Ponderings

When Kate Parry of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune spoke at the opening of the ACP Summer Journalism Workshop at the University of Minneapolis, she spoke of the seduction of journalism and how addictive journalism is. I agree.

But more importantly, Parry talked about how journalism is the voice of those whose voice is missing in society. Ordinary journalism, she said, leaves out great swaths of society. “We have an obligation to the voiceless people in our society.”

And she challenged reporters to ask whose voice is missing every time they generate story ideas, every time they critique the paper, and every time they look at the Web site. On a college campus, she challenged college journalists to ask “who is invisible in your campus conversation.” For example, on our campus, we know we fail to cover students in the College of Engineering and, notably, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences consistently. They are invisible in our publications on a regular basis.

She also challenged every reporter and photographer to get out of the office and to find out what the readers view as their most important problem, what issues they want to read more about. Just get out and ask: What’s important to you?

After all, isn’t that what journalism — and reporting — is supposed to be? What is important to readers? Let’s all make it our challenge this year to find out and then to report on those topics instead of the routine and the same stuff we report on every year.

It was fun teaching advisers at Ball State University this past week. Teaching the fundamentals of InDesign and Photoshop provided real-life skills, everything from basic text formatting to making a PDF and indexing.

We decided that it’s best not to let the computers get the best of you when learning new stuff. Computers weren’t designed to make life easier; they were designed to do repetitious and arduous tasks.

Thanks to Greg, Jan, Sue, Josette, Jessica and Jim, here’s our list of five things to keep in mind.

1. Be patient.
2. Take small steps that lead to larger ones.
3. Get your hands dirty. Get in and play in the software.
4. Repeat the process. Produce one-page fliers, programs, posters, anything to get in there to use the skills.
5. Utilize your resources, handouts, books and other students/advisers.

I had the privilege of teaching some excellent design students this past week at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was impressed with their knowledge of the software. As each year goes by, I find myself teaching software less and less. That’s good.

I was also impressed with their work ethic. Sometimes, high school students whine about having work to do in the summer at workshops. These students didn’t. In fact, they wanted more work. That bodes well for their scholastic programs.

However, this class, like many over the years, suffered from ADD. After they got the stories and photos on the page, they were done. They didn’t take the time to polish, to line things up, to check spelling, to make little changes that make a big difference. Their lack of willingness to polish is indicative of high school and college students today. Good enough is good enough.

But in the real world, that’s not good enough. I hope over the years, their advisers will take the time to help them polish the pages, check spelling, look for inconsistencies in spacing or font choice or rule-line width. Pay attention to the smallest details.

That goes for the photographers who need to work on cropping, color correction and even the proper grammar, spelling punctuation in their captions. That goes for the reporters who need to work on avoiding passive voice  and getting a variety of sources in their stories. And that goes for editors who need to develop leadership skills, push their staff members to achieve more and to cover their campus community fairly, accurately and with the richness in diversity it warrants.

The adviser is a coach. Artwork by Kevin Necessary.

Adviser — an educator who advises students in academic and personal matters. An expert in a particular field of knowledge. The adviser walks a fine line between leading the organization and giving the organization the strength to lead itself. The adviser is an integral part of the organization. The adviser is probably the only individual with the history, the big picture and the experience.

As advisers, we emphasize teamwork. Just as a quarterback can’t lead a team with no other players on the field and no championship basketball team will win with only one player, producing publications is a team effort, photographers, designers, reporters, copyeditors and editors working together. As advisers, we avoid the prima donnas (those who are egotistical, unreasonable and irritable, with a rather high opinion of themselves not shared by others) and emphasize the teamwork.

As advisers, we foster communication. We provide information, present alternatives, encourage responsibility, support creativity and challenge students. None of that can happen without regular, frequent, open and honest communication — in both directions.

As advisers, we stress meeting deadlines. Time management is a challenge for students who need to learn to balance their academic lives, their personal lives and their role in the media. For time management and learning to meet deadlines are skills that go beyond the classroom or newsroom.

Advisers, we push for excellence. Most students, especially those without much prior media experience, have no idea what a quality publication is, and there are fewer and fewer great publications out there to serve as role models. Chances are, they aren’t even consumers of the mass media. So we have to teach them high standards in everything from cropping photos to writing leads to using white space appropriately to avoiding use of anonymous sources to maintaining high ethical standards. Just as a coach pushes students to achieve more and to raise their standards, advisers push and push for better and better.

As advisers, we provide information, present alternatives, encourage responsibility, support creativity. We challenge our students to develop as leaders. We push students to learn from their mistakes, to learn from the past, and not to repeat the mistakes of the past, constantly producing better media outlets that serve the communities they cover. It’s all a part of leadership.

As advisers, we are role models, through our words and actions. Like all good leaders, an adviser’s ethical and professional behavior all leave a strong impression on students, as does their attitude toward work habits, including meeting deadlines and achieving excellence.

As advisers, we know there is no good way to summarize what we do on a daily basis, especially when dealing with media as varied as yearbooks, video outlets, radio stations, weekly newspapers, literary magazine and/or daily newspapers.

Certainly, as advisers, we know advising isn’t easy. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

CLICK HERE for a great article by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy.

I was looking over the Pulitzer-Prize winning photographers’ work today. And it reminded me that a great photographer is worth his or her weight in platinum. (At $1,147/ounce, that’s not chump change.) Seriously, good photos grab a viewer into the page or story both online or in print. I always tell designers and reporters, “If you want to get your story read, get a great photo to accompany it.” But the reciprocal is true as well: a crappy photo will turn a reader/viewer away just as fast. Indeed, it’s better to publish no photo — alternative copy, other story-telling devices, other entry points — than a bad photo.

Are books a thing of the past? Are newspapers dying? What about yearbooks? When blogging first started getting hot in the early years of the millennium people were dying to start blogging. The blog was the new journalism. Now, the power of the press didn’t belong to he who owned a press, it belong to he (or she) who owned a computer, say some 300 million people. But books aren’t going away any time soon. Neither are newspapers. Neither are yearbooks. And even I am blogging more frequently now. They all will be part of the new media, each serving a niche and a need in the market. Indeed, even Twitter, for which I find little use, has its niche — and about 18.1 million people agree. (eMarketer.com, April 2009) But none of these new technologies has decreased the need for good journalism, for quality reporting, reporting that goes beyond the surface and provides unique information to the readers. Good reporters will always be worth their weight in gold.

DEBBIE AYLESWORTH — In the newspaper business, no one wants to get “scooped.” That is the process in which one newspaper beats another in the same market with breaking news. Scooped is often the “one up-manship” of the newspaper business.

I helped to write a textbook on journalism a while back. “Journalism Today.” On page 79, we said, “Once a journalist is trained and experience, news judgment becomes a matter of instinct, of course. Professional journalists make judgments without reference to techniques beginners often rely on.” But for beginners, there was the “Who cares?” technique that I recommend. The more people care about information in the story, the greater its news value.