As you heard at orientation: Participating at least once a week (hopefully, more) in this classroom space is a required part of your Chips Quinn internship. This is a place for you to discuss—asynchronously as a group, or individually with me in chat -- general principles of writing, editing, photo-shooting, storycraft, as well as and specific stories you are working on or issues that arise in your newsrooms.
Please respond to this welcome post, using the posting tools below, with a brief introduction of who you are, what concerns you most about your leap into the Real World of journalism, and what skill (s) you want to start working on right away.
My name is Carlos M. Silva Jr.
-Lived in El Paso, Texas for 21 years; all spent around sports. Career goal is to become a sports journalist for a daily newspaper.
-Earning a degree in Communication (Print Media) at the University of Texas at El Paso.
-Currently residing in Tallahassee, Fla., enjoying a 10 to 12 week sports reporting internship at the Tallahassee Democrat.
-Moderator and Staff Writer for the Rivals.com Web site MinerDigs.net.
To be honest the real concern I have is being mediocre. The pressure of being at a daily newspaper gives me higher expectations. In turn I do not know if I will be able to write at that high level to begin with. The college paper was relaxed and now I am expected to turnaround stories in a day, rather than weeks. Also, I am worried that my lack of knowledge of the area teams may hinder some of my writing.
The skills I have worked on since beginning my internship were writing and editing. I feel you can never get enough in this business. I will also begin to work on my multimedia skills. Whether it be shooting photography, video or recording audio games, I must learn to get with the times.
My username gives away who I am, but I’ll introduce myself anyway. I’m Martha and I’m back at work in SoCal. I’m going to follow Carlos’ format (sorry for the lack of originality).
-Born and raised in Los Angeles County, Calif. (West Coast gal!)
-Graduated from Cal State, Dominguez Hills in May 2006
-Community Reporter for Excelsior (Spanish publication) in Santa Ana, Calif.
I left orientation with information overload. However, I’m looking forward to putting everything I learned into use. I have a handful of concerns. Multimedia is definitely on the top of the list. I’m confident with the level of knowledge I have about technology because I grew up around it, however, I came to the realization that I should know more. It’s my responsibility to become saavy in that aspect to remain competitive.
I’m looking forward to learning more about story ideas and how to write gripping and significant stories. There are so many of us writing about the same topics that I want to stand out and bring a delightful change to the daily routine of writing. I also returned sligtly more paranoid about making mistakes. If there were a time when being paranoid is a good thing, I believe this is one of them because I’m going to be that crazy lady who edits her stories to death. The new motto I live by is “Never Assume”. Assumption will be the death of me and my career. The more I think about it, this also applies to everyday life. Assuming leads to misunderstandings, among other things.
I have a positive outlook for my future. I know I will succeed because I’m not one to half a$$ anything and I want nothing more than to have a successful journalism career. Thanks to to the great people I’m surrounded by, from mentors to my new chipster family and friends I know I’ll be OK. What I’m not too certain about is my love life. Who I’m going to choose for my spouse? I need to become a great judge of character for my own good, or else, I won’t be among those successful happily ever after stories we heard so much about during orientation.
I apologize to Mary Ann and everyone else if I veered off a bit from the topic.
My name is Ana Cubias.
-Born and raise in El Salvador. I moved to the U.S. about six years ago and lived in Los Angeles since then.
-Earned a degree in Journalism with a minor in Journalism in Spanish from California State University, Northridge in December 2007
-I will be working as a staff reporter for the Ventura County Star tomorrow, so I’m really exited.
I still have a few hours before my internship starts and I can feel the pressure in my head and in my shoulders. As a recent graduate I have many concerns as I begin to enter in the Real World of journalism. One of them, it’s the fear to make a mistake. During the whole orientation that just ended yesterday, accuracy and fact checking were very much emphasized. I’m also concern to fail as a reporter and let my family down. Since I have not written for a couple of months I feel that I’m forgetting things maybe is just my imagination or maybe this fear is part of feeling nervous.
I want to start working on improving my writing, my leads and my overall reporting as soon as possible, so Mary Ann I will be asking you for a lot of advices.
As for now I wish you all good luck in this new adventure.
To be honest the real concern I have is being mediocre.
Carlos & Others:
This is a GOOD concern to have! It means that you can start right now to prevent it. There are two ways people become mediocre: 1.) They get comfortable with where they are and no longer feel the need to keep learning new stuff and improving. 2.) They allow mediocrity in their environment to set standards for them.
By virtue of your being in this program, you WILL be learning new stuff, so ...
And, don’t allow anyone or anything in your environment to lower your personal standards.
If you hold to those two things, you won’t be mediocre (or as my onetime writing coach used to say, “a Hot-3...").
I promise. Deal?
looking forward to learning more about story ideas and how to write gripping and significant stories. There are so many of us writing about the same topics that I want to stand out and bring a delightful change to the daily routine of writing.
Martha et al:
this is one thing we will DEFINITELY be doing in this group space—talking about story ideas, and interesting and fresh ways of approaching everyday stories....When we get going, I will start a new thread that has examples of wonderful short (fresh, interesting, innovative) daily stories for you to study and use as models and for us to talk about. thx!
Ana—as we emphasized at orientation, probably a “mistake” or two will be made along the way. Key is, if and when it happens, let your editor know right away,be able to explain exactly how it happened, learn from it, and redouble your efforts to make accuracy your personal mission.
Everyone: Don’t forget, you are interns (and in some cases, new hires). You are not expected to know everything straight off. Don’t hesitate to tell your editor that you’re not sure of something, you don’t understand, you’ve never done such and such before, so does she have some advice on how to approach, because you want to learn how to do it right, etc. Worst mistake you can make at this point: To go out on an assignment not understanding what you’re supposed to be doing & what’s expected of you!
I was born Christopher E. Vongsarath in Modesto, Calif. in 1984. I’ve lived there for most of my life, but I’ve also taken up residence in the Bay Area, Southern California and Chico (for college). Like I said, I graduated from California State University, Chico with a degree in journalism, focus on news-editorial, with a minor in history (still not sure why I chose that).
To be honest I wish I had this kind of orientation going into my internship this past summer because it would have helped SO much. But now that I am a full-time employee, I’ve learned some of what to do and what not to do in the newsroom. I guess my biggest concern after being here for four months is what Carlos touched on - being mediocre. What scares me most is the thought of getting too comfortable with what I am doing and having it reflect poorly on the work I produce. I recall several nights when I was the last one in the newsroom struggling to write about a story that I did not care about (which probably meant it wasn’t a story to begin with), and questioning whether or not I made the right career choice. In those times, I think back to why I first wanted to be journalist, which was to make it to the big time, either with Newsweek for news or ESPN or Sports Illustrated for sports. It’s a dream that I’m sure many of us had when we chose our colleges and majors, but to keep it alive has been difficult to say the least.
Mary Ann, you are absolutely right about wanting to improve and learn because that really nurtures the passion that can sometimes get lost with the day-to-day grind of less-than-exciting journalism. The new doors and experiences that open up when you keep your eyes open and ears to the ground are what really keeps you going. Someone once told me that to make a story great and to really understand the issue, you have to throw caution to the wind and dive right in. It’s something worth remembering, but at the same time, it has also been difficult to apply.
Nonetheless, there are a lot of skills I would like to begin applying, most notably new techniques I learned about reporting and finding sources. The workshop for developing new story ideas was also helpful. But what really stuck was when I heard Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor for the Detroit Free Press, speak about character versus skill. As Mr. Grimm said, the latter can be learned, but the former should be innate. It a test of character against credentials, and up until this past weekend I always thought I had it in me and the only thing I was lacking was the experience and necessary skills. I now question that. I know with experience I will get better and refine my craft, but again, like Mr. Grimm said, changing one’s character takes much time and effort. This is not to say I am completely fed up with my current situation - there are definitely days when I love my job - but I guess it is up to me to find the right balance between the ups and downs.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on for much longer than I should have, but this is where my thinking is right now. Hopefully with Mary Ann’s and everyone’s input, I can gain some perspective on my concerns.
Hello to Everyone. This is Matthew Cooper.
I am a wise 22 years old, and I was born and raised in Oakland, California. I moved across the country for college in 2003 because of I wanted to meet other people from different parts of the world, and see snow too. I just recently graduated from Howard University( home of the infamous pedophile soccer coach) in Washington, DC with a degree in Print Journalism. I have interests in both sports and local news coverage, everyday I flip flop between which one I want to do.
I have been working for the past two weeks at my internship paper, The Jackson Sun in Jackson, Tn. I have really enjoyed this opportunity, it has been pretty fun to be the watchdog for local sports teams, and being the story teller of the games and athletes. Today wasn’t so fun however, when there were tornadoes in the area of the game I was covering, and the lights went out in the gym. Being a California guy, that was a little frightening.
I really don’t have any fears for my internship. I just take plan to take every day step by step, and hope to get better in every aspect of my job and a person. My major concern is what I will do after the internship. I want to continue to be in the newsroom and thrive, not just be a one-time intern and then go to work at UPS delivering packages to the newsroom. Getting a job after these ten weeks is major concern and goal.
What I will try to learn is like everyone else do some multimedia experience. There will be opportunities to do audio interviews, and video recording during the internship, and I hope my editor will give me the opportunity to learn with multimedia and online editors. I also want to do a better job of gathering my own ideas for features, and become a better feature writer as well.
My major concern is what I will do after the internship. I want to continue to be in the newsroom and thrive, not just be a one-time intern and then go to work at UPS delivering packages to the newsroom. Getting a job after these ten weeks is major concern and goal.
Matthew et al:
A wonderful piece of advice, by one of my wise colleagues and mentors, Mary Kay Blake of the Freedom Forum (paraphrasing badly, here):
If you pay close attention to the here and now of the job you are doing, the next job will come along. If you set your sights and goals on how to bag the next opportunity, you may lose the opportunity you now have, and thus, new ones.
Several of you said in our last group that your fear was not finding a job after this. There’s nothing you can do about that now, or about what the job market will offer when the time comes. What you CAN do something about is how you perform (yes, skill AND character, thank you, Joe Grimm) today.
thx for the good comments, all!
but I guess it is up to me to find the right balance between the ups and downs.
Folks—Chris has hit on an important thing here. There WILL be ups and downs. For the downs, we are all here for each other ... let’s help each other keep ‘em at bay.
I really wish I could get my shot at shooting some footage about firefighters responding to an emergency. I think that would be really good experience in shooting video.
Argenis—this is a thrilling prospect! Keep us posted!
I feel like I am oblivious to the world around me. Living in the same town for all of my 24 years of life (Chico, Calif.) and hardly ever leaving for long periods of time can do that to someone. So, since I never moved away from my hometown I’ve been a feline my whole life. I was a Chapman Elementary Wildcat, a Chico Junior Cougar, a Chico High Panther and a Chico State Wildcat - a complete circle.
So I graduated with degree in Journalism (emphasis on News Editorial) and a minor in español. Coming into my internship I am nervous that I am too slow turning edited papers in. At the school paper I would have to edit once or twice a week and here I have to edit five days a week. Also, I am not coming in here with the intention to slack off. I’d like to think that I’m a serious guy who wants to take this job seriously as well.
I’m hoping to learn the most I can when it comes to the copy desk. I want to leave that newsroom, at the end of my internship, with the capability of reading a story, proofing it and busting out a headline for it. (It currently takes me about 15 minutes to even think about a crappy headline let alone a mediocre one.)
I’m hoping to learn the most I can when it comes to the copy desk. I want to leave that newsroom, at the end of my internship, with the capability of reading a story, proofing it and busting out a headline for it. (It currently takes me about 15 minutes to even think about a crappy headline let alone a mediocre one.)
The best advice I can give on that front is watch television and pay attention to your surroundings. My best headlines have played of famous skits from Conan O’Brien or restaurant names that I have encountered. Of course this is sports, but I feel it can be used in other situations to broaden your thinking.
[quote author="Sergio" date="1201737648" I want to leave that newsroom, at the end of my internship, with the capability of reading a story, proofing it and busting out a headline for it. (It currently takes me about 15 minutes to even think about a crappy headline let alone a mediocre one.)
Sergio (and others)—Headlines are a great topic of discussion. What makes a good one? Where do they come from (love the advice, Watch TV and keep up with popular culture....). Are there any qualities a good headline has that you also find in good news writing or good quotes?
Something to think about…
I forgot to mention that Mary Ann. I have also used quotes in headlines, which portray what the author is writing. Normally they entice to reader to find out why that person said that. The main thing is to hook the reader with the headline, give them something in the first three paragraphs and crank out a good story that elaborates on those points.
Doing that on deadline? Makes it difficult, but its not impossible.
