The 7 most useful apps for mobile journalism | RJI

 Some of these may be useful for the website and for HS Insider.



The 7 most useful apps for mobile journalism | RJI

Speaking of HS Insider, here are some tips they sent in an email when the site first started. Please take them to heart.

1. You don't have to say Avengers High School. Just say Avengers. Everyone who comes to your page knows you are talking about your high school.

2. When reporting the score, always list the winning team's score first. So, don't say, "Avengers lost, 17-35", say "Avengers lost, 35-17"

3. Try to include more stats in your game stories. Don't say "John Adams had a dominating performance at running back.: Say "John Adams was dominant at running back, rushing for 247 yards."

4. When referring to a person a second time in the same story, just use their last name. For example: "John Adams was very disappointed in the loss. The only touchdown for the Avengers came on a 66-yard pass from Steve Rogers to Adams." The only exception to this would be if there are two people with the same last name in the story. Then you would use first and last name in all references to those two people.

5. Try to include the won-lost record of the team. Such as, "Avengers improve to 7-1 with the victory."

6. For game recap videos, nothing over 5 minutes. Once you cross the five-minute mark, you lose 90% of your audience.

7. For videos, try not to make it just a series of plays from the game, unless you can describe what is happening on each play, it doesn't mean much to people who weren't there.

8. You don't have to note what camera you used, in fact, we would prefer you didn't as we don't want to give free advertising or make it look like Go Pro is sponsoring Varsity Video.

9. If you have a particularly in-depth feature video, you can go past five minutes.

Opportunities from HS Insider

HS Insider Team,

We hope you had a fun and eventful week. We’ve got a bunch of announcements to cover, so we’ll start with reminders.

Reminders

- Attached you will find the 2015 HS Insider Summer Internship Application. Some key dates to note: your application must be emailed to varsityvideo@latimes.com by Friday, April 17^th at 11:59pm PST. Please read the application carefully before emailing Kyle with questions. (It is in the shared documents folder in Drive.)

- This April 18^th and 19^th is the LA Times Festival of Books. HS Insider will have a booth, and we’re looking for volunteers to work with Kyle that day to help run it and spread the word about HS Insider. Thank you so much to all the volunteers who signed up last night. As of now, we have two spots open for shift 1 & 2 along with one spot open for Shift 4. Email Kyle if you would like to join!

                Shift 1: Saturday 11am-3pm             Shift 2: Saturday 3pm-6pm

                Shift 3: Sunday 10am-2pm                Shift 4: Sunday 2pm-5pm

-Tired of repeating all the cool stuff you’re doing with HS Insider at family functions over and over again!? Help them sign up for the Family & Friends newsletter so they can stay up to date with the great work you’re doing. You can find the sign up form here. You can forward this email on to family and friends or send them the sign up link.

State Write-Offs Bring Success

Congratulations to Steven Montoya, copy editor, for his first place honors in editorial writing at the Southern California Journalism Education Association state write-off on Saturday, March 21 at Rancho Dominguez Prep School in Long Beach.

Here is a link to a video of Steven's name being announced.https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0Jfp7zwNRMIVlhhb3IyYk50Wm8&authuser=0
It was taken by John Shrader, from Cal State Long Beach, who delivered the keynote address.

Also contributing to Hollywood's placing fifth in the newspaper sweepstakes were Vanessa Centeno, fifth place sports; Franklin Franco, sixth place news; and Erika Salazar, tenth place, news. There were 25 schools competing from all over Southern California.

Summer Internship in Silicon Valley

The 22nd Annual Mosaic High School Journalism Workshop is looking for students for an exciting, two-week summer camp taught by professional reporters, editors and photographers. This workshop is free of cost to students. 

Please forward this information to those who would be interested. 

The students will work in the campus newsroom at San Jose State University. They’ll hit the streets of Silicon Valley to cover issues and trends that matter to them and other teens. They’ll stay in campus dormitories and get a taste of college life.

Besides honing their skills in reporting and writing or in shooting photos and videos, they also will share their stories and photos online and will explore and pave pathways on social media.

Our instructors will guide them every step of the way, from focusing ideas to critiquing. At the end of the program students will see their newspaper roll off the presses of the Bay Area News Group and witness their stories spread online.

Please visit our website, www.mercurynews.com/mosaic, for more details and an online version of last summer’s workshop newspaper. You’ll also find a downloadable application for the 2015 program, attached here as well.

Founded in 1993, the Mosaic has given hundreds of high school students a close-up, hands-on look at professional journalism. Many of our alumni now work at newspapers, magazines, television, online publications and in public relations around the country.

Applicants must be current sophomores, juniors or seniors. Experience in journalism or photography, and solid writing skills are strongly recommended.

The 2015 Mosaic will be held from Sunday, June 14 to Friday, June 26. Applications must be postmarked or emailed by April 13.  

Please do not hesitate to call or email for more information. 

Thank you, 

Joe Rodriguez, Mosaic Director Emeritus

408-920-5767

jrodriguez@mercurynews.com

Next week is Scholastic Journalism Week: Take the Pledge

 I'd like to celebrate Scholastic Journalism Week by taking the TAO of Journalism Pledge (their slogan: "just TAO it.") and taking a photo of the class taking the pledge and putting it on the website. One of the teams can use it as one of their posts. The idea is that journalists are always demanding that sources be transparent, accountable and open. If we want our readers' trust, we need to be transparent, accountable and open as well. Read more about it on the link.

TAO of Journalism - from the TAO of Journalism Center