Slick work- how to break into magazines

During this session, on Saturday morning, the sun began peaking through the shade, and I became very mad. This session was very good and I learned a lot, but it would have been better received if I wasn't steaming from anger for the weather.

Three women represented different ways to get into magazines. One started, and still works, in teen magazines. Another started as a copy editor, and the third began working for organizations with in-house magazines.

It was stressed by all three to gain as much writing experience as possible and learn many different writing styles. It was also said that it is never too early to start submitting work to potential publishers.

When creating a cover letter for your resume, it is a good idea to research the magazine and emulate their style. Also, don't oversell yourself and find your own voice.

Online resources such as Craig's List, idealist.org, journalismjobs.com, www.mediabistro.com were given for query tips and job applications.

It is important to follow the application guidelines very carefully, since some are different.

Also, if sending your resume electronically, it is best to save the cover letter as a word document so it may be opened and read easily.

I also learned that a perk of the magazine industry is its variety. One is less likely to burn out if one does not stay at a publication for very long.

Kera Simon

Easy Breezy Journalism

On Saturday morning at 9 a.m., Easy Breezy Journalism was being held to a room filled with an almost even amount of editors and advisers. This session had some important key points about how to teach journalism to not only journalism students, but also young writers on a newspaper staff.

Her first suggestion was to bring food. Where there is food, there is fun. She also suggested praising quite often for little things.

The lecturer suggested creating mini-lessons during meetings, which I've been meaning to do.
She suggested a book that was very useful to her. "Inside Reporting" by Harrower was said to have small chapters that can easily be turned into short lessons.

As a means to recruit writers, the speaker suggested talking to English teachers about announcing meetings or adding extra credit(I know that will never happen, but it would be nice...)

I asked how to target the adult learners, a group of students The Current Sauce hasn't been able to reach. She suggested having a few feature articles on outstanding adult students and distributing the newspaper during night classes.

Staying ahead of the Digital Curve

College Publisher hosted this session at 12:30 p.m. on Friday and introduced the new edition of College Publisher. The College Publisher 5.0 Beta will be slowly added to newspapers next year.
The biggest news about this version is it will no longer be issue based! This means that the site can be updated as things occur (like a real newsroom).

Another important highlight is that users will have more control of their site's design. Before, you'd have to get in touch with a design expert with College Publisher (which took a while for them to answer their phones) and they would change the site for the user. Now the user can do as they please, with no html knowledge necessary. In the administration screen, all one needs to do is drag and drop. Content can be added to any column.

College Publisher teamed up with a company from Sweden to completely redesign their product. They realized that while their initial product was good, it was not offering college media all that it needed.

Kera Simon

Portfolios and Resumes

On Friday at 11 a.m., I attended a session designed as a question-and-answer panel about portfolios and resumes. This was very helpful for someone like me who has time to improve their resume.

The panel's strongest tip for resume writing was to proofread. They all agreed that the worst thing to see on a resume is common misspellings. They said it is even worse if a person lists "pays attention to details" and has misspellings. One of the panelists said if a person lists that as a quality and then makes spelling errors, "Well, then it is obvious that you don't."

They also emphasized that the copy quality was important. They suggested making a high quality copy to keep and make copies from.

It was also quite emphasized to have an online resume or personal professional website. They said it was very important to show that you are online-savvy. Also, they hinted that if a person doesn't have an online site during this drastic electronic age, it suggests that you are behind the times.

Also, when discussing a portfolio, their suggestion was to be very picky about your selections. The employers want to see your skills as a reporter, so pick the best.

Kera Simon

D.C. in the mist

On Thursday, Leigh, Mary, Richelle, Andi, Chris and I decided to go explore D.C. The first thing we did was go to Chinatown and to our dismay- it wasn't the kind of Chinatown we thought. There were no fake Prada purses, so I was definitely disappointed.

As a group, we decided to check out the monuments, which seemed much closer on the map than they actually were.

While being "misted"on, we walked all the way to the Capitol. We looked at it, noticed how pretty it was, and started walking to the Washington Monument. On our way there, we noticed the surprisingly large amount of people jogging around. These people were hardcore. They were jogging in shorts and sweaters in the cold mist. Only one of them smiled at us.

It took us about 20 minutes to get to the Washington Monument from the Capitol. It looked closer because it was SO HUGE!

This monument received many laughs for its particular shape, but, all in all, it was pretty spectacular. Once we got to the Washington Monument, Chris and Richelle spent most of the time imitating a former faculty member.

Even once we got to the monument, we had to walk even farther to reach the base.

Leigh, Andi and I decided we wanted to touch the monument, so we made the trek to the base. Chris, Mary and Richelle stayed at the bottom.

In the end, Chris, Mary and Richelle decided to take cab to Starbucks and then return to the hotel. So it was Andi, Leigh and I left to wander around to view the monuments.

After the Washington monument, we stumbled upon a monument we didn't even know existed. I don't know when, but sometime between the movie "Forrest Gump" and now, they built the WWII Monument, which is breath-taking. Around the beautiful fountain shown in the picture, they had a block with a metal wreath on it. Each block had the name of a state on it. I took a picture next the Louisiana one :)

This place was full of tourists! We were surprised since we were seriously the only tourists around the Washington Monument. We soon realized that there were a bunch of middle school trips going on at that time. Many of the boys had those Sketchers shoes with the rollers.

The WWII Memorial led to the reflecting pool, which led to the Lincoln Monument. On our way to the Lincoln Monument, we asked a man where the Vietnam Memorial was, because if it was not 10 feet away, we weren't going. It actually was about 10 feet away. We decided to check out Lincoln, then see the Vietnam Memorial on our way out.

The steps leading to the Lincoln Monument were very steep and very slick from the rain. We were hoping to see an adolescent bust it, but we were not so lucky.

There are no words to describe the Lincoln Monument. I can say it is beautiful, magnificent, even wondrous- but none would truly do it justice.
There were signs asking people to be quiet in respect.

We walked around, looked up at Lincoln in silence and read the Gettysburg Address, which was engraved on one of the walls.

Then we went to the Vietnam Memorial. We looked at the huge wall of names, which I was not comfortable taking a picture of, and visited the Women's Memorial. It was very humbling.

I also learned, while silently observing the Women's Memorial, that an 8th grade boy likes his women thin, but with muscles. But not too muscular like a bodybuilder. Just as long as he couldn't beat him in an arm wrestling match.

After the Women's memorial, we spent the last hour looking for the Metro station.

See, we never really bought a map of D.C. Andi memorized the map she found while researching D.C, but we did not have a map in our hands. All that we had was the Metro map, which gave a VERY general location of the Metro stations. We were looking for the Smithsonian, because there should have been a station near there. We never did find the Smithsonian...

Instead, we accidentally found the White house. We asked one of the guards where the nearest Metro was, and he told us it was 3 blocks that way -- which was great, but when we went three blocks that way, there was no Metro station.

So after we realized there was no Metro station, we walked into this food court looking thing and asked a guard where the Metro station was. Apparently we were looking for the Federal Triangle Metro station, and it was "just around the restaurant and take a left."

We went around the restaurant, all the way to the road and looked to our left... No Metro station. By this time we're delirious because our feet hurt, we're soaked and we still can't find the Metro!

We went to some valet parkers in front of a fancy building and asked them. They said it was behind the building, from where we just came!!!!! He said go behind the building and we should see a big blue M... We can't miss it. Did that-- no M.

Leigh, Andi and I walked behind the building, and found some servers taking a break. We asked them where the Metro was, and they started arguing in Spanish about whether it was to the left or right.(as translated by Leigh Gentry)

Finally, a server actually steps forward and says, "What are you looking for?" He tells us to look for a rose sculpture, which by now we've passed twice, and to go down some stairs behind the rose. Take a right, and it will lead to the Metro.

At last: some SPECIFIC directions. No one told us that the Metro station was on a lower level behind the rose statue. We came to the conclusion that the last guy must have been from the South, because all Northern people are not nice.

Then we found the Metro station, rode to DuPont Circle and decided to eat some well-deserved supper at 10 p.m.

After supper, that was the end of our adventure.

Kera Simon

Finding Students Where They Live

This was my first session of Friday, held at 9 a.m. It discussed ways to use Facebook and Myspace as reporting tool.

It was suggested to start a Facebook group and use it for recruitment and self-praising. We don't want to always talk about the journalism department accomplishments in the paper, but we are free to do it on our Facebook group.

One should always fact check afterwards, but information can be accessed initially when a story is breaking. It is also a great way to stay in touch with alumni. It is also a good way to find friends of the story subject to interview.

Kera Simon

Coaching like a Peer

This is a close tie with "how to write visually" for my favorite of the day. This adviser is awesome. Her name is Kenna Griffin from Oklahoma City University. She gave some very helpful tips.

Ok, we have a microwave in the office; why not a refrigerator? Her first suggestion was to use food. We're in college and love to eat. It is a great social tool. She also suggested using the staff
meetings to teach(which we do sometimes, but not every meeting b/c people get very antsy).

She also thought it was very important that people know the hierarchy of the newsroom. She suggested making a chart, which I will next semester. It is also important to reward publicly. This enforced my idea for a "star reporter," which I'd like to start next semester.

It's also important not to gossip about your staff. This is important, but hard to do.

It is also important that people on the staff understands the "greater purpose" of the paper. I don't want to preach, but I should remind people that this newspaper affects those who read it and who are written about. It is distributed to the community and can be used for potential employers.

She even gave us some hand-outs that are given to beginning reporters. It is an awesome tool that we can use to base our teaching materials on. I loved it!

Kera Simon

Remember the Reader

This session made me depressed, because I seriously think that Dr. Furr would have a heart attack if we tried these things. We could do some of those things in life, but I don't think most of it was appropriate for the news section. We are also just now discovering the power of color (thank you, spot color), so the majority of it would look weird in black and white.

This was one of those sessions where the guy stands there and shows us examples. The lights were turned off, and I got sleepy.

I must admit, we could be using more fun photo illustrations than we are. It would give our photographers more freedom. Cutouts would be fun to do as well, but at a minimum. I also got some good life story ideas like gifts for the holidays, an overview of foreign clubs, etc.

The session was also good for some graphic ideas. Jen would have loved it, but it probably depressed her too.

Kera Simon

Breaking into Magazines

This session was held on Thursday at 11 a.m. and was right after the web trafficking one. I must admit that I was disappointed, not because of the content of the session- but mostly because I went to the same exact session last year in St. Louis. It was labeled with a different name, so I was tricked! lol. It was even the exact same hand-out.

I re-learned about query letters, the Writer's Market, and how magazines work in general. I like the fact that he is real with us. He said that free-lance writers do not make money. They work hard and try to sell themselves.

That's about all that I got out of the session. I left five minutes early to get a Kit-Kat :)

Kera Simon

Web site Traffic Building 101

This session was held by College Publisher. It was fairly informative. They were big on receiving reader content, which I guess is great for schools were students actually care about the world around them (not NSU). Polls, surveys, questions of the day... They also suggested adding podcasts(which I'd like to start emphasising next semester), adding the audio slideshow application, setting up links to related information, and creating a constant IM for the newspaper where people can contact you at all times.

The most useful information was how to contact College Publisher. I talked to Michael(Mike), who has been with the company for five years, and picked up his card. He said that any changes we want to do with the layout(yes please), adding applications(yes, please), or getting general information(YES, PLEASE) would be accessible by calling or e-mailing him. I'm also going to a session about the newest edition of College Publisher that is scheduled to be released next year. I'm excited about that. I might be able to give poor Devon(the Web editor) some relief.

Kera Simon

How to Write Visually

I was really impressed by this session, which was held at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning. After my long day of traveling with only 3 hours of sleep (thank you, Current Sauce), I was surprised by how lively I was for this first session.

The main idea of the session was to describe how good photography and writing are similar. The lecturers, Brian Poulter and Joe Gisondi from Eastern Illinois University, went through the hierarchy of photography and described them in terms of writing.

1. Informational- This is the foundation of any news story. It is the inverted pyramid and facts without flavor.

2. Graphic information- This is where details are observed and described. Certain items are used to focus the story and create a picture in a person's mind. Reporting was defined as the "fine art of hanging out."

3. Emotional writing- This captures the feel and emotion of a story. The main factor of this sense of writing is to get the reader to react(laugh, cry, become angry, etc.) The speakers emphasized speaking to other people about the focus person to find personal facts about them.

4. Intimate writing- This is the hardest form of writing. It takes the reader to a place that is rarely seen. In order to capture an intimate portrait of a person, one must ask questions like, "what were you thinking about at that time?" and create a relationship with the subject.

This was definitely my favorite session of the day.

Kera Simon