On the job

23Jun09

The last you heard from me, I was in the transition week between college and full-time employment. I was all geeked out about starting my job; bragging about how lucky I was to find a job in journalism, particularly a full-time reporter position and kind of waving off all of my obligations.

Now I’m over a month in.

Expecting me to say that I no longer think this is the opportunity of a lifetime? That I’m overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the big-kid world and disillusioned by the workload?

If that’s the case, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

I love my job. Is it exactly what I thought it would be? No, of course not. Would I want to change it? Not on your life.

Over the first month, I’ve met students, teachers, administrators and parents from almost every school district in the county. Well, that’s to be expected as I took over the education beat. City councils have seen my face around as well. I’ve covered budgets and state-wide news. Concerts and 4-H kids.

Through that I’ve met some really great people. I love sharing their stories.

It’s come with long hours — 12 hour days were the norm last week — something familiar to journalists all around. Working at a small paper means that everyone chips in with everything; my time waiting for return calls is spent typing up the local court news or a local woman’s weekly column on health questions.

I take all of my own photos. I like to think of it as diversifying my talents.

Getting this job at a small-town paper that covers the entire county was probably the best thing that could have happened to me for my first job. Why? Covering the entire county usually means that I’m not pulling teeth to get my daily two stories. Covering a network of small towns means that I can form the personal attachments to the communities and the people who live in them that allows me to overlook the long hours and low pay.

Having this job will, in my opinion, give me the best chance at keeping the burn-out at bay.

The only thing  I regret a little is that, as it stands now, the paper isn’t really Web-integrated. We post our top three stories online daily, with only the lead story’s photo. Our archives are only searchable for two weeks.

But the editor seems interested in exploring the Web so I’m hopeful that I’ll be there for  the Sentinel’s online integration.

Oh, and just as a point of pride, I covered the recent flooding of the Ionia fairgrounds at the B93 Birthday Bash over the weekend. The story also made the national news, via USA Today among others. :)


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The great beyond

13May09

Two weeks ago, I was celebrating my last class of my undergraduate career. Last week, it was my last exam. And then four days ago I walked across the steps in front of Kresge Gym, accepted my diploma, and drove away from Albion for the last time.

I still don’t think it has hit me that I’m done. I am now a college graduate, going on into the big, grown-up working world.

That’s right, the working world.

The day before my very last final exam, I got that coveted phone call inviting me to an interview. Right after my final, I packed up my car and drove to Ionia, Mich. to meet with the editor of the Ionia Sentinel-Standard. Two days after that–and one day before my graduation–I was offered one of the paper’s two full-time reporter positions. I start Monday. Talk about a tidy ending.

I know just how lucky I am. While so many of my peers are scrambling to find work, I managed to snag not just a job but a job in journalism. It must have been the lucky penny that I picked up that day.

That doesn’t mean that everything is coming up roses… with student loans looming (the by-product of my expensive private college education), my entry-level reporter salary will mean a lot of macaroni and cheese and PB & J sandwiches in my future. I’m also crashing in my friend’s living room as I try to apartment search from across the state. And having a couch (even a Salvation Army steal) is looking like a pipe dream.

But when it all comes down to it, I couldn’t be happier or more excited.


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About the Pleiad

09Apr09

For those of you who are not on Albion’s campus, I’m writing this post to serve as a forum to discuss the changes to the Pleiad–starting next year, it will be one of the first college papers in the GLCA to move exclusively online. I wrote a column announcing the switch in this week’s edition of the paper.

I, of course, am both really excited and jealous about the move: excited because I was there to help transition the site to one that supports the switch, as well as offering a little input on how the new program should look, and jealous because I’m graduating before the program moves exclusively online.

Okay, enough about that. The real reason for this post is because the switch is bringing a lot of changes to the paper.

  • First, the publication will be updated far more frequently. With our current process, stories are pitched with a 10-day lead time, making a lot of stories old news by the time our readers finally see them in print. By moving to to the Web, we expect stories to be updated at least twice a week and “breaking news” stories could be made available as soon as they are edited.
  • There will be a lot more focus on multimedia reporting. We have a relatively small program here–only one professor and about three classes offered per semester–which limited how much ground we could cover. By eliminating the design aspect of the curriculum (we used InDesign for page layout in the print version), we will have time to teach staffers how to shoot video, construct slideshows and edit audio for the Web.
  • The move to the new Web site allowed us to add a lot of community building features. We now have a RSS feed and can allow readers to comment on stories. I’ve also created a Twitter account (@PleiadOnline) that feeds the latest stories as well as insights from the editors. Don’t like a story? Think we got something wrong? Or just want to add your own thoughts to what was reported? Let us know with a comment. Talk with one another about the stories using the comment feature–you’ll get a lot more from the what we report that way.

If you want to know a little bit more about how I put the site together, check out this post.

If you have any questions or concerns about how the site –from being confused about how something works to telling me that you don’t like the color scheme, now’s the time to say something. Before I leave, I want to do my best to make this your paper as much as it is the staff’s.

Having the paper exclusively online is going to be a change, but I think it’s going to be a great one. What do you guys think?

**Edit: The Pleiad archives will be migrated to the new site over the summer. Because of my busy schedule with classes and applying to grad programs and jobs and whatnot, I didn’t have the free time to do it with the initial transition.


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Starting with an idea

30Mar09

At last night’s CollegeJourn chat, Suzanne Yada asked what our ideal start-up publication would look like.

My immediate reaction was this:

community based reporting, ties experienced reporter with “citizen journalist” to create in-depth web content
funded by the community

I know, I know, shame on me for lapsing on proper grammar and capitalization. Double boos warranted for not even using complete sentences. But the idea itself… I think that has real-life potential.

After thinking about it a little more after the chat, my plan morphed to encompass not only my love for journalism but also my goal of teaching as well as acknowleging what it would take to get the communities of Sanilac County to rally around an online publication.

My new plan? To try to convince the ISD to allow a journalism program.

The program would partner one or two students with active members of their home community’s organizations–PTA moms, school board members, city hall representatives, school sport boosters. That person would become essentially the inside source on the information going on within those institutions (Obviously, this person can’t be particularly high up in the organization, nor can they be quoted sources as that would be a huge conflict of interest. Their role is essentially to steer the students in the right direction and perhaps legitimize their work to the institution).

The students would report on their “beats”–developing stories, art, and multimedia, for the publication, which would be updated as stories come in. I’d serve as editor for the first few years at least, while I established a base in the program, and then potentially open up positions for student editors (second-year students who proved themselves capable).

Local advertising and perhaps a $5 subscription fee would help fund the project.

I’ll be the first to say that this isn’t an easy thing to do. Money is tight and everyone knows that the newspaper industry is collapsing, so why would they invest in a vocational program to teach students how to do it?

The trick is going to be showing the validity of teaching community based reporting and the skills necessary to present that on the Web.

I have a couple things working in my favor:

  • To my knowledge, none of the schools in the county offer journalism classes; the closest we get is yearbook. So the program would be unique, not duplicating what is already offered in the home school districts.
  • The program, by virtue of being a publication, could generate some revenue towards its existence.
  • In the process of teaching the students how to report, we would be producing a quality source of hometown news that would be widely available to the community.
  • I’d be teaching how to present the news reliably online–something that currently is not really being done in Sanilac County. Sure, the local papers have Web sites, but they just reiterate the content from their print versions online in badly formatted pages. This could be the first publication in the county to do it right.

I think this has the potential to be a really strong program that would give students an outlet that they currently don’t have. What do you think? Is it viable?


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IMHO

15Mar09

I have always had opinions, lots of them. And I’ve been willing to share them with you face to face, free of charge. The only problem with that method of delivery is that it really limits the people who can benefit from all the wonderful thoughts and advice I have to share.

Not anymore. No one in Sanilac County will be safe from my musings in the coming year. Muahahaha.

My editor at the Sanilac County News has asked me to contribute as one of twelve columnists for the “In My Opinion” section. At least four times, I’ll be given approximately 400 words to discuss anything I feel warrants the attention–national news, county politics, life in general, nostalgia… the options are completely open.

I’m really excited about the opportunity. I’ve enjoyed the columns that I’ve written for the Pleiad, and feel like a well-written column can drive home the facts of a drier news story with a punch that even a journalist’s beloved statistics can’t. They give the condensed version of impact that you get in a well-written investigative piece. Good columns make the stories that play out on the front page  real for the readers.

But why is that?

Honestly, I think it’s because of the voice that you get in a column. The idea of the objective media has its strengths, but making people feel like they are involved in what’s going on isn’t one of them. A column people can agree or disagree with. It feels like a conversation. A well-written column can provoke people to look deeper into what’s really going on, to really think about how they will be affected.

In my humble opinion, this is exactly where professional blogging fits in. Properly researched posts serve the dual purpose of getting people the basic facts of an issue and taking a stance on it, then giving the readers an interactive forum in which they can assert their own views. And that environment is precisely why I think so many people are turning more and more to the Web for their news (not to discount the fact that we haven’t found a way to charge for Web content, so it’s cheaper that way as well).

That melding of reporting and reaction is one of the most exciting parts of journalism for me right now. So here’s to my venture into using that voice in print, and hoping that I can hone those skills on the Web as well. :)


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The road ahead

24Feb09

Well, after a couple months of scrambling and weighing options, I know the basic direction that I’m headed after I walk across the stage and leave Albion for good come this May. Come next fall, I’ll be moving into a new dorm on a new campus as I pursue my teaching certification at Saginaw Valley State University. I made the choice to go to SVSU for a number of reasons:

  • I decided that the Teach for America program wasn’t for me. After I got invited to the final round of interviews, I sat down with my family and close friends to talk about my future and realized that I’m just not ready to commit to being away from home for two years yet. Sounds ridiculous, but the contract aspect of the program scared me away. So I pulled myself out of the running for that.
  • This will allow me to pursue part-time or freelance journalism work while going to school for my teacher certification.
  • Financially, this is the most sound decision for me right now after eliminating TFA.

I’m hoping to finish my program there by December 2010 and hopefully I’ll be better positioned to find my way in the working world then. In the meantime, if the staff at the Valley Vanguard is looking for another writer, I’m more than happy to volunteer. :)


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Xampping it up

10Feb09

After a couple of meetings and numerous e-mails, I convinced the new EIC and the advisor for the Pleiad to let me move the newspaper’s Web site to WordPress last week. YAY! Huge improvement over FrontPage. The only downside is that I am the only one who can create the template for the site, and I’m still learning the ins and outs of magazine themes.

In order to give myself a “safe” space to experiment with my vision for the site, as well as various plugins and whatnot, I’ve downloaded XamppLite onto my laptop and am running a version of WordPress 2.7 on a localhost server. It’s my first experiment with this, and I have to say I’m liking it. A lot. My mistakes aren’t made public and I have access to all template and application files for WordPress–something that will change when the site goes live on Albion’s servers.

I’ve opted to modify the Structure theme to fit the paper’s needs–mostly because the site needs to be ready to go live quickly, and between work and classes and interviews I don’t have time to try to do something from scratch. With my novice abilities, that would probably take a long while even if I were working on it full-time.

After a couple days of playing around; this is what the “above the fold” of the site looks like (keeping in mind I’m using placeholder articles, not real ones):

pleiad_screenshot

The header graphic needs work, and the colors will likely be tweaked… but overall, I’m pretty happy with how far I’ve come as quickly as I’ve done it.

Anyone have any tips or suggestions for me as I continue to try to make this better?


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Life Happens

28Jan09

It has occurred to me that I am very critical of myself. Nothing is ever really good enough in my own estimation, even though I’d often praise less from other people. Well, I’m going to try to change that.

In that spirit, here are a few realizations that I’ve come to:

  • While I still know that I cannot do it all, I can do a lot. And do it well. My perfectionist tendencies fight that statement but it is still true.
  • I may have gotten rusty with somethings while focusing on others, but I didn’t forget it all. To what am I referring? My estimation that I had “devolved” in my Web knowledge. Within a month of working with HTML and CSS, I’ve already brought myself back up to speed. If I had forgotten it all, that wouldn’t have been possible.
  • I need to stop exaggerating. Not everything is wonderful or a disaster when I do it.

Those are obviously just a few examples. The list could go on for a lot longer, but it doesn’t need to. I am going to try focusing on what I can do, and stop thinking so much about being perfect. It will be far better for my mental state, as well as my overall outlook on life.

Life happens, and you can’t always predict or control it. By accepting that, I realize that perfection (however hard you strive for it) is typically unattainable. That is not to say that I shouldn’t strive for it–just that I shouldn’t come crashing down on myself when I don’t reach it.


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Teach for America- Update

13Jan09

I’ve been invited to the first round of interviews for Teach for America! My phone interview is Thursday at 1, more details to come. :)


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Accessibility

12Jan09

Earlier today, I found  myself chatting about my future with a nurse  who was drawing my blood. I’ve known her almost as long as I can remember, and after I told her that I was planning on going in to journalism, she had this to say:

Everything’s moving online. It’s not like you can just put your feet up, drink a cup of coffee and read the paper anymore. And everything is so slow online.

Two thirds of that are familiar ground. Everyone has been saying that journalism is moving online, including myself. Though I disagree, I’ve heard a lot of people say that reading the Sunday paper online is not the same as reading it from print.

It was that last bit that gave me pause. Slow? The internet? But most people tout the speed with which stories are made public as a strength of the online movement for journalism.

The fact is that nearly half of Americans don’t have broadband internet access at home. And, as is expected, the breakdown is stark when you look at where people are living. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, as of July 2008:

  • 60 percent of suburban residents have broadband at home
  • 57 percent of urban residents have broadband
  • 38 percent of rural residents have broadband

The good news is that the rural statistic is up from 31 percent last year. The bad news is that it’s still less than 2/5 of the rural population. And when you find yourself out in the country, you also find yourself a lot farther away from coffee shops or restaurants with free Wi-Fi.

The limited access isn’t constrained by location either; income makes a significant difference. Only a quarter of those who make under $20,000 a year have access to broadband at home.

And as a whole, 27 percent of Americans are still offline. Period.

As a journalist, I’m quick to get all excited about the video, audio, interactive graphics and other multimedia additions to reporting the news online. They’re great ways to tell the story. But they take a high-speed connection to be effective. Trying to view them without is just going to turn readers away. Since high-speed internet access still only hovering around 50 percent, I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t offer a stripped down version of our sites for those who, like my nurse, don’t use the Web because it’s “too slow.”


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