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.

Are you Red? White? Blue? Yellow?

The seminar opened with Kaylene Armstrong of BYU administering a personality test to the audience. The test consisted of a series of questions that determined personality types and divided them into the colors red, white, blue, and yellow. She then discussed ways to deal with different personality types in the newsroom.

Chris

Managing a Staff:Knowing When to Lead or Get out of the Way

Managing a Staff: Knowing When to Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

Vince Filak, Ball State University

The three main things I learned was the difference between editing and fixing things myself and how the editor’s attitude affects the rest of the staff.

• Editing is reading someone’s work, making corrections and then making time to meet with them to go over the changes. By doing this you can focus on the things they did well and explain the things the areas they are struggling in. Editing makes it a learning experience. It will also help improve their writing skills.

• Fixing it myself is what I do most of the time because it is easier and takes less time, however, it is not to the benefit of the writer. From now on, I am going to make an effort to make more time to go over stories with the writers.

• The editor’s attitude rubs off on the rest of the staff. If I set a good example of being positive, hard-working and timely, hopefully the rest of the staff will follow.

Lela Coker

Managing the Chaos

Managing the Chaos
Mark Witherspoon, Iowa State University

This wasn’t my favorite session but I was reminded of a few things:
• Make sure your staff knows how much fun journalism is when it is done right.
• Decide you want to be excellent and then study other excellent publications. Compare your publication to these publications and take notes and set goals!
• Let your staff know why y’all do what y’all do. This will help them understand there is a reason for certain things and they will be more likely to remember it. Try to avoid saying “because I said so.”
• Nurture relationships with people outside the newsroom like President Webb, the university vice presidents and Sheila Gentry.

Lela Coker

The daily grind: how to feed the machine without being ground up

This was the first session I went to on Thursday morning. Although we aren't a daily paper, I thought it would be helpful to hear any tips to improve the paper without getting too stressed out.

The speaker gave some good tips, and some of which we had already done. She suggested changing the look of the paper, and we've learned this semester that it definitely works. Even if the writing or the types of stories are no different than previous years, it looks different, so students tend to pick it up more than the same boring paper they saw all last year.

Something she suggested that I'd like to change is to make our editors' meeting longer, so we can do more brainstorming. I'd also like to meet with each reporter when I give him or her a story to discuss different angles and contacts. Then, I'd like to take the time to meet with the reporter after I receive the story to discuss corrections, changes, questions and affirmations. This will take a lot more time, but I think it will pay off in the end.

Leigh

Managing Conflict

It seemed as though the 2:30 hour was a popular lunch break for all of the interesting sessions. I wandered into the Managing Conflict session presented by Carry Berry-Smith from U of Wyoming. Personally, I have never really liked dealing with conflict, but I would say I know how to deal with a difficult situation when presented with one. Having no other options for a session, I thought perhaps I could learn something or maybe even just be reminded of some valuable lessons. Berry-Smith suggested that when faced with conflict in the newsroom, students should do the following:

1) Understand yourself and how you react to conflict in general.
2) Identify the specific conflict at hand and realize that emotions bring out the fight or flight mentality in most people.
3) Control your emotional response with your brain -- this means, don't fly off the handle. Do something "right brained" like counting to 10 or writing the alphabet.
4) Check out your "beliefs" and "fears" and ask questions like "is this worth fighting over?"
5) Identify the elements of the conflict - what is causing this, what are the logistics?

Overall, I was not highly impressed with the session, but it was good to hear those things my mother has been telling me all along, once more.

-- Lauren Sciba

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

Are You Red? Blue? White? Yellow?

Understanding your personality and the different personalities of your staff is important in assigning tasks, communicating, and addressing problems. This session informed attendants about the personalities and the pros and cons of each.Everyone at the session took a personality test. I was a red/blue personality.

Red is a very strong personality. Usually very productive and practical, reds are used to getting thier way and work well is leadership positions because they get things done. Sometimes hard to work with, reds can be bossy.

Blues are very loyal and everything they do is quality based. Blues are the most controlling of personalities and are very committed. They are dependable, worry prone and very analytical.

To know how to work with and respond to your staff you first have to understand your own personality. We discussed which personalities worked well together and performed which tasks the best. This session gave an interesting insight on how to read and manage your staff.

Brittany Byrd