A few weeks ago, a Texas lawmaker's bill that would protect student free speech at colleges reached the Higher Education Committee. Free speech on campus is a concept that my colleagues and I usually don't think about. We haven't felt threatened by the administration to censor ourselves at all, though we do have problems with access to information as we are a private university. It is kind of odd that states would have to push through legislation further protecting its citizens rights even though it's such a fundamental part of this nation. But if this bill become enacted, Texas will be the ninth state to have such a law.
This Student Press Law Center story mentions a few instances in Texas colleges, not necessarily private, of prior restraint and censorship. In one university, students were asked not to display political messages from their dorm windows. At another community college, prior restraint was protected in the student media policy.
At my university, TCU, I do recall an instance where a cop was called because a student was reading out loud from his Bible. The student was asked to stop because he didn't have a permit and his actions counted as "illegal assembly." How many people constitute an assembly? Can one person assemble alone? I also later found out that our camus has "free speech areas" where free speech is allowed. As a higher education institution, restricting free speech in anyway seems counterintuitive. So, maybe this bill was necessary after all.
Anyway, here's the link to the column the student wrote about his little social experiment.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Jobs
Easily one of the most talked-about topics in journalism these days. Newspapers are closing left and right, two-newspaper towns are becoming one-newspaper towns. People in the news industry are having to think about back-up plans and assess the advantages and disadvantages of taking a buyout.
It is into this reality that I am looking for jobs. No, I'm not going to graduate school, and no, I'm not going to Teach for America or enlist and hope to join the real real world at a more opportune time. I'm diving into the job market head first, praying that I won't land in a bunch of boulder.
So here are a few things I've learned about the job market:
1) It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, landing a job will be difficult, openings are out there. Don't assume you're looking at a wasteland. There are little patches of life here and there for those who use their resources wisely. Hint: community journalism is what's doing well these days.
2) You will be Googled. I think. A prospective employer gave me feedback on clips that I never provided in great detail. He asked me why I did things a certain way, and why stories turn out the way they did. I always assumed that it was up to me to select the clips that would make me look good. It doesn't end there. Don't get creeped out if your prospective employee is well-informed on what you have done in the past.
3) If you don't have Facebook and Twitter, get with the program. Now. I'm not joking. Twitter isn't just a fad. Like I said in my last post, journalists are absolutely in love with it. I have seen postings where they demanded that applicants have strong networks on both Facebook and Twitter.
4) My favorite job-hunting tools: journalismjobs.com, texaspress.com, and friends. Keep in touch with friends after they graduate, because they will really be able to help you out and pull you into the circle they are now a part of.
It is into this reality that I am looking for jobs. No, I'm not going to graduate school, and no, I'm not going to Teach for America or enlist and hope to join the real real world at a more opportune time. I'm diving into the job market head first, praying that I won't land in a bunch of boulder.
So here are a few things I've learned about the job market:
1) It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, landing a job will be difficult, openings are out there. Don't assume you're looking at a wasteland. There are little patches of life here and there for those who use their resources wisely. Hint: community journalism is what's doing well these days.
2) You will be Googled. I think. A prospective employer gave me feedback on clips that I never provided in great detail. He asked me why I did things a certain way, and why stories turn out the way they did. I always assumed that it was up to me to select the clips that would make me look good. It doesn't end there. Don't get creeped out if your prospective employee is well-informed on what you have done in the past.
3) If you don't have Facebook and Twitter, get with the program. Now. I'm not joking. Twitter isn't just a fad. Like I said in my last post, journalists are absolutely in love with it. I have seen postings where they demanded that applicants have strong networks on both Facebook and Twitter.
4) My favorite job-hunting tools: journalismjobs.com, texaspress.com, and friends. Keep in touch with friends after they graduate, because they will really be able to help you out and pull you into the circle they are now a part of.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
It's the recent obsession in journalism. Although it's gaining a lot of popularity among the general public as well, most people on my campus would respond with a, "What's Twitter?"
If you're one of them, Twitter is a micro-blogging Web site where you post little updates within 140 characters. An easy way to visualize Twitter is a Facebook status update ... and only the Facebook status update (here's a link to Facebook in case you have been living underground participating in a social experiment). People are updating, or "tweeting," by the minute on their computers and cell phones. To be honest, I feel a little ridiculous saying, "Hey, I'll shoot you a tweet," but it's what's in these days.
Most people's reaction to Twitter is, "What's the point?" If you're asking the same question there are plenty of videos and blog posts that are supposed to help Twitter noobs answer it. I can't remember the last time a social Web product that people are flocking to without really knowing or understanding what the appeal is. According to a video posted by Twitter, while blogs and e-mails keep friends and family updated on the large events in life, such as child birth, death in the family, a new job (ha!), engagement, marriage, etc., Twitter allows people to learn about the little things, like turkey sandwiches for lunch, articles you're reading, a new recipe you discovered, etc.
Anyway, for journalists, Twitter has become yet another tool to reach apathetic readers with short blurbs of news updates. It has especially proved successful for the Star-Telegram's coverage of Ike.
Twitter has become the new "cool" thing for journalists and the rest of the world. I definitely sense an air of arrogance and elitism associated with people's use of Twitter. Now, journalists are expected to know Twitter, have an active account, and to love it. This is why Twitter is the only thing I have tried to become addicted to. It hasn't worked yet, and I think that makes me a bad journalist. Sometimes, I leave it up at work so that maybe people will think I'm tech savvy. Anyway, if you're interested in observing my slow exploration of twitter, follow me.
The Skiff has recently started tweeting as well.
Anyway, here's Jon Stewart's (The Daily Show) take on tweeting journalists:
- edit -
Check out what student journalists in Minnesota did with Twitter for a story about disabled parking.
If you're one of them, Twitter is a micro-blogging Web site where you post little updates within 140 characters. An easy way to visualize Twitter is a Facebook status update ... and only the Facebook status update (here's a link to Facebook in case you have been living underground participating in a social experiment). People are updating, or "tweeting," by the minute on their computers and cell phones. To be honest, I feel a little ridiculous saying, "Hey, I'll shoot you a tweet," but it's what's in these days.
Most people's reaction to Twitter is, "What's the point?" If you're asking the same question there are plenty of videos and blog posts that are supposed to help Twitter noobs answer it. I can't remember the last time a social Web product that people are flocking to without really knowing or understanding what the appeal is. According to a video posted by Twitter, while blogs and e-mails keep friends and family updated on the large events in life, such as child birth, death in the family, a new job (ha!), engagement, marriage, etc., Twitter allows people to learn about the little things, like turkey sandwiches for lunch, articles you're reading, a new recipe you discovered, etc.
Anyway, for journalists, Twitter has become yet another tool to reach apathetic readers with short blurbs of news updates. It has especially proved successful for the Star-Telegram's coverage of Ike.
Twitter has become the new "cool" thing for journalists and the rest of the world. I definitely sense an air of arrogance and elitism associated with people's use of Twitter. Now, journalists are expected to know Twitter, have an active account, and to love it. This is why Twitter is the only thing I have tried to become addicted to. It hasn't worked yet, and I think that makes me a bad journalist. Sometimes, I leave it up at work so that maybe people will think I'm tech savvy. Anyway, if you're interested in observing my slow exploration of twitter, follow me.
The Skiff has recently started tweeting as well.
Anyway, here's Jon Stewart's (The Daily Show) take on tweeting journalists:
- edit -
Check out what student journalists in Minnesota did with Twitter for a story about disabled parking.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Killing time
We often have a lot of waiting time in the newsroom. First the design team waits for us as we get our copy in and edited. Then, at the end of the night, we wait for the designers to finish, tweak and ship the pages. In the midst of all the waiting, we have become very creative with how we spend our time.
Here's David trying to stick a pen into the ceiling. He says it's like playing darts but harder because pens aren't sharp and pointy. I challenge you to try it. It really is more difficult than darts.
Now, I should remind you that we spend close to 40 hours a week in the newsroom. And we're all full-time students and most of us have scholarships to keep up. Which means it would be wise to put every idle moment toward reading, studying and homework. But instead, we spend hours reading blogs, watching YouTube videos and doing crosswords. Nothing too crazy -- pretty standard for a bunch of 20-something-year-olds.
But lately, we've gotten into a few peculiar hobbies:
Here's David trying to stick a pen into the ceiling. He says it's like playing darts but harder because pens aren't sharp and pointy. I challenge you to try it. It really is more difficult than darts. Next: http://fmylife.com/
It's a hilarious blog that we've recently become really obsessed with due to journalists' inherently dark humor. Here's a recent post that makes me a bad person because I laughed:
It's a hilarious blog that we've recently become really obsessed with due to journalists' inherently dark humor. Here's a recent post that makes me a bad person because I laughed:
Today, my family gathered at my 96 year old great-grandmother's surprise birthday party that was my idea. When she walked in, we surprised her so much that she literally had a heart attack. She is now in the hospital. FML
Third: Neener neener
Writing and talking in neener. I won't be offended if you never return to my blog after this paragraph. I'm just trying to be frank about what we do for fun. It's like Mad Libs but every blank is a neener. The same guy you see trying to poke the ceiling with his pen also wrote our first cop story in neener.
Writing and talking in neener. I won't be offended if you never return to my blog after this paragraph. I'm just trying to be frank about what we do for fun. It's like Mad Libs but every blank is a neener. The same guy you see trying to poke the ceiling with his pen also wrote our first cop story in neener.
Here's what a typical crime story might look like in neener: FORT NEENER -- A Fort Worth neener died at a local hospital Neener morning after he was neenered shot outside of a neener on Berry Neener, neenering to a neener release.
Oh, and I don't know if this warrants its colon to separate it from the rest of our time-killing activities, but we once ordered some midgets to a weekly staff meeting. They haven't called us to confirm our order, though. Does that make us bad people, too?
Anyway, here is a classic time killer:
Eating.
Eating.If someone has ever told you to never leave food in a newsroom, this is because it's true. It's not just because we're starving college students. My copyediting professor has asked me to bring brownies to a professional newsroom when I visited for a class assignment and the brownies were gone in a blink of an eye. No joke. Anyway, our production manager pops so many bags of popcorn a day that we have become convinced that it is part of her official job title. At peak times of the evening, which is around dinner time, she pops two, one after the other.
As you can tell, we aren't really picky about how to kill or waste time. Have any suggestions? My comments are enabled in case you were wondering.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Mistakes and correcting them
Our newsroom has a love-hate relationship with factual and grammatical mistakes. We would like to think it's mostly hate, but every once in a while, you'd hear someone yell, "Fact error!" in a voice disturbingly like those you'd hear at bingo night. It's oddly triumphant.At this point, I should define fact error: the misspelling of any proper noun, misquoting or just a plain old factual error. See headline above for an embarrassing fact error that happened to make it to print on our most important news day. In our J-school, a fact error is an automatic F on our stories.
Anyway, our odd relationship with fact errors is the reason behind a scoreboard we had up for a semester, where all the copy editors (see last post for some thoughts on copy editors) had a running tally for how many fact errors they find in stories. More loosely related to fact errors but strongly related to journalists' innate love for correcting/ editing people even in life outside of the newsroom, we also have a wall of epic fail. That's where we record all our favorite mistakes. I wasn't involved in the creation of this wall but I think the inspiration for the wall came from this blog.
A corner of the board is dedicated to the wall's hall of fame.
Here are some of our favorite epic fails:
- racial epitaph (needless to say, it should've been racial epithet)
- Scarborough Hall (no. Scharbauer Hall)
- Voctor Boschini (Victor Boschini)
I've been trying to come up with the reason for our fascination with errors when I came across a blog post on stuffjournalistslike.com. This post on jargon said that because journalism classes don't necessarily require brain power like biology, engineering and math classes might, we feel superior on this small expertise that we have: grammar, spelling and attention to detail.
Check out the post here.Here's to no more Virginas ... the massive error as well as the violence.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Copy editors
Here's a tribute to copy editors.
They're probably the most often ignored when news consumers think about newsrooms. And now that newspapers are cutting back, there are even fewer copy editors in today's newsrooms. But they're the ones who know the community. The leaders, the street names, whether it's avenue or road or boulevard, whether it's President Obama or President Barack Obama (it's the latter, by the way. The AP style changed for some reason).
Here are two of our editors diligently copy editing. How do we know? Because they're wearing the green visors! Duh.
Copy editors also write headlines. Here's an image of our recent favorite hammer headline:
A Coca-Cola truck caught a tree branch and "snapped" off a lot of the tree. Neither tree nor driver was injured. I should note that it wasn't a copy editor who came up with that hammer, however. Julieta was metaphorically wearing the green visor, though.
They're probably the most often ignored when news consumers think about newsrooms. And now that newspapers are cutting back, there are even fewer copy editors in today's newsrooms. But they're the ones who know the community. The leaders, the street names, whether it's avenue or road or boulevard, whether it's President Obama or President Barack Obama (it's the latter, by the way. The AP style changed for some reason).They're the ones who read stories the way a reader would, then make the technical stuff approachable, the abstract stuff concrete, and the faraway stuff humanized. They're on your side. Thank god for copy editors.
Apparently, according to our copyediting professor, copy editors used to wear green visors. The visors helped mitigate eyestrain because it is such a detail-oriented job. They're also called green eyeshades. They're way hip.
Anyway, the editors in our newsroom have multiple "hats" they must wear throughout the day. About half of them are actually also copy editors. Which means when they're wearing their copy editor hats, it causes lots of confusion about what they're supposed to be doing. The reporters want their attention, the senior editors want their attention, we wonder why they aren't doing what we think they're supposed to be doing when in fact, they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing -- copyediting. So, we decided to go a little literal with the term "hats."
Here are two of our editors diligently copy editing. How do we know? Because they're wearing the green visors! Duh.Copy editors also write headlines. Here's an image of our recent favorite hammer headline:
A Coca-Cola truck caught a tree branch and "snapped" off a lot of the tree. Neither tree nor driver was injured. I should note that it wasn't a copy editor who came up with that hammer, however. Julieta was metaphorically wearing the green visor, though.
I'll end this post with a link to a Washington Post column by Gene Weingarten. It's about copy editors. You should also challenge yourself and see if you can find the fifty-something copyediting errors in the column. I'm sure it'll help you realize their value better.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Deadlines
To say that deadlines are a huge part of journalists' lives would be a gross understatement. Today's experience with our first news broadcast at KTCU reminded me of just that. After so many years of working under the constant pressure of deadlines, our tolerance for that pressure just gets higher.
This is our head radio guy still editing the recording two minutes before it was supposed to go on air. I think we got it ready with about 30 seconds left. Ah! 
Phil, who did the sports part, and Michelle anxiously watching as Rebekah reads the newscast. She particularly had a hard time with "Hillary Clinton."
This is our head radio guy still editing the recording two minutes before it was supposed to go on air. I think we got it ready with about 30 seconds left. Ah! Michelle, the NewsNow adviser, said we had no reason to freak out until about 10 seconds before the newscast. I had already been freaking out for about three minutes by then. I'm thinking broadcast journalists have quite a different perception of deadlines. Wait, what am I thinking? The term "broadcast journalist" is so 1995. We're all journalists now.
Anyway, I know I'm only required to post once a week but my news judgment tells me that our first newscast will have lost its timeliness by time my next post is actually due (journalism buzz word alert). I even used my 2-megapixel camera phone to document the experience.
Rebekah, News Now news director practicing the script. I was very impressed with her voice.
Phil, who did the sports part, and Michelle anxiously watching as Rebekah reads the newscast. She particularly had a hard time with "Hillary Clinton."Now here's a sneak peek at what the news cast actually sounded like. You can also get a sense of the anxiety in the station after having barely made the deadline. You can also hear the mastered reading of "Hillary Clinton." It's more difficult than you would think.
If you missed the newscast, be sure to tune in from now on. 88.7 KTCU "The Choice." The DJs also have awesome taste in music so you can even stay and hang out if you'd like. If you're not in the Metroplex, you still don't have an excuse. You can stream it live at ktcu.tcu.edu.
4 p.m. daily. Be there or be square.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
KTCU "The Choice"
Welcome to a journal of a student-journalist.
Starting today, I will be posting weekly about my thoughts on campus media. The topics of my posts might be about what goes on at our newsroom, the Skiff, or student publications around the country. Student-journalists tend to find themselves in tricky situations. There is the tension among students and administrators, only to be intensified the conflicting duties of those who seek information and those who protect it. There are also questions of how journalism programs and in turn student media can prepare prospective journalists for an industry that is revolutionizing right as we speak. And for those who are very close to graduating, journalism is a scary industry to want to be a part of. Will we be hired? If yes, will we be able to afford to eat?
Through this blog, we will explore how student-journalists are coping, adjusting and blooming under these dodgy circumstances.
I'm the managing editor of the Skiff and have been involved with some sort of student media since high school. Journalism has been my passion for years, and as I get ready to graduate in May, this blog will be an opportunity for me to reflect, relearn lessions and prepare to (hopefully) jump into the professional field.
An e-mail I received today from our adviser served as a perfect inspiration for my first post. The Skiff has been easing into this concept of "convergence." Last semester, we partnered with NewsNow for several live streaming opportunities, including Election Day coverage. This semester, more specifically this coming week, we will be partnering with KTCU "The Choice." Our student-run radion station, which is the only campus station in the area that broadcasts to the whole Metroplex, according to admissions, will be broadcasting news that our reporters gather at 4 p.m. daily. This is something I have been pushing for several semesters and I'm excited that we're finally doing this. This will give us a lot more exposure -- just a wider group of listeners throughout the Metroplex, not to mention the additional skills we would be introducing to the students involved.
Although I never feel like we're making significant progress toward being able to truly take advantage of the converged newsroom our journalism students will have next year, this definitely is a step forward.
Starting today, I will be posting weekly about my thoughts on campus media. The topics of my posts might be about what goes on at our newsroom, the Skiff, or student publications around the country. Student-journalists tend to find themselves in tricky situations. There is the tension among students and administrators, only to be intensified the conflicting duties of those who seek information and those who protect it. There are also questions of how journalism programs and in turn student media can prepare prospective journalists for an industry that is revolutionizing right as we speak. And for those who are very close to graduating, journalism is a scary industry to want to be a part of. Will we be hired? If yes, will we be able to afford to eat?
Through this blog, we will explore how student-journalists are coping, adjusting and blooming under these dodgy circumstances.
I'm the managing editor of the Skiff and have been involved with some sort of student media since high school. Journalism has been my passion for years, and as I get ready to graduate in May, this blog will be an opportunity for me to reflect, relearn lessions and prepare to (hopefully) jump into the professional field.
An e-mail I received today from our adviser served as a perfect inspiration for my first post. The Skiff has been easing into this concept of "convergence." Last semester, we partnered with NewsNow for several live streaming opportunities, including Election Day coverage. This semester, more specifically this coming week, we will be partnering with KTCU "The Choice." Our student-run radion station, which is the only campus station in the area that broadcasts to the whole Metroplex, according to admissions, will be broadcasting news that our reporters gather at 4 p.m. daily. This is something I have been pushing for several semesters and I'm excited that we're finally doing this. This will give us a lot more exposure -- just a wider group of listeners throughout the Metroplex, not to mention the additional skills we would be introducing to the students involved.
Although I never feel like we're making significant progress toward being able to truly take advantage of the converged newsroom our journalism students will have next year, this definitely is a step forward.
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