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July 8, 2013

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Improvement

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14 Things for Yearbook Staffs to Think About in 2014

It’s mid-July and yearbook staffs are likely in full planning mode for the 2014 edition — maybe even before the 2013 book has been delivered. There’s not time to rest if you want to get better.

Why try?

Work to improve each year. Last year’s book may have set records or won awards, so build on those successes and what worked.
Sell more. The book might be beautiful, but you still need people to buy it.
Improve and engage. Better content from an engaged audience results in sales.
That’s success all around!

You still have time to make 2014 the best book on record. Try some new endeavors to improve your yearbook operation. Here are 14 things you can try.

1. Be excellent. It probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Strive for excellence. Excellence isn’t settling for pretty good. Good enough is not good enough. Demand the best from every photo, caption, story and design. Set goals to improve with each deadline.

2. Be the #1 source. Be serious about being the top information source and archive for all things about your school. If someone wants to know a fact, score, date, record, time or whatever — be the place they turn for that information. Own sports stats, especially JV and lower squads. No other source is recording this information in this way.

3. Get out there. You can’t really get a story unless you get out and talk to people. In person — yes, in person! You can always tell the difference when a writer has observed and interviewed in person.
Email or chat interviews fill a need, but they are not as effective as being there.
4. Find stories. Establish a solid system in place to gather information beyond the big events. You’ll need this information for the narrative copy blocks as well as sidebars and fast-fact charts. Demand enterprise. Dig around to find something newsworthy and interesting from this year. Write it in a compelling, interesting and useful way.
5. Improve photos. Most of the yearbook is photography, which can make or break the book. Invest time in teaching each staff member to take usable photos that are…

  • In focus
  • Well composed
  • Candid

Leave every assignment with images that are wide (scene-setting), mid-range and close-up. That gives designers options.
6. Show us. Probably the most widely read (and most liked) stories are those that tell interesting stories about people. Your school and community are full of these stories. Localize national issues with the stories of people around you. Spend as much time on captions as on copy. The captions must be engaging, too.
7. Get social. Use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to interact with readers by posting links to content and by getting tips from readers. Monitor and listen to the conversation, or ask them to let you know about events occurring outside school (or at school but not known). Or search by #hashtag. Let readers submit photos and ideas to you through these pages.
8. Curate and share. Delicious.com is a free social bookmarking site. Pinterest allows sharing and re-sharing by “pinning” on “boards.” Tumblr allows curating links, images, text and video. Post links/items that will be useful to others. Tag and sort in a number of ways to enhance content beyond the printed page. You can also see what others shared.

9. Beyond the page. Flickr is a free online image-sharing service. Make your images available for people to browse as slideshows. Instagram is a social photo-sharing site. Follow others or promote your staff’s work. Show what happens behind the scenes! Through a Creative Commons license, you can get images to use (free and legal!). WikiCommons is another source for free images.

10. Post video. YouTube, SchoolTube and Vimeo are solutions to upload videos. Some might be blocked on school computers, but they’re not blocked on mobile devices or at home, where most people will access the videos. Use short clips that enhance the printed content. Social sites Instagram, Tumblr and Vine host short video clips.

11. Try QR codes. The “QR” stands for quick read and is a type of two-dimensional bar code. Smart phones can scan the codes and launch PDFs, videos or websites. Create a QR code easily and for free online. Even without a website, this is a way to add content and value or to promote sales.

12. Do fewer…

… superlatives that feature the same students as other sections. Find ways to showcase a variety of students.
… cliché stories on topics not tied to a news event. Make sure you have a news peg to include the story. Then localize.
… boring stories that aren’t about people. Feature your students and staff and what makes them interesting in 2014. Dig!

13. Follow the law. Obey copyright. Only use “fair use” images or get permission. Flickr and WikiCommons each allow searches for Creative Commons or public domain images. Know privacy rules. Know your rights.

14. Remember: Your role on campus is to inform your audience and record the events of the year. You have a responsibility — an obligation, even — to take that seriously and to do it well. Your audience needs you to tell the story in a truthful, authentic and teen-oriented way.

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October 18, 2012

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Content

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Look for photos beyond the obvious

As part of its Lightbox feature online, the photo editors of Time magazine recently showcased the work of Pete Souza, chief official White House photographer. This article included Souza’s comments on his work photographing the Obama Administration and the Obama Family and the photos that he’s captured since 2009.

Souza said that as he assembled the 100 images for this Lightbox feature that he wanted to create a portrait of the president to help people understand him. Souza had known the president since Obama became a senator in 2005 when Souza was working for the Chicago Tribune. “I was looking for things that I knew that if he ever became President you would never see again,” Souza said in text accompanying the Time feature. “[Obama was] walking down a sidewalk in Moscow in 2005 and no one recognized him. I realized that if he ever became President, you would never, ever see a photo like that again. The odds of becoming President are obviously pretty slim, but I knew he had the potential. And you can’t say that about too many people.”

What Souza recognized that day in 2005 — that something special was to come and Obama had the potential to be famous well into the future — made Souza begin to look for moments that would prove valuable in the course of history.

That’s exactly what student journalists need to do, too. Even as a photographer captures the action of a game or assembly or flirting in the halls, he or she can always look for the action that’s beyond the field and the obvious photos. Seek the behind-the-scenes moments that will help future readers to know what it was like on that day — at that moment at your school. Look for the stories around school that have the potential to tell us as readers and viewers not just what’s important today but what might be important in the future. These are the observations, the moments, the glimpses that will prove valuable in the course of history as our memories fade – our impressions of the school change.

And advisers need to help students see these moments. Advisers know that moments change unexpectedly. Whether in triumph or tragedy, teach students to anticipate many situations. Doing so will mean that unexpected won’t mean unprepared. Help students see beyond the obvious and to collect bits of observation, sideline images and off-hand comments before assembling a larger narrative.

Sometimes the narrative is not apparent even though students are in the middle of documenting it. That’s why going beyond the obvious is so important. Some photos, quotes or stories are obviously important, while others may prove valuable only later. The challenge as a journalist is recognizing the potential in everything.

Find Pete Souza’s collection of images:
http://lightbox.time.com/2012/10/08/pete-souza-portrait-of-a-presidency/#1

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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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March 3, 2010

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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.