification and then hit the streets. Like the new doctors that hit the emergency room floors this week, sometimes these folks scare me. That patch doesn’t make them a good street medic. It certainly doesn’t mean they know how to handle an 80-year-old who has a hemorrhoid and who just need some attention at 1:30 a.m. because she’s afraid of being left alone.

By giving EMT-Basics or -Intermediates or Paramedics a chance to work on a volunteer basis before making final career choices, the volunteers become stronger medics down the road.

CARY IS DIFFERENT

That compassion is what makes the really strong volunteers, part-time and full-time staff at Cary different. We don’t just run calls, scoop people up and transport them to the hospital. Sure, there are days where we just want to scream at the patient who has had a headache for four days and waited to call EMS at 3 a.m. on Friday. (I remember one patient who was sitting curbside with her suitcases at 6:50 a.m. — our shift ends at 7 a.m. — just wanting a ride to the hospital.) There are also days when we spend two hours with a patient at a nursing home who doesn’t need to go the hospital. He needed help back in bed, not a trip to the hospital.

Adams said the ambulances in Cary are orange because that’s what the Department of Transportation in the early 1970’s recommended. That too makes Cary different. So when the orange ambulance arrives with the big lettering on the side that says Cary Area EMS arrives at the accident scene our your front doorstep, take a few seconds to tell the staff thanks. Thanks for staying up all night. Thanks for putting up with the vomit and the blood. Thanks for holding true to those guiding principles that John Owens, Bill Evans, Jerry Adams and the other founders of Cary Area EMS set forth 40-some years ago.

I hope the organization is around providing the finest in pre-hospital care for another 40 years.

2011 COLLEGE YEARBOOK IMAGES

Our page six from the first day of production in Austin.

I always spend a better part of my summer traveling around the country teaching some of the most talented high school and college students in the country. This week was no exception.

I spent the first part of the week in Austin teaching at the Dow Jones News Fund Center for Editing Excellence. I’ve been doing this with great instructors like Griff Singer, the director, Beth Butler, Amy Zerba and George Sylvie for more than a decade.

Then I spent the rest of the week in New Orleans at the 10th annual college yearbook workshop. I also got to spend a few minutes before I came home Sunday with a former NCSU sports editor who is entering law school this fall, Tanner Kroeger.

If you ever think that America’s colleges and universities are turning out mediocre students, you haven’t met any of these folks I spent time with this week.

Wow!

Spread by Ashley McKevitt of the University of Miami

The student editors from places like the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas and the University of California at Los Angeles, the yearbook staffers from schools like Jones County Junior College and the University of Miami were undoubtedly some of the most talented students with which I’ve ever worked.

They took pride in their work. Even when they could have spent more time at Hole in the Wall or on Bourbon Street, they spent time working on layouts or preparing for their internships. (Then they spent time at the bars or just hanging out.) Their work ethic was exemplary.

I hope that along the way the students learned something. Based on the feedback we’ve received so far, they did. But for me, it was also a refreshing opportunity to work with the best and the brightest our colleges and universities have to offer.

Chris Hondros speaks at N.C. State in 2009.

At his funeral in Brooklyn, April 27, family and friends of Chris Hondros remembered him as a photojournalist with a passion for documenting the lives of people in conflict all over the world. Hondros has covered many major conflicts around the world, including wars in Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq and Liberia.

As Jennifer Calhoun said in her blog, “Chris knew his job covering war was important. He knew he was needed there to tell the stories. He did it well.”

Father Anthony J. Sansone, who presided over the service, called Hondros a “prophetic witness,” who was able to maintain the strength and courage necessary to do his work, because of the “heart of his conscience.” Sansone said, he never ran away from reality, in his life or in his pictures, so much so that in the end it even took his life from this earth.

At the service, Photography Director at Getty Images Pancho Bernasconi said, “Chris had such a good heart, even thought he saw the worst in life,”

Chris was the kind of person who could call some 800 people to the church and another 1,000 online to watch the video stream.

His work has appeared on the covers of magazines such as Newsweek and The Economist, and on the front pages of most major American newspapers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Indeed, the day after he was killed, images he shot in Libya ran on the front page of the New York Times.

Chris graduated from North Carolina State in 1993 with a bachelor’s in English. After working for the Fayetteville Observer he eventually went to work for Getty Images. While I knew of Chris before I came to NCSU, and certainly knew many of Chris’ co-workers, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I got to meet Chris. He came to campus to speak twice as part of a campus lecture series. Each time, he met in small groups with students, talked about his work — and his time at N.C. State and what a valuable experience working on the Technician newspaper and Agromeck yearbook was. He went out of his way to be accessible, to “do lunch” and to, well, chat.

But for the masses of people who met Chris, his outgoing nature and humility, refreshing in the photojournalism field, will never be something they can experience. At least some of my students and I got to experience his openness.

Christina Piaia, Chris' fiance, speaks at the funeral in Brooklyn. Photo by Bradley Wilson.

“He was amazing,” said longtime friend Eric Schofield in a Fayetteville Observer article. “It didn’t matter who you were — he made time for you. He was very passionate about life and lived life to the fullest. We’re going to miss him so much.’’

For the masses of people, indeed millions, it’s his images they will remember, startling images of humankind at its worst, humankind in battle, people killing other people. I know, however, that Chris had a mission to document the lives of people affected by the conflict and the hardships they endured. He set out to document those hardships to people worldwide who remembered them and the lives they lived.

“He was always willing to give of himself,” freelance photojournalist Steve Hebert said. “That’s few and far between in this industry. For Chris, it wasn’t just about capturing an image and moving on. He was vested in these people. And it showed.”

I agree. Even in the short time I knew Chris, I experienced his passion for photojournalism and his passion for experiencing life. He was vested in the lives of the students at N.C. State. That showed too every time he came back.

While no one now will get to share in that passion personally, his images remain. We can learn from them as much as we can learn from Chris. Those images will help us remember the best of Chris and his passion.

His images are his legacy.

Chris Hondros’ website

I have to admit right up front — I’m biased. I’m sitting here on a beautiful spring day worrying about yearbooks. Well, not about their survival, about their future. And they have a future — at least we all better hope so.

Earlier this week, I got an invitation to the 100th reunion of a group I belong to at The University of Texas. Some odd years ago, I happened to find a copy of the 1911 Cactus yearbook from UT at a library sale. I purchased it for like $10 as I recall. Today, I shot some photos of that yearbook before I shipped it off to be used at the reunion. In flipping through the pages, I’m reminded of the value of the printed yearbook.

Flip inside the disintegrating cover, and you can gain insight into the now famous football team or baseball team. You can read poetry by the senior class. You can see what activities the students were involved in. You can read ads from local businesses including the college bookstore that still exists, more or less, today. And of course you can see the first entry of the Friar Society.

As a historical record, this book succeeded.

Yearbooks serve a plethora of functions. Providing a near permanent and accessible record of life at the school is but one of those purposes, but it’s the one no other media can match, no how, no way.

As pervasive as Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug and Twitter are in today’s society, they’ve been around for less than one-tenth of the life of that yearbook. Who knows how accessible they’ll be when the Friar Society celebrates its 200th anniversary. Who knows if we’ll even be able to view those JPEG files that we shoot with our cell phones and digital cameras and upload at 30,000 feet while fighting the cramped spaces flying between cities.

Recognition

I also have to admit that I’m a little biased in another way. I just received a Twitter post from one of my buddies at the University of Miami. Our university yearbook received a Gold Crown, the highest national award given by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. I’m sure it’s only one of five or six that received that honor, but I haven’t seen the official list yet.

I’m proud of the hard work the students put into producing that yearbook. Led by fantastic people like Michele Chandler and Bryant Robbins, the book was bound to be successful. They knew what a yearbook was all about.

Sure, they knew it was a historical record. Indeed in 100 years, no matter what the technology is like and no matter how much digitizing the library does of the pages, when people want to know what student life was really like — from the students’ point of view — they’ll turn to the printed book. Administrators will ensure that history is accessible from their point of view. But want to know what the students thought about and did, turn to the yearbook.

Our student leaders also knew that the yearbook played an important role on campus in addition to being a historical record. For them, it’s an educational opportunity, an opportunity to learn how to be leaders, how to be editors, how to manage time, how to participate on a team. These are all as valuable as any lesson they will learn on the other side of campus in the classroom.

They also knew that the book serves as a reference tool, documenting scores, participants in group activities, major events (such as the resignation of the chancellor, provost, chair of the Board of Trustees, University attorney and athletic director). In 100 years, when people want to know what happened all in one place, they can go right to the yearbook and read the student perspective.

They also knew it was a business. With a budget just shy of $100,000, it was a business few other college students could say they manage. Largely devoted to payroll and printing, they learned lessons similar to those in Congress are learning now about how to manage scarce resources. They learned how to fight for their fee dollars and how to work with the business staff to increase advertising revenue. They worked with their own marketing folks to increase awareness of the book and sales. Not even a degree in management could provide hands-on knowledge like that.

Writing a chapter

I’m also biased in another way. I’m working on a book chapter about yearbook design, sort of a yearbook design 101. I’ve spent hours and hours on it already. I’d be crazy to spend that kind of time if I thought yearbooks were going away. Hogwash.

And as I look ahead to the rest of the semester and the upcoming years, I know other people better be fighting for the yearbook’s survival just as hard as I do.

All those people who want photos of campus activities, such as various campus departments, the Alumni Association and even the University’s website should realize that without the yearbook our photographers would have no incentive to go shoot things unless they got an assignment from the newspaper. It’s for the yearbook that they document history, not just events for tomorrow’s paper.

All those professional media outlets who show yearbook photos of famous people, and even not-so-famous people, when they decide to run for public office or commit some crime, well, what would they do without the yearbook?

Don’t be shortsighted

I’ll admit another, final bias. I’m amazed at how shortsighted people can be. As I flipped through those pages of the 1911 Cactus, I got a feel for what life was like in Austin 100 years ago. I would trade that impression for a terabyte of photos, an online slideshow or a video. No how. No way.

So when people tell me the yearbook is dying. I say hogwash. We better not let it.

What can we do?

1. Local businesses can buy an ad in the book. Congratulate the senior class. Congratulate the students at the school working at their business.
2. Parents can buy a senior ad. They’re not expensive, and they’re a great way to provide your own personal, historical record.
3. Buy a book. While many schools, particularly colleges and universities, have found other methods of funding, most still sell books and rely on that income. If you don’t need a book yourself, buy one for a graduating senior who can’t afford one.
4. Get your senior portrait taken. If the book is to be a true historical record, documenting the senior class should be one of its prime functions. It’s usually free.
5. Support a fee. Whether it’s a check box allowing students to opt out of buying a book when they pay for their tuition and fees or a student fee specifically allocated to the book, this will help ensure the survival of the book. And, no offense to all those other groups that get massive fee increases every year, it’s actually something students will value in 100 years.

CLICK HERE to view a slideshow of images.

"Fort Knox" comic strip author Paul Boscacci and me at SIPA.

Yesterday, I went down to Columbia, S.C. for the annual Southern Interscholastic Press Association regional conference. More than 400 students came from all over the Southeastern United States to hear speakers on everything from video editing to basic reporting.

It was great seeing old friends like Mark Murray, Leslie Dennis, Beth Dickey, Jake Palenske, Karen Flowers, Frank LoMonte, Chris Floore, Buck Ryan and all the others. It was great working with such talented students as T.J. Maynes who shot most of the photos in the gallery already online. And it was great teaching classes on how schools can move online efficiently and practically — now — as we went through using Facebook, Twitter, SmugMug, Flickr and other tools. Of course I always enjoy teaching my introductory photojournalism classes. Fun.

There were some frustrating moments as well, every single one of them around phrases such as “I can’t…” or “The administration won’t let us….” Schools that can’t use Facebook because some administrators don’t see the value in modern social networking. Or schools that can’t use Twitter  because they don’t see how it can be used in the classroom. Or, can’t use Flickr because of what students ‘might’ be able to find.

The rationale: Some folks said they were blocked because students would waste too much time (and bandwidth) online. The students who sat in the back of my classes ‘Facebooking’ were evidence that this is a real concern. But the students who sat in class sending out Tweets (#sipa11) to share educational moments with the rest of the world quickly countered that problem. It seems evident that schools are well acquainted with the pathway to success for using social media. First, train the students how to use the various tools at their disposal, ensuring that such training is flexible and adaptable enough to change with the times. Second, set high expectations for how and when to use this two-way communication. Educators do this every day with other tools. That’s why we have schools.

Schools that are blocked from using this new technology are blocked from sharing these new ideas, viewing photos of their students at work, entering local, regional and national contests. They’re blocked from learning.

Administrators in secondary schools, colleges and universities need to get past their fear of this new technology and start embracing it. If you want to see some schools that are doing it right, check out:

• mndaily.com, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minn.); Devin Henry, adviser
• HiLite Online, Carmel (Ind.) High School; Jim Streisel, adviser
• Kansan.com, University of Kansas (Lawrence, Kan.); Malcolm Gibson, adviser
• The Harbinger Online, Shawnee Mission East High school (Prairie Village, Kan.); C. Dow Tate, adviser
• The Ithacan Online, Ithaca College (Ithaca, N.Y.); Michael Serino, adviser
• Blue and Gold Today, Findlay (Ohio) High School; Jim McGonnell, adviser
• eCorsair, Pensacola (Fla.) State College; Christina Drain, adviser
• FHNtoday.com, Francis Howell North High School (St. Charles, Mo.); Aaron Manfull, adviser

Look how they incorporate social media, video, staff applications, calendars, various ways to buy photos and reprints and much more. They use the Web like it’s different from print media, more than just social media. It’s a way to converge video, audio, still photography and words. They know, it’s another way for us to communicate, and they take advantage of its strengths as they teach students how to function in a modern mass media society.

Regardless of whether the staff members are future engineers, poets, doctors, lawyers, police officers or teachers, these schools are doing their staff members a favor by teaching them teamwork, leadership skills and time management as they take the latest and greatest technology and use it to its fullest extent. Schools have been doing that for hundreds of years now. Why administrators are afraid of this new change in the way we communicate is beyond me. They need to find the strengths in what’s new and embrace it rather than hiding from it.

At North Carolina State University early on the morning of Nov. 4, 2010, students stood up to protest the writing of some hateful speech on the University’s Free Expression Tunnel. One artist had drawn some art of a person with dark skin. What appears to be another artist wrote “Obama” on the wall adjacent to that art. What appears to be another artist wrote the N-word in white spray paint along with a vulgar illustration. Offensive? Yes. Hate speech? Maybe. Inappropriate? Definitely.

But perhaps more disturbing to me today were the discussions about eliminating the Free Expression Tunnel completely.

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I can’t say for sure what hate speech is, within the law or outside the law. I can say for darn sure I don’t want government officials regulating my free speech. I may disagree with everything these individuals have to say. I may find it repulsive. But I will continue to defend their right to exercise their right of free speech.

The Free Expression Tunnel is not without its critics. It’s ugly. I detest giving tours of campus because there are always male sex organs and other illustrations that many people find offensive painted on the walls, ceiling and walkway. It costs thousands of dollars to maintain because people can’t paint within the lines. It’s probably not the safest place on campus because people paint over the lights. Most of the art isn’t by students, who want to advertise programs, it’s by non-student graffiti artists, so, other than being a source of art, it doesn’t even serve the campus community.

So, would some monitoring of the tunnel prove useful. Sure. People should follow the simple guidelines that are in everyone’s best interest. Why everyone on campus can’t share in enforcing these common-sense guidelines is beyond me. And everyone on campus, students, faculty and staff, should hold everyone else to acceptable community standards and should engage in dialog when people write things other folks might find offensive.

But regulate speech?

Free speech is fundamental to a free society. America could lose its social programs, its military and its schools but as long as we retain the right to communicate freely, we will remain free.

People have fought wars since 1791 so that we can retain our right to free speech. It’s worth the fight.

I hope the students, faculty and staff will take a time out in the next few days to review the First Amendment and what it really means — to all of us — regardless of race/ethnicity, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, or age.

The First Amendment is worth fighting for, even if you disagree with what other folks have to say.

• WRAL television story
• News & Observer story (Note how reader comments have been disabled on this story because of numerous violations of the N&O comment policy.)
• Technician story