Daily Tar Heel Editor Selection Process at UNC Used to Be Insane

It reads like a mix between “Hunger Games” and “Survivor.”  Apparently, in the past, students vying for the position of Daily Tar Heel editor-in-chief at the University of North Carolina had to run in a CAMPUS-WIDE election similar to a student government vote.

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An excellent new article in the DTH commemorating the 20-year-mark since the process ended outlines a bevy of problems with this “John Carter”-sized #epicfail.  The paper’s general manager Kevin Schwartz says simply about his memories of that time: “It decimated the staff.”  The words nightmarish and popularity contest also appear in the piece.

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The oddest– and in retrospect, funniest– part to me: The election required active campaigning, prompting EIC candidates to QUIT the paper in January so they could begin politicking.  Staffers loyal to them would apparently then also resign to pitch in (leaving the paper in great shape, I imagine). 

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And then it was a bloodbath of a campaign, pitting former colleagues against one another.  One more quote from Schwartz: “The race was so nasty.  Campaign staffers stole all the Rolodexes from the office, which were like the Bible back then.”

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Happy Saturday. :)

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10 Tips for Photojournalism Students: How to Succeed Visually and Financially

By his own admission, Al Diaz shoots better than he speaks.  The award-winning photojournalist and Miami Herald staffer began his presentation at last weekend’s SPJ Region 3 Conference by admitting that while his oratorical skills may lack gusto he hoped the photos he planned to show and the stories behind them would resonate.

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And they did.  Diaz delivered a kick-butt talk with stirring images to boot.  Below is a top 10 sampling of the wisdom and witticisms he shared last Saturday with j-students, profs., and advisers.

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10 Steps to Succeed as a Photojournalist in 2012

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1) When you wake up, consider yourself on assignment.  Shoot every day.  As Diaz put it, “Don’t just shoot for class.  Shoot for yourself.”  Early in the talk, Diaz mentioned with a smile that when people ask him when he stops shooting, his two-word answer: “I don’t.”  People laughed when he said it.  But I didn’t get the impression he was joking.

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2) Develop your own style and vision, while also mastering the basics.  Take visual arts classes.  And visit museums to get a firsthand glimpse of how artists capture and present elements such as lighting, composition, and depth of field.

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3) Embrace photojournalism as a business.  The days of surviving and thriving as simply a staff photographer at a single news outlet are over.  Set up multiple revenue streams that include editorial and commercial work such as wedding photography and holiday portraits.

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4) Self-promote, humbly not arrogantly.  Set up a professional website featuring a portfolio of your work.  Be present and active on social media.  Blog within reason about assignments and photojournalism news of the day.

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5) Retain the rights to your images.  Diaz repeatedly stressed the importance of copyrighting your work, along with keeping track of the whereabouts and use of your older, archived shots.

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The message featured beneath images on his own site: “COPYRIGHT NOTICE All multimedia content, photographs, text, video, sound and music within aldiazphoto.photoshelter.com is copyright protected by Miami photojournalist Al Diaz and/or the stated publication and are presented for web browser viewing only. No images are within public domain. Nothing contained within this site may be reproduced, downloaded, stored, copied, manipulated or altered for broadcast or publication. Nothing may be redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium  without prior written permission from Al Diaz and/or the stated publication. Using any image as the base for another illustration or graphic content, including photography, is a violation of copyright and intellectual property laws.”

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6) Enmesh yourself within the larger photography community.  He recommended joining the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), Editorial Photographers, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), and Professional Photographers of America (PPA).

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7) Don’t wait to be handed an assignment.  Develop, pitch, and undertake your own projects, for your employer and yourself.  Advantages: You get the chance to follow your passions and do work you’re excited about.  You can earn a rep as an independent thinker, someone with the foresight to simply be let loose on the waiting-to-be-photographed world.  You have the opportunity to stand out by building up a body of work that represents a particular style or content niche.  And you are motivated to stay visually sharp, always looking for the next potential project.

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8) Learn and love video along with stills.  Become a multimedia whiz, adept at capturing, quickly stitching together, and presenting narrative slideshows, still-and-video mash-ups, and full-on video reports.  These presentation options also seem to be great for organizing and featuring your own work on your portfolio site.

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9) Dress appropriately, depending on the assignment.  Don’t wear sandals and shorts to shoot a funeral.  Don’t wear a shirt and tie or super stilettos to shoot a construction site.  Think ahead about the type of scene you’ll be entering, the people within it, how long you will be on site, how much you will be moving around, and what the temperature will be.  Bottom line: Attempt to fit in while still projecting professionalism and ensuring comfort and ease of motion.

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10) Never work for free.

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Related

Top 13 Reasons Journalists Screw Up Their Stories

10 Tips for J-Students: How to Land a Job & Impress People

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Dartmouth Hazing Scandal: From Student Newspaper Column to Rolling Stone

The Dartmouth University hazing scandal first brought to light earlier this semester in the school’s student newspaper is featured prominently in the current edition of Rolling Stone.

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“Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses” is a “meditation on class, violence, and power in Dartmouth’s overheated campus culture.”  The piece premiered online yesterday to oodles of interwebs chatter.

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The hazing fanfare began in late January, with a column in The Dartmouth by senior Andrew Lohse (pictured in the screengrab above) outlining the many degrading acts he allegedly endured while pledging a fraternity in 2010.

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As he wrote in the piece, headlined “Telling the Truth”: “I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool full of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beers poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks; and vomit on other pledges, among other abuses. Certainly, pledges could have refused these orders. However, under extreme peer pressure and the desire to ‘be a brother,’ most acquiesced.”

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The Rolling Stone report explores some of the extreme activities Lohse describes, while also turning a spotlight on him.  In respect to the latter, an IvyGate post calls it “a comprehensive character assassination of its main subject– Lohse– whom editor Janet Reitman portrays as a violent, pretentious, alcoholic, mentally ill, status-anxious, back-stabbing drug addict.”

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Trayvon Martin Case: Student Press Coverage, Commentaries Go Far Beyond Daily Texan Cartoon

The controversial editorial cartoon published earlier this week in The Daily Texan has quickly become the most (in)famous student media take on the Trayvon Martin case.  But there have been many other student perspectives offered that are worthy of the spotlight, in a positive sense.

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Over the past two weeks, a large majority of the student news outlets in the U.S. have featured articles and op-eds discussing various aspects of the saga, including the media coverage, the “hoodie controversy,” the Stand Your Ground law and the role of neighborhood watch, and the shooting’s existence as a flashpoint for protests, talks, and tension surrounding race relations.

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Below is an active-links screenshot sampling of related news stories, commentaries, photo spreads, and video reports that have recently appeared in more than 30 student news outlets nationwide.

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Any additional pieces you recommend for inclusion??  Please let me know, politely, via a comment.  To be clear, the focus of this post is sharing student outlooks about the incident beyond straightforward coverage of the many protests and vigils that have been held on campuses.

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Most Popular Tennessee Daily Beacon Story: ‘Masturbation, Steak Theft Plague UT’

A whopper of a headline leapt out at me during a web scan of The Daily Beacon website yesterday afternoon.  The header tops an article containing crime report highlights from a decade of campus life at the University of Tennessee.

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The oddity: It first ran in 2004, but eight years later remains the most popular story on the Beacon site.  The headline: “Masturbation, Steak Theft Plague UT.“

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Time to Wake Up: Independent Student Newspapers are Struggling Financially

Student newspapers are struggling financially.  The decade-long plights of the professional press have at last weaved their way into the land of collegemediatopia.  If not quite a time of reckoning for some campus papers, we have definitely entered a prolonged period of profound change– cutbacks, weary sighs, and hopefully some spirited reinventions.

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That is the gist of what I told Connecticut Post reporter Linda Lambeck late last week when contacted for a quote.  She was wrapping up a story on the financial woes of The Daily Campus at UCONN, and the paper’s attempt to add needed funding through a slight rise in student fees.  (In a campus-wide vote, students rejected the proposal.)

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As part of the piece, Lambeck wanted a wider-angle view on the economic dilemmas of student papers nationwide.  Below is the response I sent her, a statement I feel needs to be taken as a wake-up call for the j-students, j-profs, and advisers swearing everything is still status quo or A-OK.

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A Boot Camp of Sorts

My Take on the Current Financial Status of the Student Press

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For years, student newspapers have been immune from the financial downturn plaguing the professional press, thanks to their lack of overhead, the support of their schools, advertisers’ love of the student market, and their need to only break even.  But those days are over.  A growing number of student papers are struggling financially.

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The hardest-hit segment at the moment are the daily papers that operate independently as their own businesses.  Some have cut the number of days they publish each week.  Others have reduced the number of pages they print or their page sizes.  Many are pulling back on staff pay and perks like conference travel.  A few have appealed directly to students and alums for funding help.  A small amount have launched magazines in hopes of broadening their readership and ad appeal.  Still others have aligned with a service that requests donations from all readers who visit the papers’ websites.  A few papers have even gone dark entirely, mostly at smaller schools or community colleges in which related journalism programs have also been shuttered due to state funding cuts.

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Students are still reading their campus newspapers in print, by all accounts at a reliable, surprisingly high rate.  But advertising is tougher to come by.  Related school budgets in some cases are tightening or disappearing entirely.  Student governments are getting occasionally restless as they look at papers’ financial bottom lines.  And the seemingly inevitable shift toward digital-first publishing looms large in many editors’ and advisers’ minds.

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At a recent major college media conference in New York City, a pair of student newspaper advisers spoke in a packed-house session about the opportunities and challenges of becoming an online-only news outlet.  The close of the session description in the program stated plainly why attendees should stop by: “[B]ecause your newspaper will probably have to consider it eventually.”

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Student editors’ financial battles might be a boot camp of sorts for what they will face after graduation.  Or the troubles might be a blessing in disguise, motivating members of the young, mobile, and wireless generation to step up and help reinvent, truly reinvent, journalism.

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Daily Texan Pulls, Then Re-Posts Trayvon Martin Cartoon

The Daily Texan briefly removed an editorial cartoon about the Trayvon Martin case from its website yesterday afternoon.  The University of Texas student newspaper then re-posted it, with an editorial statement acknowledging “the sensitive nature of the cartoon’s subject matter.”  It also appeared in yesterday’s Daily Texan print edition.

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The cartoon depicts a mother reading a book to her daughter about media coverage of the Martin shooting.  The mother says to the wide-eyed daughter, “And then, the BIG BAD WHITE man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent colored boy.”  The cartoon’s overt argument: Sensational, biased journalism has morphed Martin’s death into a racial flashpoint in which the minority victim is being unduly sainted and the shooter unfairly vilified.

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Critics are calling the cartoon tasteless and “vaguely racist”– referencing the “colored boy” description, the white skin-tone of the characters featured, and the misspelling of Martin’s first name.  On Gawker, the headline of a post that broke the news about the cartoon’s temporary removal stated sarcastically, “University of Texas Student Paper Wins ‘Most Racist Trayvon Martin Cartoon’ Contest.”

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The full statement from the Daily Texan editorial board: “A controversial editorial cartoon on the Trayvon Martin shooting was published Tuesday on the Opinion page of The Daily Texan.  The Daily Texan Editorial Board recognizes the sensitive nature of the cartoon’s subject matter.  The views expressed in the cartoon are not those of the editorial board.  They are those of the artist.  It is the policy of the editorial board to publish the views of our columnists and cartoonists, even if we disagree with them.”

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In response, one commenter counters: “Your statement is insufficient.  As a writer and editor, I disagree with your view of an editor’s or editorial board’s role in forming its publication.  You curate the voice of your publication; it is your responsibility to draw difficult lines between what is acceptable, what is controversial, and what is tasteless.”

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10 Tips for Journalism Students: How to Land a Job and Impress People

At this past weekend’s SPJ Region 3 Conference, Meredith Cochie delivered a hyperactive Broadway-esque performance– interrupted only by the occasional “coffee burp” (her words).  In a manic 50-minute session that brought a blah-carpeted University of Florida auditorium to life, Cochie shared a bevy of tips aimed at helping j-students stand out from the job-seeking masses and land a gig worth bragging about on Facebook.

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As the esteemed UF journalism alum and self-described “journo-maniac” shouted to an audience literally hanging on her every word, “I’m going to tell you some things you already know.  I’m just going to say them louder.”

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Below is a brief highlight reel of what she laid out.  Enjoy.

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How to Land a Job and Impress People…

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1) Be a know-it-all.  Or in Cochie’s words, “Be a know-it-all about what you want to be a know-it-all about.”  Journalists need to know about the world in general and should have near-encyclopedic knowledge of one field or subject in particular.  As the classic saying goes, “Know a little about a lot and a lot about a little.”  If you want to report on sports or fashion or write movie reviews, dive in.  Study the history.  Read related daily news.  Identity and write about emerging trends.  Participate in online discussions.  Share your knowledge breadth and depth in mixed company, including in front of potential employers.  Just don’t overdo it.  Asinine should not become a three-syllable synonym for you.

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2) Get a real email address.  Potential employers’ first perceptions of you may veer into the unprofessional category if you contact them with a personal email containing a cringe-worthy nickname, potty humor or nonsensically odd word-number configurations.  Two whoppers that students apparently used when reaching out to Cochie in the past: tequilas69@hotmail and tupac4evah@yahoo.com.

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3) Analyze what your social media profiles and Google results say about you.  When warranted, delete, update, revise or create new content that oozes professionalism while still retaining the essence of you.

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4) Make an impression in person.  At one point, Cochie told the tale of an overzealous student who politely and repeatedly accosted her with business cards and clips and questions about job prospects.  Guess what?  He stood out to her.  Some of his early approaches were a bit abrupt and artless, but his overall persistence and speak-to-strangers-in-positions-of-power courage enabled him to earn a name for himself, one that was backed up over time by the quality of his work.  In the digital age, when anything but an email back-and-forth makes some students break out in cold sweats, those who man up and introduce themselves to people they don’t know have an edge.

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5) Hustle, without being a pimp.  Work uber-hard to stand out in some way.  As Cochie mentioned, “Tweet, blog, build an online presence, and a professional individual brand. . . . Otherwise, you’re in this big group of normal people and that’s gross.”

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6) Don’t be late to an interview or any other get-together with an employer or mentor.  In Cochie’s words, “When you’re late, you look rude.  And silly.”

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7) “Write.  Tons.  A lot.  All the time.”

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8) “Build, don’t burn, bridges.”  As I can also attest, the people you know are often just as important as what you know and where you’ve worked when attempting to land jobs or make new connections.  To be clear, this shouldn’t be about simply collecting contacts that might be called upon for favors later.  Phoniness, like Saran wrap, is see-through.  And heck, you should genuinely like people.  You’re in journalism, after all.

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9) Don’t overlook the handshake.  “When you shake hands with someone, use your hand, not a dead fish.”  According to Cochie, the art of the handshake is simple: Be firm without breaking bones; make eye contact without being creepy; and lean in without inching a…bit…too…close.

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10) Look at your current cover letter one last time, then rip it up.  Most applicants’ letters scream perfectly adequate, unmemorable or middle-of-the-road.  So do their job prospects.  Your goal: Be bold.  Do something different.  Inject some life into it.  Remember, it’s the first chance an employer has to vet you.  Hook them with the lede sentence.  Show them who you are and why they must hire you immediately.

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Student Social Media Directors, Check Out Michigan Daily’s Citizen Journalism Tool #MichLinks

Student news outlet social media directors, take note: a reader engagement exercise potentially worth emulating is now in its third month of operation at The Michigan Daily and seemingly finding success.

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As the Daily explains to its readers, #MichLinks is a “citizen journalism tool that compiles reporting about Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.  If you find an interesting piece about the city of Ann Arbor, college life or the university, send a tweet with the hashtag #Michlinks for a chance to be published on our website. . . . #Michlinks was inspired by Propublica’s social networking tool #Muckreads.  Similar to #Muckreads, the goal of #Michlinks is to use social networking to enhance your access to reporting about our community.  Though the Daily will contribute a number of interesting pieces to #Michlinks, your participation is key to its success.”

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It is a wonderful social media daily drill for four reasons:

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1) It provides an impetus and an organized system for staff to keep track of related stories reported by other news media.  Every day, the Michigan Daily has forced itself to keep up with what its local competitors and the national media are saying about Michigan Wolverines and people who love them.  It’s something that student news teams should be doing anyway, but as I’ve seen firsthand, regular, full-on media monitoring often gets tossed in the coulda-woulda-shoulda-will-do-more-next-semester pile.  #MichLinks though is public and daily, making it much tougher to procrastinate about or overlook.

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2) It enables easy-breezy audience involvement and a true feeling of reader contribution.

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3) It provides a public, easy-to-spot avenue for PR peeps and marketers to promote news, and a confirmation for the Daily staff that the news the paper is promoting is at least worthwhile enough to have been featured in a reputable outlet.

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4) It is a manageable means of providing a fuller, richer body of content online, giving readers one more reason to turn to the Daily site first for all related news.  A little aggregation atop tons of original reporting is ethically A-OK.

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Daily Illini Premieres Vidcast to Highlight Day’s Top Stories (@thedailyillini @hannahmeisel)

During a session at the CMA Spring College Media Convention last week in New York City, New York Times reporter and digital journalism guru Brian Stelter shared, “We’re all going to be video reporters in the future, which means we will have to comb our hair and stuff.  It’s something that is quietly happening in the industry.”

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The Daily Illini is boldly charging into the video fray today with its premiere of a daily vidcast, featured on its YouTube channel and the bottom left of its homepage.  As the student newspaper explains, “The short video newscast will highlight the stories of the day, as well as preview stories and events relevant to the University of Illinois and Champaign-Urbana.”

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Daily Illini staff writer Hannah Meisel shares in the opening vidcast, “In this day and age, news travels fast and media moves at the speed of light.  As the University of Illinois’s oldest student-run publication, the Daily Illini wants to keep up with new media and provide news to our audience in as many forms as possible.”

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Related

Daily Illini is Up $150,000; For the First Time, Students Will Help Fund the Paper

Salary Database Most Popular Part of Student Paper’s Site

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Oregon Journalism Students Having Trouble Checking Out Multimedia Equipment They Need (@DailyEmerald)

Students in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon are increasingly having trouble checking out reporting 2.0 tools like video cameras and digital recorders from the school stockpile, a report late last week in The Oregon Daily Emerald revealed.

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Apparently, a new set of classes is requiring their use, suddenly making demand dramatically outpace supply.  Frustrations are up.  Assignments are being submitted late.  Deadlines are being pushed back.  And work quality is suffering.

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An Oregon junior: “It’s worrisome because if you don’t have funds to purchase the equipment, it’s a game of chance. It’s really discouraging for a lot of students.  It really makes you think ahead and some people are really good at doing that, others are not.”

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What’s the multimedia lab and equipment access situation within your j-school or j-program???

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Top 13 Reasons Journalists Screw Up Their Stories

Over the past month, my magical mystery tour of collegemediatopia’s best and brashest conferences has led me to Seattle, New York, and, most recently, Gainesville, Fla.  At yesterday’s Region 3 Society of Professional Journalists Conference— held at the University of Florida– a bevy of entertaining presenters educated student and adviser attendees about all manner of journalistic greatness and ills.

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A morning session, led by UF master lecturer (actual job title) Mike Foley, sought to help students stave off the most horrible creature in all of news media: the correction.  He shared the top reasons journalists make mistakes in their copy.

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Below is a brief highlight reel of what he laid out, along with a few reasons I nominate as (cringe)worthy additions to the list.  Enjoy.

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Journalists Most Often Screw Up Their Stories Because…

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1) They work from memory.

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2) They make assumptions.

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3) They deal with secondhand sources.

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4) They become scatterbrained from the warp speed at which they are attempting to publish.

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5) They rely upon bad sources, including those who fall into categories such as spinners, incompetents, attention-seekers, and bad memory fiends.

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6) They blindly trust emails, tweets, and online story comments.

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7) They re-quote info from other news sources without independent verification.

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What I’d add to the list…

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8) They let their impassioned desire for a great story blind them to factual snafus.  (See Mike Daisey.)

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9) They lack understanding about an individual or topic– through either ignorance of laziness.  (For example, see parachute journalism.)

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10) They are bad at the writing part.  (Having the facts is irrelevant if you cannot explain them clearly and correctly.)

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11) They do not listen to their gut/the voice inside their head telling them something is off, too good to be true or needs another go-round on the fact-checking carousel.

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12) They do not want to impose on their sources by calling them back to double-check something, a sudden cowardice I’ve especially seen play out on weekends, holidays, and late nights.  (Note to student journos: Toughen up.  Make the call.  A source might be slightly annoyed at the unexpected imposition, but they’ll be more annoyed that something wrong about them is appearing online/in print.)

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13) Once their pieces are published, they do not even scan the related online comments, which at times point out grammar and factual slips.

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What other reasons should be included on this list???

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10 More Funny College Memes: Kony 2012, Spring Break Tans & Dorm Bathroom Cleaning

As I’ve posted previously, one the major stories of the semester so far: college memes.  Campus-specific memes have been invading the Facebook streams of students at schools throughout the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe.

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A rash of student media reports and social media chatter confirm that some undergraduates’ online experiences have been hovering between “meme madness” and full-blown “meme mania.”  I recently shared a sampling of memes posted on college meme Facebook pages.  Building on that post’s popularity, I wanted to offer another glimpse at college memes being produced by students at schools nationwide.

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To see more, check out my post offering a growing list of all college and university Facebook meme pages.

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The Oregon Daily Emerald is Hiring: Digital Media Developer Wanted

The Oregon Daily Emerald is hiring.  Publisher Ryan Frank passed along the job announcement below.  If you have the requisite skills and the student media passion, apply today!

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Job opening: Digital media developer

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We are launching a little project here at the Emerald to change the future of journalism.  Yeah, we know. It’s ambitious and a bit audacious. But we like to think big. It’s who we are, and it’s what the moment calls for.  Technology has revolutionized the journalism business. It’s time that we hire the right people to lead our own revolution.

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We are looking for someone who can dream up the digital products that best serve the UO community, then go build them. We will work together to build cool stuff that makes people’s lives richer, easier or more entertaining.

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To do this, we need a programmer who knows his or her way around code, but who is also a thinker and a doer, a journalist and an entrepreneur. We need someone who is comfortable working in a creative, fun and fast-paced environment.

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The digital media developer job is a salaried, full-time position with health and dental benefits and pays $40,000 to $50,000 per year. It’s a pretty sweet gig.  Every legacy media company in America is trying to re-invent itself for the digital age. Why not do the work for one of the country’s top college news operations? The Emerald, an independent nonprofit company, has won the Pulitzer Prize of college journalism– the Associated Collegiate Press’ Pacemaker award– twice since 1997 and has been finalist five other times in print and online categories.

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To apply, email a cover letter, resume, three references and relevant work samples to publisher@dailyemerald.com. We need to get to work quickly. The position will be open until 5 p.m. Friday, March 30 and we plan to fill it soon after.

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If you want to lead a revolution, come work for us.

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Journalism Professors: When Your Students Want to Cover March Madness, You Excuse Them From Class

In the oddest piece I’ve come across this week, a professional-in-residence (AKA visiting prof.) at Marquette University debates how he should have responded to a pair of his students who asked to be excused from class to cover March Madness-related events in person for reputable outlets.

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For some reason, this debate takes 1,000 words and involves multiple sources weighing in.  Seriously?

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My answer to the students, in two words: You’re excused.  Two more words: Good luck!  A few more words after that: Send me links to your work, let’s talk soon to catch up on what you missed, and be ready to speak to the class about the experience and any lessons learned once you’re back!

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Classes are wonderful avenues through which to explore and practice journalism.  But they are incomparable to a real-world reporting opportunity of A-list stature such as covering March Madness– in respect to strengthening students’ résumés and for adhering to the larger idea that college is about many, varied, and even occasionally once-in-a-lifetime experiences.  Even having to think twice about penalizing or holding my students back from that sort of experience seems apposite to my role as an educator.

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So, in answer to the question posed by the visiting prof. in the Poynter piece headline, “What’s a journalism professor to do when his students miss class to cover March Madness?“: You cheer them on, offer help and feedback along the way if asked, and brag about them to anyone who will listen when they’re through.

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Happy Friday. :)

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