We’re not in Kansas (City) anymore: An ACP/CMA recap

My conference craziness for the semester finally ended on Sunday.

This past weekend I attended the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers conference in Kansas City, Mo.

The Miami Hurricane sent six people, four from the newsroom and two from the business office.

Other UM student media also sent staffers, including five from the Ibis yearbook and one from Distraction magazine. The respective Hurricane and Ibis advisers also attended.

(Quick shout-out to Hurricane adviser Bob Radziewicz, who learned some iMovie and Audacity at the conference, yay! And he got Twitter on his own. Follow him @caneadviser.)

Another UM professor, Rich Beckman, was the conference’s first keynote speaker on Thursday (Mark Glaser of MediaShift was the keynote on Friday).

Rich started his talk by discussing how the newspaper industry fell behind with the Web. But, instead of harping on the negative, he mostly offered advice for the hundreds of students and advisers in attendance.

Video excerpt of Beckman’s keynote, shot by Anthony Pesce.

To summarize Rich’s advice:

  • You still need the basics — writing and editing across platforms, legal and ethical grounding
  • Everyone needs to know audio and video content gathering, editing and storytelling skills
  • Photojournalism and photo editing skills and the ability to produce audio-driven photo galleries and stories
  • Understand audience, usability, social networking, etc.
  • You need multimedia storytelling skills
  • Skills are given. Once you have them, you need to learn how to use them
  • Take advantage of what the Web is good at (interactivity, availability, etc.)
  • Use your publications to test your skills
  • Follow people, not organizations, when looking for good examples of journalism
  • Find mentors

Rich also discussed how multimedia design and infographic skills as well as multimedia programming and producing skills will land you the best (and best paid) jobs at top news organizations.

Besides the familiar faces, I got to see some new faces and meet some people in person for the first time, including Andrew Dunn, Anthony Pesce (whose video is embedded above) and Miles Skorpen. I’d known each through Twitter and the latter two from CoPress, so it was great to hang with them at the conference.

I also had a mini reunion of sorts with David Grant, editor of the Collegiate Times (Virginia Tech) and Kristen Daum, editor-elect of the State News (Michigan State). The three of us were part of the Al Neuharth Free Spirit scholarship class of 2005.

Speaking of awards:

  • The Hurricane didn’t win an online Pacemaker, but we got a pretty plaque for being a finalist. So, we’re looking to next year’s competition, when we’ll be entering the new WordPress site that Brian Schlansky and I created last summer.
  • Will Wooten, Hurricane visuals editor in spring 2008, won a third place page one design award for the “Do Not Rush the Field” cover

Sneak peak at next project

I’ll be playing producer and leading one of five video teams today for an Election Day 2008 multimedia project, which is being organized by the UM visual journalism program. The group, which also includes seven still photo teams, is being led by vis-j faculty Jim Virga, Kim Grinfeder and Rich Beckman.

We’ll be working in the West Grove and later putting together a site with all the stories, expected to launch soon after the election is finished. Note: This is not live coverage, but instead a documentary-style project.

I’ll write a recap post with my thoughts and a link after it launches.

Until then, follow the project on Twitter. Alex de Carvalho (@alexdc), who is one of the project’s other coaches, and I (@greglinch) will be live tweeting using the hastag #grove.

National Writers Workshop: Highlights and notes

What? Another conference, you ask?

Greg with Leonard Pitts
Greg with Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts. Photo by Lilly Echeverria.

Yes.

This past weekend (Sept. 19-21) I attended the National Writers Workshop in Fort Lauderdale, an annual conference hosted by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Among the speakers (A-Z):

I liveblogged the conference using Twitter and updates can be found by searching greglinch + NWW or NWW.

I’ve posted on Google Docs my notes from a Saturday morning session by Jacqui Banaszynkski, Knight chair in editing at University of Missouri School of Journalism.

I’ll be taking about a month to catch my breath before the next conference, a trip covered by The Miami Hurricane:

Associated Collegiate Press and College Media Advisers conference in Kansas City, Oct. 29 to Nov. 2.

I’ll be flying up on the evening of Oct. 30 and leaving Nov. 2. The Hurricane is sending a total of eight students, plus our adviser.

Related Posts

Links about journalism education

A journey through the murky depths of my electronic correspondences (read that, trying to clean out my Gmail inbox), brought me to the ACP Web site and led me to these very interesting reads:

Are journalism schools ‘getting it’? Jarvis, Greenslade, Woods – Editors Weblog- Analysis

Pajamas Media: What Journalism Schools Should Be Teaching

Is journalism school really unnecessary? – Editors Weblog

I found this less recent article article by ZDnet’s Larry Dignan after a quick Google search of “journalism education.” How journalism education should change | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

“…most schools still segment folks–magazine focus, TV focus, newspapers etc. All of those specialties should be infused with online learning.” – Larry Dignan, executive editor of ZDNet news and blogs

Looking forward to future j-education coverage from the SPJ Classrooms and Newsrooms blog:

“For the August 2008 J-Ed issue might we analyze and evaluate the various ways newsrooms and classrooms intersect ~ be they innovative student internships or practica, unusual professional development programs for instructors, curricula that integrate newsroom practices or products into instruction, or the recruitment and retention of professionals into the academy? This weblog would be a perfect venue to propose or flesh out ideas.”

Click Quill 2008 Journalism Education Issue for the original post.

I’m already pondering some ideas.

Weigh in: To students, what do you want to learn? To editors, what should we learn?

Poynting out one’s online identity

Mallary Jean Tenore wrote a great article on Poynter Online called “Journalists Develop, Dismiss Digital Identities,” which offers several perspectives on the topic from journalism professionals, young and old. Click the link or image (linked from Poynter) to read the article.

I thought the timing was great because in the past few months I have been more actively working to shape my online identity. For instance, I became very aware of the concept of the “digital legacy” after attending an ethics session by Poynter’s Kelly McBride at UM, during which she discussed this topic in reference to journalists and people named in articles. Paul Conley‘s remarks as part of a resume-writing panel at the national ACP/CMA in Washington, D.C. also spurred me to reevaluate my presence on the Web.

“A digital identity is your presence on the Web — the sites and accounts you register for and create that help determine who you are and what you do online,” Mallory Jean Tenore explains in the the article.

Though my online identity is something I am proud of, I wanted to even better represent myself and demonstrate my Web-savyy. Some ways I have molded it are through buying my domain name using GoDaddy, creating this blog, posting comments on other blogs and creating a LinkedIn page.

Bottom line: Anyone going to journalism or in journalism should be very aware of their online identity and be proactive in establishing and shaping his/her online identity.

Weigh in: What do you think about having an online identity? Do you do anything to shape it?