Adobe Production Studio

Jason Levine, the Adobe evangelist, had to be the most excited instructor I had seen all day. This man eats, sleeps and breathes Adobe software. He only had time to show us a few things in Adobe Photoshop CS3. His enthusiasm made me excited about the new features that Photoshop CS3 has to offer. Images can now be made into a 3-D model without taking as much time. Objects can be selected without the dreaded magnetic lasso tool taking 30 minutes to trace. We also learned that now video can be edited using Photoshop. The new features reduce time and improve quality of images.

Mary Manno

Can I be a Journalist and a Christian, Too?

I was really excited about my noon session because I was going to attend the independent filmmaking seminar. By the time I got to that room, every seat was taken. I found myself wandering the hall for a different session to sit in.

The one I wandered into happened to be my favorite of the day. Terry Mattingly and Dean Nelson were very interesting and entertaining instructors. They discussed how teachers at Christian colleges can be biased and turn students away from secular journalism jobs. They identified being a journalist as a calling. A really great point they made is how religious people hate journalists, but the people who wrote the Bible were journalistic in a way. The Bible is written by storytellers, and in a way, journalists are storytellers. They tell the stories that get published all over the nation or even just their community.

They also discussed how some of the ethics of Christianity make great journalistic standards. Christians are supposed to treat others as they would want to be treated. Same thing goes for journalists. They should write stories about others as they would want stories about them written -- unbiased.

A great verse they gave us is Proverbs 31:8

"Speak up for those who can not speak for themselves."

Mary Manno

'And You Want Me to Write What?'

This session centered on recommendation letters and tips on how to get teachers to write one for you. A handout was passed out with one side giving examples of two recommendation letters and the other with the top 10 things to remember when looking for a great reference. Some of the tips include providing a job description of the job or internship and giving the adviser a resume and portfolio to jog their memory. We were also taught that the adviser is like "Santa Claus" and is watching a student at all times. Also, the adviser is keener to write a great recommendation letter for a student who is always trying and working hard.

Mary Manno

Intro to Underwriting

In all honesty, this session made me a little sad. One of the instructors talked about how strict they were on their staff. After one excused absence at the station (as in missing their shift without notifying a manager ahead of time) they received a warning. The second time they lost their shift, because 700 students were on a waiting list to fill that spot. I wish somehow students would get that excited about KNWD! I cannot even imagine a waiting list that long! I did take note that deejays were dismissed for missing their shifts, since it can be a problem at our station.

The main thing discussed in this session was how to create an effective media kit to send out to advertisers. The main thing to remember is to keep it simple and client-centered. We also learned about effective times to contact certain businesses in order to make an ad sell.

Mary Manno

First impressions of our nation's capitol ... a day late

As this was my first visit to Washington D.C., I couldn't help but peer out of the window of the airplane when we began our descent into Reagan National. The brake lights of afternoon traffic pockmarked the soaked streets of our nation's capital...unfortunately we would encounter traffic of our own. We happened to board the Metro subway right as Washington's corporate bees left their metaphorical hive. Apparently masses of people crammed into tiny subway cars bring out the worst of people in this city. Regardless, this has been quite an educationally valuable trip (more on the visual spectacle later) as we attended our first sessions today.


At 9 a.m., I attended the "Whither Magazines" session with National Geographic magazine's Keith Bellows, who discussed the future of magazines. He essentially stated that reinvention must occur if magazines are to survive. Writers must become more well-rounded in terms of what they can do for the publication; they must be willing to write for the print and online mediums. They must be willing to produce narratives that engross the reader.

At the 10 a.m. "Intro to Underwriting" session with NPR's J.C. Patrick, we explored the basics of radio kits to present to potential advertising clients. Radio kits should be personal and user-friendly to the prospective and should sell a benefit -- not a feature -- to the prospective client.

At the 11 a.m. 'Breaking into Magazines" session, we learned that query letters really help gain the attention of magazines to your story, as many submissions lack a query letter and magazines have little time to sort through them all. The session was focused heavily on the query letter. We also learned that if we wanted to start submitting now, it's all right to state that we're still writing for our school's newspaper.

The 12 p.m. "College Press 101" was a basic outline of significant court cases involving student journalists with follow-up on how it affects us today. The SPLC's Adam Goldstein was very knowledgeable of his craft, as he deals with the bulk of calls from student journalists to the SPLC; he said that he deals with at least 1,000 calls per year, which surprised me a bit.

Perhaps the most energetic session of the day was hosted by Jason Levine. The 1 p.m. session by the self-proclaimed evangelist for Adobe software was filled with exhibitions of his "prowess". Oohs and aahs serenaded his glowing ponytailed and mutton-chopped aura after he made a seagull disappear from a video clip in the Adobe After Effects program. I was personally engrossed in the new software that enables users to make their videos suitable for broadcast on everything from cell phones to YouTube.

More on the sights and sounds of D.C. in a later post. My fingers hurt.

--Richelle Stephens

Whither Magazines? A Look at the Future

Originally, I was going to attend a seminar about landing an internship. However, it happened to be canceled, and I found myself at a seminar about magazines. With all the convergence going on in journalism, I decided to attend a seminar that deals with something that I do not know that much about--magazines.

Keith Bellows, who works at National Geographic, gave a great seminar about how the magazine industry is not a dying field, just different. He gave us a different way to look at the rise of Internet readers. The magazine world is now a 360-degree field. Reporters are not only being hired to write articles, but to post Web articles and podcast.

I learned a lot from this seminar. I never realized that a magazine has to keep a subscriber 3-4 years in order to start making money off of them. Mr. Bellows made it clear that getting into this field is very competitive, especially for photographers to get work in National Geographic. He gave some great advice for breaking into the field. For example, when you intern, always ask if there is something to do. Motivation shows that company you really want to help and learn. Mr. Bellows said National Geographic has had countless interns who just sit at their desk and wait for work and lack that certain motivation the magazine needs. In the end, they don't get selected for the jobs.

Mary Manno

Rolling Suitcases unite!!!

For some reason, sitting in the airport Wednesday morning made me really nervous. Maybe it was because I was about to conquer (like many airplane trips before) my fear of heights and embrace the unknowingness of the sky. Maybe it was because I was reading "Into the Wild", a book about a free spirit embracing the road for two years, finally starving to death in Alaska. The only thing I did know was that I was early. My mom, being the wonderful person that she is, demanded dropping me off at the airport about 20 minutes till I had to be there.

After defeating the wannabe Airforce 1, also known as the Shreveport jet, I waited anxiously with Dr. Lee, Jim and Lauren to see if we won a seat on the 11:45 plane. Oh, the joyous life of a standby flyer. By some miracle of God, all three of us made it on the plane and into Washington in one piece. Since we have been here it has been an interesting ride. There are a lot of important people walking on the streets (and by important I mean they have a suitcase and are listening to an iPod). The Wall Street posers line the subways, and we knowingly took them down with our rolling suitcases.

Mary Manno

Writing About Your Campus Through the Lens of Diversity.

While this session drew me in with its caption, I should have read the blurb more closely. This noontime session on Thursday spotlighted George Mason University's VoxPop magazine and Web site, both dedicated to tell stories of diversity on campus. The staff and advisors discussed the elaborate team-building and creative processes that went into launching this project as well as the work that goes into producing and publishing VoxPop now.

The last thing I need is another student medium to advise, but the determination to seek out diverse voices and coverage is something that I want to cultivate in the media that I already oversee. I picked up an issue of VoxPop to leaf through and bring back. The magazine is impressively colorful and glossy -- it looks like the alumni periodicals that I get from much larger universities with much larger budgets.

VoxPop's articles and features cover a wide range of cultures and voices, ranging from "Mason Moms" (students with children) to "Minority in a Sorority" to "To Hijab or Not to Hijab?" (Islamic clothing) and beyond. It's clear that the VoxPop staff, which is larger than the entire staff of our campus paper, was dedicated to finding new approaches to reporting on existing tensions and to showcase diversity as a strength in the context of their campus.

Suggestions from VoxPop for campuses wanting to start a similar project:
- Know your audience. Who will read your publication?
- Find ways to partner with organizations and involve the community
- Identify grant sources and other funding options
- Solicit advertisers who might have an interest in diversity issues
- Emphasize distribution and promotion strategies

Note: while VoxPop is a publication of George Mason's University Life office, students edit, write and design the magazine.

Dr. Lee

Legal and Ethical Issues for Advisers.

Not sure what the CMA powers that be were thinking when they scheduled "The Socially Conscious Adviser" and this session for the same hour on Thursday morning. I tried to go to the first simply because I was running late and the room was closer than the other. However, the socially conscious were not spacially conscious. The room set-up was backwards, so that the speakers were by the door. This lack of feng shui made it difficult to slink into the audience without disrupting the entire panel. So, rather than cause a ruckus, I decided to ditch the social and head down the hall to the legal and ethical.

This session, led by Kathy Lawrence of UT and Karen Bosley of Ocean County College, more fueled than calmed my anxiety as a first-year student media adviser. I am in charge of both the campus newspaper and radio station, so I was already a little wild-eyed before I had even walked into the room. True tales of advisers canned for their involvement in student media send “get prescription for ulcer medication” higher up my to-do list. (Bosley had been fired from her position as newspaper adviser after 30 years, but she has since been reinstated with the help of the CMA.)

Because I double-booked for this hour, I arrived just as the session changed in a Q&A format. As advisers in the audience starting asking about this and that hypothetical situation, I suddenly wanted my mommy.

Advice from Lawrence, head of CMA’s Adviser Advocacy Committee and immediate past president of CMA:
- Do not become involved in the content of the paper.
- Get a formal, written description of exactly what the student media advisor job entails.
- Do not get involved in a reader’s problem with the paper. Refer the complaint to the editor in chief.
- Seek alliances within the university.
- If needed, CMA can assign an investigator to your case and help as ombudsperson, so contact them.

I did find it reassuring that the CMA has people who, according to Lawrence, would drop what they were doing to help a fellow adviser out of a jam. Now that's what I like to hear. Lawrence handed out her business cards at the end of the session, and I think we all took one. Yikes, you never know.

Why Blog?

During this conference, it is not uncommon to hear advisors admonishing their students about attending sessions. We all worry about whether the students will be so excited over being in D.C. that they lose sight of what brought us here in the first place. One of my students, however, had the chance to give ME a hard time about attendance, after I was a no-show to “New Media and the 2008 Presidential Election,” an early-bird session that we were both planning to attend. (So much for leading by example. Thanks for saving me a seat anyway, Chris.)

I had spent most of the morning try to find free wi-fi so that I could e-mail an updated version of the JOUR 3600 exam to Mrs. B. (Mrs. Brocato, Marie and Sharis: thank you for making sure the test ran smoothly in my absence!) Consequently, my first session of the day turned out to be a mid-morning one: “BLOGGING FOR ADVISORS.” This year, the NSU group is blogging from the conference for the first time, and I was eager to find other ways that I could incorporate this new media tool in my classes and curriculum in the future.

The panelists – Rachele Kanigel, San Francisco State University; Joe Gisondi, Eastern Illinois University; and Christina Drain, Pensacola Junior College – showed examples of blogs that they had created and supported for journalism classes and student media, along with others they developed as personal teaching tools. The amount of time and creativity that they devoted to blogging was impressive and inspiring.

I left this session with high hopes for our “Student Media invades D.C.” blog. Eleven of us from NSU are writing about what we’ve seen, done and learned, in our own words, from our own points of view, over the course of our time in D.C. Yes, it’s an ambitious project to undertake in an already overscheduled 72-hour trip. Plus, we only have four laptops with us AND are too frugal to pay for the hotel’s ubiquitous Internet access.

However, if we can pull this off – and I wholeheartedly believe that we can – this project will exemplify what our journalism department and NSU student media can accomplish. Thank goodness I found some free wi-fi. We’re going to need it.

Dr. Lee

What the Law Allows

Podcasting, as it turns out, is currently surrounded by lots of legislation. This session explored in-depth copyright issues. We discussed Copyright laws that have been passed, the first in 1790, as well as one in 1976 that removed the defense that something was for educational purposes.

We talked about what things were eligible to receive copyrights, and which are not. Ideas, facts and titles are some examples of things that cannot necessarily be protected.

But podcasts are interesting in that it has not yet been determined if news content on them can be considered news. While stremaing is viewed legally as as public performance, a DPD podcast is distribution. Podcasts were called the TIVO of radio.

We learned that a copyright is valid for 95 years from its publication and 120 years after its creation.

Laser-dropping, the process of cutting two or more clips from a song and randomly using them on the air or in a piece, is not exempt from fees that have to be paid for permission. We also went into the importance of getting people to sign releases after they have participated in interviews online. The professor from Michigan who was leading the discussion shared a rather lengthy anecodote about a gubernatorial candidate whose campaign was ruined after he said something on a college radio station that ended up being spread all over the place until even the AP picked it up and ran with it.

Finally, we talked a little about Napster and the ligation in progress.

Jim Mustian

So you want to be a foreign correspondent?

This session started slow but ended being interesting for me. We watched a slide show about IES, which is a program that places students in internships in Europe, primarily Italy and Spain. This organization claims to help students on their way to becoming correspondents, with permanent work opportunities abroad. But only 7 percent of the students that receive positions are in any way shape or form affiliated with journalism. Their very best one is a girl they selected to come and give a brief testimony of her experiences.

The speakers told students in attendence how important it is to broaden horizons and acquire second language skills. The young lady who spoke had been placed in Italy and claimed to speak Italian. She did not, however, indicated whether she had learned the langauge within the four weeks she was there, or if she was born with it, etc. While they were right with their observations as to what students should shoot for when studying abroad, the following quote left me unimpressed with what they had to offer. "Someone will speak English, don't worry. And you'll be able to find a place to find a hamburger."

Part of the experience is not just learning Italian (or other foreign language) or broadcast journalism skills (they also kept a Webzine and posted video and news reports of a small town they covered) but also adopting a new culture. Going over in goups of 25, as they did, creates what linguists refer to as the ghetto effect, a phenomenon that precludes second language acquisition.

A gentleman seated to my right interjected at the end that he was from a university in St. Paul that offered a similar program in the German city of Trier, as well as an internship in the Twin Cities. I approached him and found it interesting that he was stationed at the same university I was at last year in Dortmund.

Jim Mustian