One of the great things about this IHSPA program is the fact that I get to go through a lot of new experiences.
I teach in a suburban school. I live in a suburban community. I grew up in the burbs. Back in my days as a full-time journalist, I spent nearly all of my career at a suburban newspaper.
Needless to say, the trappings of suburban life have pretty much been my experience through most of my years on Earth.
When I've crossed Carroll Road into Indianapolis, I've also been used to being "the little guy" at big events.
So, it's been a little bit of a culture shock for me.
I've had a handful of profile-type stories assigned to me this week, and one event. One major urban trend that I've heard about, read about but not really experienced is the local food/urban gardening movement. There just isn't a lot of emphasis on either in suburban culture. This week, I've worked on two completely different stories that tie back to the same topic. I suddenly know more about a topic that I had next to no knowledge of four days ago.
One of the most important things for a reporter to do is to break out of the myopic mold of seeing things the way they are in our own little bubbles and see the world around them. In the classroom, I try to coach my reporters to see this. So many students have their own definitions of what is "news." To some, what they see on the national news is news, but not the big story happening right in front of them. To others, news is only what's going on within their own social circle -- news is what only interests them.
One concept I've tried to push with my students is the idea of news being local (for those whose concept of news comes only from CNN and the national news), and the idea that news isn't just what you care about (for those who don't see the world outside of their social circles).
In a week, I've had to become an expert on something I knew practically nothing about before, had to see something that's not in my own little concept of the world as being a pretty important, trending story just a few miles to the west. In a word, it's broadened my horizons. What is newsworthy is what matters to your readership. And that's a great lesson to take away from this week.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Two days down
It's been two days of hitting the ground running.
I nervously pointed my car westward on Monday morning not quite knowing what was going to lie ahead. There is the usual paperwork filling-out, newsroom chatter, meeting new people and hitting the ground running.
And I had to hit it running. I settled into my new desk, looked up and had several story ideas in my inbox -- mostly profiles of local businesses. It's a good way to get the lay of the land in business journalism. I spent a lot of Monday burning up the phone lines, leaving messages and setting up interviews -- which I began to do today, heading up to Broad Ripple to talk with the founders of a startup company that's everybody's dream -- come up with an idea that people like, get a cult following and then watch it take off and try to keep up.
Then, I came back to the office, transcribed the interview and started writing my lede.
And I wrote it again.
And again.
And finally walked away from my desk, wrote a photo assignment, shuffled it off to Andrea Davis -- my editor -- and asked her to tear them to shreds. In a nice way, of course.
Writer's block never leaves the writer. Neither does the pit of uncertainty in a creative pursuit -- is this good, is it wretched, is it something in-between?
Enough about my tortuous efforts to write for a bigger audience and in a much different style than I've ever written before.
One of the biggest reasons for doing this internship was to be able to glean real-world experiences and bring them back into our student newsroom at New Palestine High School so I can better instruct my students and create as real-world of a publications environment as possible. One of my top priorities for next year was to use our website more for breaking news, multimedia and have our staff do shorter stories and briefs to better cover our building in-between the times the printed paper comes out, and then use more in-depth, timeless stories and folos in the printed Crimson Messenger newspaper (and even more timeless stories in our Avalon yearbook).
On Day 1, I had a perfect object lesson to take back to my students.
The IBJ is a weekly publication, but the age of Internet journalism has meant there's no such thing as a deadline cycle anymore. While longer, more timeless and in-depth stories go into the paper each week, there is also a digest of daily news, which gets emailed to readers each afternoon and posted online. The IBJ has done a great job of merging its printed product with the online product. Each has its own character, but each complements the other. Print stories are available online, but only to subscribers. The shorter, more timely news stories are freely available to all online. It keeps reader loyalty and contact on a day-to-day basis.
As a story broke Monday afternoon that the city had chosen a bid to demolish the old Keystone Towers high-rise near the Indiana State Fairgrounds, I was tabbed to write the first draft of a brief that would be online within minutes. The staff would follow up with a more in-depth story today. It's precisely what I'm hoping my students will be able to master in the fall. Object lesson #1 just ended up in the hopper.
The one thing that surprised me was the newsroom culture. As I noted earlier, before I began teaching in 2006, I spent nine years working as a reporter for two community dailies in Greencastle and Greenfield -- the last four as the sports editor of the Daily Reporter in Greenfield. In both, we had smallish newsrooms -- five in Greencastle, up to 12 in Greenfield -- who sat pretty close to one another and were always communicating. The newsrooms were very active, busy, noisy places where people were always talking -- either taking a break, chatting about a story, going over an edit, talking about a photo shoot or a graphic, discussing page design -- something. Of course, we were small staffs putting out daily newspapers and we were always on the go -- to a game, to a meeting, to an interview, just to fill the next day's publication.
At the IBJ, it is a very quiet, professional culture. Very little idle chatter crosses the newsroom. Reporters are seemingly constantly working on their own stories within the confines of their cubicles. It is a very productive newsroom, and it shows from the quality of journalism in each week's paper (and on the web daily). However, it was quite a culture shock to me coming from the frenetically-paced small daily newsrooms to one that is so quiet and where the staffers are so directed. At every place I've worked, the staffers are very talented and take a lot of pride in what goes under their bylines. But this staff has a much different way of approaching things.
It's one I'll get used to, without a doubt. It's actually great, because another thing I wanted to get out of this internship was to experience another type of journalism that was very different from what I had experienced working for small community dailies. It gives me another piece for the file cabinet of experiences to take back to New Palestine.
But I think I've made it past writer's block now. I still have this lede to finish.
I nervously pointed my car westward on Monday morning not quite knowing what was going to lie ahead. There is the usual paperwork filling-out, newsroom chatter, meeting new people and hitting the ground running.
And I had to hit it running. I settled into my new desk, looked up and had several story ideas in my inbox -- mostly profiles of local businesses. It's a good way to get the lay of the land in business journalism. I spent a lot of Monday burning up the phone lines, leaving messages and setting up interviews -- which I began to do today, heading up to Broad Ripple to talk with the founders of a startup company that's everybody's dream -- come up with an idea that people like, get a cult following and then watch it take off and try to keep up.
Then, I came back to the office, transcribed the interview and started writing my lede.
And I wrote it again.
And again.
And finally walked away from my desk, wrote a photo assignment, shuffled it off to Andrea Davis -- my editor -- and asked her to tear them to shreds. In a nice way, of course.
Writer's block never leaves the writer. Neither does the pit of uncertainty in a creative pursuit -- is this good, is it wretched, is it something in-between?
Enough about my tortuous efforts to write for a bigger audience and in a much different style than I've ever written before.
One of the biggest reasons for doing this internship was to be able to glean real-world experiences and bring them back into our student newsroom at New Palestine High School so I can better instruct my students and create as real-world of a publications environment as possible. One of my top priorities for next year was to use our website more for breaking news, multimedia and have our staff do shorter stories and briefs to better cover our building in-between the times the printed paper comes out, and then use more in-depth, timeless stories and folos in the printed Crimson Messenger newspaper (and even more timeless stories in our Avalon yearbook).
On Day 1, I had a perfect object lesson to take back to my students.
The IBJ is a weekly publication, but the age of Internet journalism has meant there's no such thing as a deadline cycle anymore. While longer, more timeless and in-depth stories go into the paper each week, there is also a digest of daily news, which gets emailed to readers each afternoon and posted online. The IBJ has done a great job of merging its printed product with the online product. Each has its own character, but each complements the other. Print stories are available online, but only to subscribers. The shorter, more timely news stories are freely available to all online. It keeps reader loyalty and contact on a day-to-day basis.
As a story broke Monday afternoon that the city had chosen a bid to demolish the old Keystone Towers high-rise near the Indiana State Fairgrounds, I was tabbed to write the first draft of a brief that would be online within minutes. The staff would follow up with a more in-depth story today. It's precisely what I'm hoping my students will be able to master in the fall. Object lesson #1 just ended up in the hopper.
The one thing that surprised me was the newsroom culture. As I noted earlier, before I began teaching in 2006, I spent nine years working as a reporter for two community dailies in Greencastle and Greenfield -- the last four as the sports editor of the Daily Reporter in Greenfield. In both, we had smallish newsrooms -- five in Greencastle, up to 12 in Greenfield -- who sat pretty close to one another and were always communicating. The newsrooms were very active, busy, noisy places where people were always talking -- either taking a break, chatting about a story, going over an edit, talking about a photo shoot or a graphic, discussing page design -- something. Of course, we were small staffs putting out daily newspapers and we were always on the go -- to a game, to a meeting, to an interview, just to fill the next day's publication.
At the IBJ, it is a very quiet, professional culture. Very little idle chatter crosses the newsroom. Reporters are seemingly constantly working on their own stories within the confines of their cubicles. It is a very productive newsroom, and it shows from the quality of journalism in each week's paper (and on the web daily). However, it was quite a culture shock to me coming from the frenetically-paced small daily newsrooms to one that is so quiet and where the staffers are so directed. At every place I've worked, the staffers are very talented and take a lot of pride in what goes under their bylines. But this staff has a much different way of approaching things.
It's one I'll get used to, without a doubt. It's actually great, because another thing I wanted to get out of this internship was to experience another type of journalism that was very different from what I had experienced working for small community dailies. It gives me another piece for the file cabinet of experiences to take back to New Palestine.
But I think I've made it past writer's block now. I still have this lede to finish.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Introduction
Welcome! Contained on these virtual pages over the next few weeks will be a chronicle of my internship with the Indianapolis Business Journal during the summer of 2011.
I'm very excited to be taking on this role and a new challenge in journalism, and I want to thank Dennis Cripe and Diana Hadley with the Indiana High School Press Association, the Hoosier State Press Association and Andrea Davis with the IBJ for giving me this opportunity.
As the publications adviser at New Palestine High School, I intend to use this experience to spend time back in the "real world" of professional journalism, and use these experiences to better prepare my students for the world of journalism they will enter.
For me, this is a chance to return "home." For nine years, I was a professional journalist, a news/sports reports reporter at two small Indiana dailies and later sports editor at the Daily Reporter in Greenfield. After four years away from print journalism, I returned to the craft in 2010 as the publications adviser at NPHS. In the meantime, I taught history at New Palestine and did some freelance writing and broadcasting in my spare time.
As a small-town journalist, I did virtually everything, so this is an opportunity for me to see a different side of the craft, and also to see how much the craft has evolved since I left the business (at least on the print side) full-time in 2006. At that time, Internet journalism was an emerging phenomenon, social media hadn't come to dominate newsgathering and dissemination as much as it has done now, and newspaper staffs were significantly larger. Today's journalism is significantly different, and I hope to experience that and take those experiences back to my students this fall.
This is an exciting opportunity. I'm looking forward to the journey, and also looking forward to sharing it with you!
I'm very excited to be taking on this role and a new challenge in journalism, and I want to thank Dennis Cripe and Diana Hadley with the Indiana High School Press Association, the Hoosier State Press Association and Andrea Davis with the IBJ for giving me this opportunity.
As the publications adviser at New Palestine High School, I intend to use this experience to spend time back in the "real world" of professional journalism, and use these experiences to better prepare my students for the world of journalism they will enter.
For me, this is a chance to return "home." For nine years, I was a professional journalist, a news/sports reports reporter at two small Indiana dailies and later sports editor at the Daily Reporter in Greenfield. After four years away from print journalism, I returned to the craft in 2010 as the publications adviser at NPHS. In the meantime, I taught history at New Palestine and did some freelance writing and broadcasting in my spare time.
As a small-town journalist, I did virtually everything, so this is an opportunity for me to see a different side of the craft, and also to see how much the craft has evolved since I left the business (at least on the print side) full-time in 2006. At that time, Internet journalism was an emerging phenomenon, social media hadn't come to dominate newsgathering and dissemination as much as it has done now, and newspaper staffs were significantly larger. Today's journalism is significantly different, and I hope to experience that and take those experiences back to my students this fall.
This is an exciting opportunity. I'm looking forward to the journey, and also looking forward to sharing it with you!
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