Tips for the New Year

Before throwing away my notebook from the High School Journalism Institute at the University of Texas, Austin this summer I thought I would pass along these tips from reporters at the Austin American Statesman daily newspaper:

Print out your story and do a line check.
Read your story aloud.
Include a detail, a piece of description about the person or the room
Pretend you are a foreign correspondent: why is this story important?
Don't be afraid to ask questions. If it's not in your notebook, you can't write about it.
If using a tape recorder, don't listen to the whole thing. Write down where on the tape something important is.
Ask for a phone number, so you can double check your information later.

And finally, from Jeff Cohen, the editor of the Houston Chronicle:
"At the end of the day, you can change the world with a newspaper; you can change the world with a high school newspaper."

Cheers to finding and reporting more great stories in 2010!

Go online, read other high school newspaper stories

Click on the high school journalism link at right and read one of the stories there. Be prepared to discuss it in class tomorrow.

Turn in Your Portfolios

Midterm grades are due this week, so please turn in your folders with your clippings and the portfolio form where you list any extra duties you've done.

Editors:I've added a link at right for a tutorial on cropping using InDesign.

Advertising

Thursday:Let's talk about a plan for selling ads and a plan for organizing the holiday greetings (including what we are going to call them).

Exchange editors: Please send out the latest issue of the Crimson Chronicle.

Keeper of the Future Book: We still need someone to do this. I would start by going through the school calendar and making notes for each date.

Story ideas for the next issue

Please come prepared on Monday with story ideas for news, opinion, entertainment and sports. That means checking on your beat assignments to see what is going on.

News: If your beat is an SLC, talk to the administrator or lead teacher for the SLC to see what is going on. If your beat is a grade level or a club, talk to the teacher-sponsor or student officers to find out what is schedule between now and December 14 (our next publication).

Also, check the school calendar on the website to see what activities are scheduled that we might want to cover.

Opinion/Editorial: will have two pages, so let's get some letters to the editor. We could do a staff editorial if we like. It could be something serious (global warming, war in Afghanistan) or not so serious (what we hope will happen in 2010, our New Year's resolutions.) The resolutions could be about the Crimson Chronicle (spell people's names correctly, double check our facts, cover SLCs equally, expand club coverage, etc.)

Entertainment: will also have two pages, so figure out what movies and music releases will be out around that time and see if we can review them.

Sports: If your beat is a sport, figure out if we need a season ender story (football, cross country) or a preview (basketball, volleyball, soccer, swimming).

Advertising: We need to sell at least one page of advertising, in addition to the shout-out ads. Let's get back to Amoeba Music and sell them a half page at least. If we sell lots of shout-outs, they can go on their own page. We need to come up with some guidelines for this. How many words for $2? Will we have a form for them to fill out? Will we give them a receipt?

Unpublished stories:Don't forget we have Antonio's mentor program story. (add quotes from mentors/mentees in SAS advisories who have already started it.) Also, Taguhi Tavitian submitted a story about how budget cuts are affecting field trips that we didn't have room for in the last issue.