Category Archives: Leadership

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January 20, 2014

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Leadership

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Print versus online doesn’t have to be either/or.

With budgets tightened and not likely to recover soon, dozens of scholastic journalism programs have scrapped the printed newspaper in favor of a digital presence. Many reasons exist why developing a robust news website is a good idea, but the price should not rank high.

A post to the Journalism Education Association email discussion list in November 2013 discussed the possibility of eliminating most print editions and replacing with a news website and a few print publications. The teacher wrote that she struggled with what those issues might include — should they be oriented toward news or features? Maybe they should be a separate magazine?

It’s easy to scrap the printed edition and cook up a flashy website with a carousel of rotating stories — video and audio, too. But doing so does not maintain the best options for storytelling.

The key is finding the right balance among all platforms. The printed page is unmatched for large displays, especially of visual storytelling through photography, illustration and graphics. It also provides the serendipity of discovering stories simply by leafing through the pages.

If I were starting a scholastic news journalism program today, I would build it with three components in mind: a comprehensive news website with an online-first philosophy, a well-curated printed magazine for special coverage and a social media presence that encourages building community.

Start with news online. Focus there.
Develop and maintain an online-first mentality. Doing this means changing the paradigm from publishing that is restricted by quantity, dimension and frequency of the print edition. When news happens, be ready to cover it. When a story is ready to publish, publish it.

The website should be the source of daily news and information for the campus community. Frequent posts encourage return visits, which reinforce the position of the website as a news source. They also create opportunities for community engagement and increase traffic for revenue potential.

Though the website is a primary news delivery vehicle, it will evolve into a storehouse of information — sports scores archive, past coverage of long-term stories, and even a place to watch live coverage of events like sports games and graduation.

The website would also be a place to showcase the best multimedia work — slideshows, audio and video clips and comprehensive stories with contextual linking and related content. Take advantage of the unique aspects of the digital platform. Because of the new coverage opportunities, students will be engaged constantly — no more ebb-and-flow cycle where some reporters have no work because the editors are designing the pages.

Add companion special-interest printed publications.
With most routine news items pulled to the website for publication, the print edition’s role must be redefined. Topics with greater depth can be explored in print.

Develop a publication where each edition carries a single theme — music and other arts, sports, health and fitness, food, family, faith and spirituality, the environment. Take a broad topic and find ways to approach it that go beyond providing encyclopedic reports. Use the topic as a trunk from which individual stories sprout and branch. For example, one topic could be competition. Stories could come from sports, of course, but also from video games, sibling rivalries and the pageant world. Build in a community engagement piece with a contest before the edition, and publish the results — or post them online.

Keepsake editions are another great example of a niche print product. Repurpose older stories and photos into a new package with some additional context. Championship season? Best of the decade? School or community anniversaries? All of these provide opportunities for keepsake editions.

These print editions also allow for new advertising opportunities. A businesses or organization that might be new or an infrequent advertiser could be persuaded to participate in a special edition, especially if it relates to their mission or specialty. These themed print editions should be viewed equally as content production and revenue opportunity, though the advertising should never drive the content itself.

Build community with social media.
Social utilities — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and others — are useful not just for promotion but also to foster a community. Each platform has its own audience, so develop a strategy. Think about why the news staff is using a specific social utility and who the target audience is. If the students use Instagram, get on there, too. If you want to reach parents and families, Facebook is a better choice. Some special topics are great posts for Reddit, a social community whose users are highly engaged.

Engagement should be the goal, not simply followers, clicks, likes, retweets or upvotes. Engagement also means a back-and-forth conversation with members of that social community. When the community is established, the promotion will be authentic and easy. Since people tend to place trust in peer recommendations, social sharing and referrals are valuable to bring a new audience to your work and to grow the community.

You don’t have to start from scratch to get a great multi-platform journalism program going. However, restructuring might be challenge. It’s a challenge that’s worth the effort. Calibrate each platform to ensure that multiple coverage opportunities are available for students to tell the story of the school, and find the right mix that works.

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February 12, 2012

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Leadership

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Blaze a trail and try something new

In January, I came across a remembrance in The New York Times of a pioneering photographer who had died recently. I read with interest about Louise Serpa and how she came to love both photography and rodeo. She was a pioneer in both. I grew up in a rodeo town, and one of my mentors in college was a rodeo photographer, so I have always had an interest in this area. Growing up, I knew a lot of people who were tough and classy like Serpa.

Though I have never been an arena photographer, it is easy to see how it can be both exhilarating and exceptionally dangerous. Other sports photographers may contend with thrown bats or a stumbling running back, but in Serpa’s profession, she had to keep shooting while avoiding bulls, broncs or bucked-off cowboys.

While reading the article, it occurred to me that Serpa was a true traiblazer — the lone woman in a field where men dominated, and she didn’t let that stop her. Serpa become famous — at least in the rodeo world — because she had a passion for arena photography and because she was good at it.

So I wondered whether there are there any trails left to be blazed today. For students working in media today, the answer is apparent. There has never been a more exciting time to be working in media. There have never been more tools for use in creating, more methods to research and gather information, or more platforms on which to tell a story. In short, there’s a wide-open frontier ready to be explored.

The take-aways from the article about Serpa are simple: Motivation, ingenuity, passion and willingness to work hard will get you what you want in life. Be open to exploration. Be curious. Seek solutions. And find a passion.

These aren’t new concepts. They’ve been shared by teachers, graduation speakers and parents for generations. What is new is that there are ways to start doing this in your student media right now. Pursue an ambitious story that needs telling, and show it to your readers. Experiment with new online tools like Tumblr or Storify. Dip your toes in the pond of a new area of digital media, and you’ll discover the water’s not so bad.

Just like Louise Serpa, you might have to dodge some obstacles. You might be the only person like you in a world of people who are different. But, don’t let that stop you. Breathe in the exhilaration. Blend your interests with your assignments. Blaze a new trail.

Find the article at:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/sweetheart-of-the-rodeo/

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February 28, 2011

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Improvement, Leadership

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The legacy of one California newspaper adviser

From a post to the JEA email discussion list:
I did not have the good fortune to meet and know Ted Tajima, but it appears we have lost a giant in our field. The occasion of his death led me to revisit some of scholastic journalism’s history and learn more about this man and his school. Takima had been the adviser for many years to The Moor newspaper at Alhambra High School. Here’s his obituary from the Los Angeles Times.

Last week, I spoke with a reporter for the Los Angeles Times about The Moor and its adviser and accomplishments. The reporter’s beat was obituaries, though another reporter wrote this piece. The reporter I spoke with happened to be one of Takima’s former students and a member of The Moor staff that earned a NSPA Pacemaker in 1972. It should be noted there were only five or six newspaper National Pacemakers each year from 1961 through 1978. The Moor earned that honor twice for its weekly editions.

The reporter with I spoke shared with me an article, from the Los Angeles Times morgue, printed in 1983 when Tajima retired from teaching. The lengthy piece covers his personality and career but also changes in society and Alhambra High School, in education and in professional and scholastic journalism. This passage from the article demonstrates his teaching style and how some issues remain unresolved today:

And, he said, there have been changes in the type of reporting done in the school paper as students became more aware of the world around them.

“It used to be, back in the ’50s, that we’d report one week that the Spanish Club would meet, and then the next week report that the Spanish Club had met,” he said.

But in the ’50s and ’60s, Tajima said, his students seemed to become more aware of what was going on outside the school, and started to report on it, sometimes even in the colorful language that was then becoming acceptable.

“Our rule has been that a four-letter word may be used once in a while, but only if it is in context of the story, and not just for exploitation, just to attract attention,” he said.

“One of the principles I’ve always taught is that the newspaper is an educator as well as the schools, and that the newspaper must set standards for the community.

“I’ve told them: You know who your readers are, but it doesn’t mean you have to get down in the dirt with them.”

In the NSPA archives, I found a note Tajima submitted with the 1981-82 critique for The Moor: “Admittedly, THE MOOR in its makeup appears more traditional than the many biweekly and monthly publications we see in exchanges and in journalism conventions. It is our feeling, however, that we publish a weekly newspaper, 37 times a year, and we are able, because of a Monday deadline for a Wednesday publication day, to emphasize news more than features. So we stick more to a newspaper format instead of a magazine format. Yet, we are criticized for the fact that we prize frequency and news emphasis over less news-worthy magazine styles.”

Even 29 years later the debate about frequency continues, as does the evolving discussion about newspapers vs. newsmagazines.

Clearly Ted Tajima’s legacy includes the many former students who are now professionals in a variety of fields, including some notable journalists.

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March 3, 2010

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Leadership, Resources

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Who owns the work? The person who created it.

Imagine this situation: A teacher, holding a student’s recent assignment, approaches the writer. It’s really good, the teacher says, praising the student. The student beams with pride and asks whether it might be good enough to get published.
“Oh, definitely,” the teacher replies. “And that’s exactly what our school plans to do since we own this piece of writing.”

The student, astonished, sputters out a response. “But why would you say you own this?” the student says. “I’m the one who wrote it!”

The teacher simply smiles and says, “Yes, but you used a school computer and printed it on our printer, so we own it.”

“But what about copyright?” the student asks.

“Yeah, well you did the work in my class, so I’m like your boss,” the teacher answered.

Fuming, the student ponders the law and situation until the end of school, when he darts out of class to check his rights.

Does this situation sound ridiculous? Most people would say yes. Yet that’s exactly the explanation student journalists hear when they’re told the publication, website or broadcast owns their photos, videos or stories. The fact is the creator owns the copyright. Unless the students are getting paid for their work — and neither course credit or even cookies count as payment — the individual maintains the ownership. So, if the president comes to town, a student takes an amazing photo of him, and the Associated Press wants to buy it, the student can make money, even if he or she used a school camera to take the photo.

There’s a solution that can preserve the rights of student journalists while also allowing the publication, Web site or broadcast the opportunity to be the first to publish the work and to do so for a period of time — even after the student has moved or graduated. Each adviser should work with his or her editor or producer to create a contract that spells out the rights and terms of using the student’s work for publication or broadcast. Conveniently, the Student Press Law Center has developed just such a model contract to use as-is or as a guideline for your own. Even more conveniently, the model contract is available as a PDF to download at the NSPA website under the portion labeled The Wheel, resources you don’t want to reinvent.

At the beginning of each term, review the contract with new staff members and have them sign your contract. A parent will have to sign for a student who is a minor. This practice solves the problem of what to do when a student takes a photo for the yearbook but wants to post it first on his or her Facebook page. You can mandate that when working for student media, right of first publication belongs to the publication or broadcast. An added benefit is that students and their parents know the student’s rights, and everyone models the appropriate use of copyrighted images, video and text. And that’s a good lesson for everyone.

One final suggestion: If students can borrow school equipment like cameras for personal use (taking a senior portrait, a weekend trip, or to a friend’s birthday party), consider a user agreement between student/parents and the equipment owner that spells out procedures for check-out and check-in. Remember to be clear about the condition the equipment should be in upon return (cleaned, charged, etc.) and what happens if damage occurs. It’s better to have a policy in place before something occurs than to get stuck with missing or broken equipment.

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February 1, 2010

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Ethics, Leadership

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When you’re too close, there can be a conflict of interest

A posting to the e-mail distribution list for the Journalism Education Association posed a question about whether it was all right for two of the newspaper staff’s best writers to cover the volleyball team’s recent district championship. They know the sport and saw that game. They should — they’re also on the team.

So is it OK for these two athlete-journalists to write the story for the newspaper? Nope.
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