Quill and Scroll Magazine April/May 2010

Quill & Scroll • April/May 2010 1

Quill & ScrollApril/May 2010

WorkshopsAre you going?

Students and teachers should get ajournalism skills upgrade this summer

Copyright hazardsSPLC tips to avoid trouble

2 Quill & Scroll • April/May 2010

Students greatly benefit from the interaction with instructors at summer journalism workshops. Lauren Zomparelli, York Community HS, Ill., received feedback on her advertising campaign from Indiana Daily Student newspaper staff at the High School Journalism Institute. Photo by Jessica Haney, Indiana University

About This Photo


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Touch of Class

Quill & ScrollVolume 84 • Issue 4

Editor and Business ManagerVAnessA sheltonExecutive Director, Quill and Scroll Society

Assistant EditorcristinA sArnelli

Junior, University of Iowa

Contributing EditorsJulie e. DoDDProfessor, College of Journalism and Mass Communication The University of Florida, Gainesville

Bruce e. KonKleProfessor, College of JournalismUniversity of South Carolina, Columbia

Book EditorBArBArA BeAlor hinesProfessor, Mass Communication and MediaStudies, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

QUILL & SCROLL (ISSN: 0033-6505) is the Official Magazine of the International Honorary Society for High School Journalists. As the official publication of Quill and Scroll, this magazine carries authoritative notices and information about the Society. Editorial and Business Offices: School of Journalism and Mass Communication, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. Telephone: (319) 335-3457 FAX: (319) 335-3989. Web site:www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc; e-mail: [email protected]

QUILL & SCROLL invites contributors to submit manuscripts for publication. All contribu-tors will be considered, but the magazine assumes no responsibility for damage to or loss of unsolicited manuscripts. Address all correspondence to the Editorial Offices.

QUILL & SCROLL is published bi-monthly October through May by Quill and Scroll Society. Periodicals postage paid at Iowa City, IA, and at additional mailing offices.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $17 per year in advance in United States and Possessions. Single Copies, $5. Checks and money orders should be made payable to QUILL AND SCROLL. Change of Address: Five weeks advance notice required. Send old and new address and label from current issue to Iowa City address. Claims for non-delivery must be filed within 30 days following publication. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Quill and Scroll, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, The University of Iowa, 100 Adler Journalism Bldg., Room E346, Iowa City, IA 52242-2004.

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In This Issue

J-camps: A HistoryJournalism workshops have seen typewriters, darkrooms, and Photoshop, oh my!!

Quill and Scroll membership is indicative of academic and journalism excellence.

On Our CoverToday’s summer journalism workshops offer state-of-the-art equipment, and continue to teach journalism fundamentals, traits shared with their predecessors. For instance, broadcast news students use digital production facilities at the Univeristy of Iowa workshops, established more than 50 years ago. Learn about current workshop offerings on page 4; and pioneering programs on page 6. Photo by Jackie Schultz, Bearden High School, Tennessee.

Features

ColumnsJEA NotesBy Jack Kennedy

April/May

Join the Official Quill and Scroll Group on Facebook or visit us online at www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc/

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66

CSPAA NotesBy Kathleen D. Zwiebel

SPLC NotesBy Frank D. LoMonte

Journalism & TechnologyBy Julie E. Dodd and Judy Robinson

14Newest Books in JournalismBy Barbara Bealor Hines

By Kathleen Serino

By Karen Flowers

By Kathleen Serino

Learn why workshops are popular destinations of high school journalism students and teachers.

Summer Workshops


S U

M M

E RW KO R S H PO S


T

Kathleen serino

Junior journalism majorUniversity of Iowa

Why you should go

To attend journalism camp, or not to attend? That is the question.

Today’s summer journalism workshops have much to offer: top-notch educators, technologies and facilities. But these features aren’t solely why high school students go, or why advisers send them. Campers are able to work with visiting professionals and other high school advisers outside of the high school bubble, while getting a healthy dose of college life.

“Camp is really the opportunity you have to teach and really the opportunity for them to learn,” said Gary Lindsay, who has taught in newspaper workshops at the University of Iowa and is also the North Central Regional Director of the Journalism Education Association.

Lindsay, a newspaper adviser at Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said he has an advantage because he’s taught at workshops since the late 90s. He has been sending high school students to these camps for years.

Working with students in a workshop setting removes Lindsay from his less personal front-of-class teaching role. Immersing himself into camp allows him to better interact with the students because of the concentrated amount of time provided to produce great work, he said.

Alison Sullivan, an enthusiastic camper from last summer’s University of Iowa Summer Journalism Workshops, absorbed everything her editing workshop offered.

“It opened my eyes,” she said. “I went there not knowing where I wanted to go in journalism, but the [instructors and resources] opened a lot of doors for me.”

David Schwartz, director of the Iowa program, said 170 campers came from 13 states last year.

“To take a week out of your summer it takes

your interest, your effort and your money, quite frankly,” he said of potential campers. “We try to make it worth their while.”

Teachers also look at these occasions as concentrated bursts of media education because they have time to spend with students showing rather than just telling.

“Are [students] going to be told what to do or taught how to do it?” Jim McCrossen, an adviser at Blue Valley Northwest High School, asks when considering workshops.

Outside of his duties at the Overland Park, Kan., high school, McCrossen is the president of the Kansas Scholastic Press Association, and teaches at journalism workshops at Ball State and Kansas universities, among other yearbook camps around the country.

The Kansas Journalism Institute will feature seven “strands” of journalism at its five-day workshop this summer. Through seminars and writing workshops, KJI’s main goal is to encourage breakthroughs in how to make student media more relevant and cost-effective.

McCrossen said he enjoys the camps because he gets to work with students who really want to learn, play, develop camaraderie and plan for the next year’s high school publications.

Students and teachers alike have been attending the High School Journalism Institute’s summer workshops, sponsored by Indiana University’s School of Journalism in Bloomington, since 1946.

Last summer 483 students enrolled in the assortment of five-day labs, which are geared

toward helping students assess and improve their high school media, according to director Teresa White.

The Institute experimented with a new student Web site under White’s guidance last summer, said Jessica Haney, an IU junior majoring in journalism who works with the program. The site helped showcase student work, which was essentially anything they wanted to contribute, just for an opportunity to publish clips, she said.

Outstanding students, like senior Dylan Hodges of Avon High School in Indiana, were selected to contribute to the site’s blog. Hodges, 17, said he appreciated the opportunity to contribute. He’s attended two years’ worth of HJI workshops: editing and desktop design. The design lab was very beneficial to his mastery of Adobe programs, said Hodges, who plans to enroll at IU in public relations or journalism in the fall in hopes of representing a major media company after college.

That’s one of the major returns from these workshops, according to organizers: The influence they have on college attendance and news media careers.

Sullivan, 18, will study journalism at the University of Iowa and join The Daily Iowan student newspaper on a four-year scholarship. She is grateful the workshop helped her get her foot in the door by introducing her to future instructors and campus.

“The camp really changed my life,” she said.

Students immerse themselves in learning and produce better work at summer journalism workshops. Indiana University High School Journalism Institute instructor Greg Mosely gives feedback to Kaitlin Mitchell of Assumption High School, Louisville, Ky., on her yearbook spread design. Photo by Jessica Haney, Indiana University.


J-camps: A History

The school year has flown by and summer is staring you in the face.

Which is why you’re reading this — the idea of a media workshop has piqued your interest. Found across the nation, these camps are a staple for scholastic journalists and their teachers.

For decades, students have learned by doing at summer journalism workshops. At the Indiana High School Journalism Institute, Kendall Ciesemier of Wheaton North HS, Ill., works on a broadcast news package.

Photo by Jessica Haney.


J-camps: A HistorySummer workshops, or j-camps as some

affectionately call them, have been available, many through university journalism programs, for decades. They have transformed over the years from the days of working on typewriters and cutting tape on reels in stuffy classrooms to today’s students operating state-of-the-art technology in modern facilities. These new upgrades all help students perform the fundamentals of solid journalism -- telling stories -- while still encouraging journalistic integrity.

The changing face of summer workshops is apparent at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., which declares its National High School Institute dating back to 1931, the oldest and largest university summer series for high schoolers.

Nowadays, the aptly named Cherubs, students of the program, explore blogging and other digital journalism thanks to the mandatory Sunday evening class about how to be an all-platform journalist to keep pace of changing communication practices. Students also enhance the Web site to inform prospective students about the upcoming program.

The rigorous program boasts an array of students, domestic and international. According to Roger Boye, director of NHSI, students came from 25 states and regions abroad last summer. This year’s applications have come from Taiwan, France, Canada and South Korea to name a few.

“Ten years ago it was almost unheard of to have a student from abroad,” Boye said. “The last two to three years it has become much more common.”

A relatively newer entrant among summer journalism workshops is Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. In 1966, its journalism department first offered summer workshops mainly for high school students involved in yearbook. Since then, the offerings have expanded and morphed with the times.

In the past two years, according to workshops assistant director Megan McNames, new workshops have been added to the mix: Start Your Upload, a free workshop that provides students and advisers with free Web sites and hosting to create news sites for their schools; and the Daily News Experience, which allows campers to produce an entire issue of the college’s award-winning newspaper.

The workshops also feature mini sessions on social media, photography for the non-photographer and how to jazz up a publication’s designs. There are also classes for online journalism, infographics and alternative storytelling.

“We also discuss multimedia journalism, not just in these online classes but throughout

the workshops programs,” McNames said. “Not only are students and advisers learning valuable professional skills, but having a publications Web site with multimedia can help some programs save money, include more students and connect with readers.”

Like BSU, Indiana University’s High School Journalism Institute recently vamped up some amenities, director Teresa White said. Instructors started working with new digital audio recorders and Flip Video cameras for the new Web site, hsji.org, and this summer campers will work with them as well.

A multimedia workshop will be added this year to encourage backpack journalism, where students learn to shoot and edit basic video for the Internet.

Not only has programming radically changed over the years, but so have facilities.

Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s Summer Journalism Workshop began in 1982, after an air-conditioned dorm was built and students could weather the New York heat, according to director Ed Sullivan.

The Cal Poly Journalism Workshop is still going strong after almost 60 years. Established in 1951, it is promoted on a Web site that states it is “the finest, longest-running, most unique high school summer journalism program in the country.”

The workshop was spawned by William Randolph Hearst’s idea of training high school writers to cover their sports teams for the Los Angeles Examiner, according to reporter Larry Welborn of the Orange County Register.

Today the two-week workshop, held at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, is like a playground for budding high school journalists eager to break in their shoe leather reporting skills.

A blend of media professionals and journalism educators train the students in a unique approach that includes a list of 35 journalistic tasks students must complete. They may include attending press conferences, covering trials, reporting on fantastic simulated breaking events, producing TV newscasts and publishing a newspaper.

While many of the workshops facilitate new media platforms to keep up with the times, they are also perfect places to instill the traditions that underpin journalistic practice.

Like most workshops with a long history, it is the place where the old meets the new.

“We think it’s very important for students to think about new media,” McNames said. “But we know that any good journalism education starts with the basics of sound news judgment, media law and ethics and a commitment to insightful, truthful storytelling.”

• • • Kathleen Serino


Contests. Scholarships. Evaluations. Honor Society. Publications.

All of these resources and awards are available from Quill and Scroll, an international organization formed in 1926 by a group of high school advisers and renowned pollster George H. Gallup to encourage and recognize individual student achievement in academics, journalism and scholastic media.

Advisers who talk about Quill and Scroll usually talk about the honor society into

which their students can be inducted. Access to such an honor is an important aspect of the society, but Quill and Scroll has so much more.

THE CHARTER. If you are not one of the more than 14,000 high schools in all 50 states and 44 foreign countries that have been granted a charter, you need to be. Having this impressive document hanging in the media room invites an environment of professionalism.

Once your school has a charter, it never has to apply again. Charters are granted for the lifetime of the school and there are no annual dues. The school’s chapter of Quill and Scroll will receive a handbook with organizational suggestions and ideas for services to be performed by chapter members.

If you don’t know whether your school has a charter or not, visit the Quill and Scroll Web site www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc where member-schools are listed alphabetically by state; or e-mail [email protected] or phone: (319) 335-3457.

THE HONORS. All media advisers in chartered schools, or member schools as they are sometimes referred to, can induct students

into the international honorary society of Quill and Scroll. Membership should be to the high school journalist just as much (or more) of an honor as to be inducted into the Beta Club or the National Honor Society.

The standards are clear. They (1) must be in the upper third of their class in general scholastic standing, either for the year of their election or for the cumulative total of all high school work; (2) must have done superior work in some phase of journalism or school media - magazine, newspaper, yearbook, Web site, news bureau or radio/television station; (3) must be recommended by the teacher, adviser, supervisor or by the committee governing media; (4) must be of sophomore, junior or senior classification; and (5) must be approved by the Quill and Scroll Executive Director.

This last qualification means the adviser needs to send in the list of student member recommendations to Quill and Scroll headquarters. Nomination forms are available on the Quill and Scroll Web site www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc, where advisers can also order membership materials such as honor cords for graduating members, pins to recognize staff

Karen Flowers

Director Southern Interscholastic Press Association

South Carolina Scholastic Press Association

Add a touch of class to yourscholastic media program

http://www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc

mailto:[email protected]




achievements and T-shirts.Members receive membership cards,

pins and Quill & Scroll magazine. They also have access to resources including CDs with images of contest winners in PowerPoint presentations, and the popular Quill and Scroll Stylebook and the Principal’s Guide.

THE CONTESTS. Society members can enter yearbook, writing and photography contests to win recognition not only for themselves, but also for their schools and their media. Seniors who win are eligible to apply for scholarships. Winners will also receive Quill and Scroll’s National Award Gold Key.

Entry fees are $2 per entry with a $90 maximum fee for the yearbook contest and $96 maximum for the writing and photo contest. Entry forms are online at www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc.

The Yearbook Excellence Contest deadline is Nov. 1. You can find the specific date each year on the Quill and Scroll Web site. Awards are presented in 12 divisions in two enrollment categories – schools of more than 750 students, and schools with 749 or fewer students. Divisions are theme development, student life, academics, clubs or organizations, sports, people, advertising, graphics, index and sports action, academic and feature photography.

The Writing and Photo Contest deadline is Feb. 5. Like the yearbook contest, awards

are presented in 12 divisions. Divisions are editorial, editorial cartoon, news, feature and sports stories, general and review columns, individual and team indepth reporting, advertisement, news-feature and sports photography. Submissions from newspapers, news magazines and online news sites are eligible.

NEWS EVALUATION. The News Media Evaluation is not like any you will receive from state, regional or other national organizations. In fact, advisers who have used this service will tell you the evaluation itself, although helpful, is not as important to the newspaper or news magazine staff as the self-analysis the adviser and staff must go through before sending the newspapers in for a judge to provide feedback

The process of going through the scorebook forces staffs and their advisers to really think about what they do, what they believe and the reasons why. The $75 entry fee is worth every penny. Entry forms are available online.

The scorebooks are mailed to schools the end of April, so staffs and advisers have the month of May before the summer begins to work on the self-analysis. Working on the self-analysis often provides ideas for the staff to work on in the summer and weaknesses to try to strengthen at summer workshops.

Visit the www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc for forms and more information.

As the school year closes, here’s a Quill and Scroll preview of next year. These are some important deadlines to note on your calendar:

Nov. 1 – Yearbook Excellence ContestFeb. 5 – International Writing, Photo ContestApril 15 – Benz Scholarship for teachersApril 16 – News Media Evaluation registrationMay 10 – College scholarships for seniorsJune 11 – News Media Evaluation Scorebooks and newspapers

Check our Web site www.uiowa.edu/~quill-sc for membership and entry forms, programs and other resources.

Stay InformedWe’re posting more information online;

consequently, Quill & Scroll magazine will publish only twice per year – one in the fall and one in the spring. Plus, we’ll continue to send periodic member e-mail messages, as we did this year, to keep advisers informed.

In the fall, also worth repeating is our glossy, colorful membership brochure – similar to the one mailed this year. Keep an eye open for it!

Looking Ahead





’‘Jack Kennedy

PresidentJournalism Education Association

JEA NOTES

if we believe there are things that can be done to make our school communities even better than they are, we need editorials.

Express effective opinions

Several weeks ago I saw an insightful – and disturbing – entry on the JEA Student Press Rights Commission blog. Commission Chair John Bowen noted that in the course of judging various newspaper writing competitions in the past few months, he had noticed a decline in the number of unsigned editorials.

He wrote: “Some [papers] do not expand their reporting beyond that of showing what surrounds them. What is reported includes cafeteria menus, game scores and requests to get involved in school activities. In some cases it’s even hard to differentiate between fact and opinion writing. The I dominates the we of editorial leadership.”

I commented on the post, writing that possible causes for the disappearance of editorial leadership in scholastic journalism could include:

◊ Students are scared. ◊ Advisers are scared. ◊ Everyone is turned off by the proliferation of ill-considered rhetoric in the media. ◊ Readers simply do not look to their own student press for leadership.◊ We (students and advisers) are not very comfortable with persuasive essay style.

It is likely that a combination of all five of the above is responsible for more and more scholastic papers simply dropping the staff editorial.

Bowen is alarmed by this trend. So am I.You should be too.The classic mission statement for a

newspaper is to “inform, entertain and

persuade.” When that final verb is removed, where can student leadership emerge? From the school announcements? From pep assemblies? From student government? Look, all those are fine institutions, but are they really the forums for considered debate? The accessible homes for provocative writing that get an entire community talking?

Just to be clear, when I refer to an editorial I am thinking of persuasive pieces of writing that represent the official viewpoint of the publication. We might term them formal essays, complete with a third person voice. These are usually voted on by the editorial board, or even the entire staff, and therefore are not signed by an individual.

Staff editorials are not optional.If we believe there are things that can be

done to make our school communities even better than they are, we need editorials.

If we got into journalism as a way to help make things a bit better in our school communities, we need editorials.

If we believe there is even a small chance that our communities want to move forward, to get better, we need editorials.

News, features, sports and entertainment coverage mirrors the way your school, your community, your world and your readers are.

Editorials can illustrate your school, community, world and readers as they could be. Think of the power in that!

Editorials come in various styles, but all share the basics of good persuasive writing: They hook the attention of the reader and are obviously relevant. They present a clear claim, backed up by powerful evidence. They acknowledge opposing views, while presenting evidence that their own claims are stronger. And they end with a call to action, or a call for change.

The editorial of criticism is the style most people first think of. This editorial’s exigence, or inspiration is a problem, and the claim involves some sort of suggested solution. Beware of editorials consisting merely of problems with no clear solutions. Such pieces

would better be labeled as whining.The editorial of praise is underused, and a

great place to start as an editorial writer, since praise is likely less provocative than criticism. This is a place to highlight students and adults in your community whose contributions are overlooked.

Editorials can also come out for or against a proposal (for instance, arguing against a plan to go to a four-day school week as proposed by a cash-strapped school board), or can be part of an editorial campaign (perhaps a series on respect for one another in the halls) running over several issues.

The important thing is to put into clear language the views of your staff, and to encourage your readers to respond in some way.

Of course, such power can be dangerous, if mishandled, which is a great reason for editors and staff to take a summer journalism workshop. Everyone needs to work on developing a voice for their publication, and there is no better way to begin than through a staff or editorial board retreat.

If a staff is going to speak with one voice, that staff needs to listen to one another, to understand various positions, to research opinions. Great editorials demand lots of talk, lots of options, and lots of evaluation of competing claims.

The last thing the world needs is another ill-considered, shoot-from-the-hip screed guaranteed to get people arguing about the paper itself and not the issue.

The world does need thoughtful, well-researched and provocative persuasive writing that moves certain issues to the top of the conversation list. That moves readers to discuss what is wrong, or right, in our communities.

A great staff editorial resembles a great teacher, who presents problems to students, who nudges them in certain directions, and who cares enough about them to allow dissent, or alternative solutions.

Have we been doing any teaching in our newspapers lately?


CSPAA NOTES

Express effective opinions

The best way to ensure your publication’s success for the 2010-2011 school year is attend a summer journalism workshop. The staff and adviser can focus on teamwork building and acquiring essential knowledge while editors will develop expertise in all facets of their media and learn leadership skills.

Editors need to learn how to enable their staff members to find their strengths and how to balance the different personalities and variety of skills on staff.

At a workshop, editors and staffers learn how to set clear goals, communicate with each other and establish harmony in staff relationships. With the focused team-building efforts and activities at a workshop, staffers learn to complement and balance each other.

The workshop experience also enables staff and editors to understand their responsibilities. In addition, they learn how to maintain the highest standards of scholastic journalism and how to determine the content of their media.

Workshops focusing on the verbal and visual criteria for each type of medium are held in almost every state. Skills, including news, feature, sports, column, editorial, opinion, review, headline, and cutline writing; digital photography/photojournalism; layout/design and concept development; merchandising publications; developing time management skills; proofreading and editing; how to use multimedia and much more are covered.

Drawing students from across the nation is the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s Summer Workshop, which takes place on the Columbia University campus in New York City from June 20 -June 25.

The 2010 workshop features its first-ever Digital Media Boot Camp for students. This scholastic media convergence workshop will be taught by Jacob Palenske. Palenske

is president of NCompass Media, LLC in Dallas, Texas, co-director of the European Exposure photography workshop, and was an instructor in residence for the high school program at The Poynter Institute.

According to Palenske, these days, tweets don’t come from birds. A WordPress doesn’t use paper. Streams don’t have water; feeds don’t involve food, and slideshows don’t contain slides. In the brave new world of convergence journalism, technology can be as hard to understand and implement as the terminology.

Not anymore.Palenske describes the Boot Camp as six

intense days, where participants learn what a converged story is, and how to deliver it over every modern medium using words, photos, audio and video. They’ll gain the skills to publish online, easily and inexpensively without knowing a shred of HTML, PHP, ASP or any other confusing acronym.

Get ready to wade into streams, fire up a WordPress and gorge yourself on feeds. It’s so easy, you’ll be sitting outside, enjoying the sunshine and the tweets in no time.

The second Digital Media Boot Camp is for advisers. This session will be taught by Duy Linh Tu, a co-founder and the creative director of Resolution Seven, a commercial, documentary and DVD production studio. He is a writer, videographer, photographer and multimedia consultant. Prior to forming Resolution Seven, Duy founded and was chief operations officer of Missing Pixel, an award-winning interactive production company.

Duy has worked at ABC News in London, and has shot for other major networks such as MTV, CBS News Productions and the Food Network, as well as for independent filmmakers. Duy, who holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, is in production on two documentaries and travels to newsrooms worldwide to provide consulting and training to multimedia journalists.

Advisers who participate in CSPA’s Digital Media Boot Camp will receive an overview on how to shoot digital photographs and video, create a Web site using a content management system such as WordPress and how to organize their class to create a publication online.

The class will also cover legal and copyright issues concerning digital media publishing.

Continuing with the emphasis on new media, students in CSPA’s Digital Photography class will learn to shoot photographs for use in all student media. Special attention will be given to shooting academic, sports/

action and photo stories/picture packages. Environmental portraits will also play a part in the daily assignments.

The class will also practice other styles of photography, including architecture, time exposure and fine art.

Students will work individually as well as in teams, and have their work critiqued.

Leaving the class with a substantial portfolio of shots taken during the week will be a major goal. Organizing and managing publication photo staffs will also be emphasized.

Mark Murray, the coordinator of technology systems for the Arlington school district in Texas, and executive director of the Association of Texas Photography Instructors, is the instructor.

Jenny Dial will teach Digital Design for Newspapers. This sequence is for newspaper students and designers who want to kick the paper’s total package up a notch. The focus will be on page design that brings stories and photos to life, new trends professional papers are utilizing and how to give papers an identity. Page designers, photographers, advisers and even writers who want to learn how to take the paper to another level are welcome.

Dial is a sportswriter at the Houston Chronicle. A graduate of The University of Oklahoma, Dial has worked for publications such as the San Antonio Express News, Dallas Morning News, USA Today and Sports Illustrated.

In addition to the media convergence and digital media workshops, students can also choose from traditional newspaper reporting and writing, page editing and editors-in-chief classes. Nationally known journalism experts, including Robert Greenman, Bobby Hawthorne, Bretton Zinger, Jane Blystone, Helen Smith and I, teach these sections.

Check out the CSPA Web site at http://cspa.columbia.edu/ for additional information and registration forms.

There are numerous other summer journalism workshops available across the nation, many of which are also offering instruction in multimedia journalism.

Lists of workshops by state are available on the Journalism Education Association Web site www.jea.org and on the Dow Jones News Fund site https://www.newspaperfund.org. DJNF also sponsors workshops for students facing participation barriers.

The opportunities are there for all journalism advisers and students. Start making your plans now and get a jumpstart on the 2010-2011 publication year.

Retool skills this summer

Kathleen D. Zwiebel

CSPAA Past PresidentChair of Honors Committee

http://www.jea.org

https://www.newspaperfund.org


Frank D. loMonte

Executive DirectorStudent Press Law Center

SPLC NOTES

Avoid copyright traps

Here’s a quick way to stop a media lawyer’s heart. Show him a newspaper sprinkled with photographs credited: “Courtesy of Associated Press.”

Then tell him you didn’t pay for the photos. Or get permission to use them.

The high school journalism adviser who proudly showed me this newspaper – no names, for goodness sake – seemed genuinely surprised to learn that, if you don’t have consent to reprint a photo, “Courtesy of Associated Press” isn’t a curative measure. It’s a signed confession.

Hundreds of times a year, the hotline at the Student Press Law Center rings with a question that starts like this: “We found the perfect picture on Google Images, and…”

If you are 17, the concept of copyright protection of online images understandably seems like some quaint Elizabethan code of chivalry. And in practice, it sometimes feels that way.

Undeniably, getting into legal trouble for reusing content found online is about as common as being pulled over for driving 56 miles per hour on the highway. Everyone’s doing it and no one’s getting caught – or so it seems.

In fact, student journalists do occasionally face threats of legal action for redistributing copyrighted material without permission. A North Carolina high school journalist recently got a scary letter from recording artist John Fogerty’s music company, demanding the student pull down an online video montage using a Fogerty song as its soundtrack. (He complied, and the threat went away.)

In Pennsylvania, a middle school student whose MySpace page ridiculed her principal was disciplined in part for what the school regarded as copyright infringement – cutting-and-pasting the principal’s photo from the

district Web site into the MySpace profile without consent. (The discipline was recently upheld by a federal appeals court in the case of J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, despite the student’s claim that her speech was protected by the First Amendment.)

To understand the legal risks of republishing material found on the Web, let’s look at a very recent court case involving the Twilight/New Moon book and movie series.

A company called Beckett Media, LLC, published two issues of a fan magazine devoted to all things Twilight. Summit Entertainment, the owner of the rights to the films, filed a copyright infringement suit, claiming that Beckett improperly used still photos from the Twilight movies in its fanzines.

According to the lawsuit, some of the stills were not part of the press kit the producers made available for media use; and stills from the press kit were altered in ways that violated the terms of use. In other words, the suit alleges, the publicity shots could be used only under certain contractual conditions, and Beckett’s magazine did not comply.

On Jan. 12, 2010, a U.S. district judge in the Central District of California restricted Beckett’s use of Twilight images, finding that Summit Entertainment had shown a likelihood that the magazine violated copyright.

Still think it’s harmless to republish celebrity photos found by searching Google Images?

Understand that a commercial fan magazine is a bit different animal than a student news outlet. Copyright law recognizes a broad set of “fair use” defenses that protect some – but not all – uses for educational, scholarly and journalistic purposes, even if the original creator of the work has not given consent.

A major factor in determining whether using others’ material is “fair” is whether the work is resold for a profit. A student-produced newspaper provided free to a limited local audience is much less likely to be infringing copyright than a nationally sold magazine.

But don’t be fooled – even giving away valuable content (photos, songs, videos) free of charge can still be an infringement. If you put the latest Newsweek magazine through the copier and hand-out free reproductions on the street, even if you don’t make a dime, the result is every recipient is one less person who’ll be interested in buying it.

That’s the key to understanding fair use. If what you’re doing with valuable creative work fully substitutes for the original – e.g., you post an entire episode of “Lost” on YouTube – then it’s much less likely to be a fair use.

There’s no scientific formula to fair use. You can’t assume you’re safe just because you redistribute less than 100 percent of a song or video. But there are some rules of thumb that can help minimize unnecessary risks:

Know who you’re “borrowing” from. Be wary of shopping at the second-hand store. Images of Justin Bieber from his official site, www.justinbiebermusic.com, will be genuine. And Bieber’s music company will have little motivation to prevent their (limited) redistribution. Getting their artist’s face in front of more fans is their job.

But the first hit that comes up on Google Images might be some professional photographer’s portfolio – and that person is highly motivated to prevent unauthorized redistribution. He makes his living selling photos like that to people like you. Worse, the images might be mislabeled or fake. Or they may been digitally altered by some prankster, and you’ll end up Punk’d by Photoshop.

Change it up... The more of your own creativity you add to someone else’s material, the more likely that your use is legal. Think “sampling.” A line here and there is probably fine (though ethically, you should always give proper credit), but just repackaging and redistributing someone else’s work almost certainly is not.

…But read the fine print. If you do use someone else’s work as a taking-off point for your own, make sure that the Web site’s terms of use – you know, that form you clicked through in 2 seconds when you accessed the site – don’t demand that you promise to use the images unaltered. Many do.

Ask and you (may) receive. If you’re on deadline and you honestly can’t get that mug shot yourself – and why’d you wait until production night, anyway? – it’s tempting to use Facebook as your own private photo archive. But if the person knows you’re writing about him, then a simple text-message – “OK 2 use yr FB pic?” – ought to get you all the consent you need (ideally, the consent ought to come from the creator of the photo, not the subject of it). And if the person doesn’t know you’re writing about him – well, that may alert you to a different set of problems entirely.

One last tip – the SPLC’s Web site, www.splc.org, has a whole section on copyright law, with tools to help you understand more about fair use and links to some trustworthy Web sites that offer public-domain material unprotected by copyright. And unlike the guys at Twilight, we freely encourage you to reuse and share what you find.


Julie e. Dodd

Journalism ProfessorUniversity of Florida

Judy robinson

Journalism Assistant ProfessorUniversity of Florida

JOURNALISM & TECHNOLOGY

Make your blog public

Do you know how many people are visiting your blog? Here are ways to get your blog known and increase your readership:

You want to be able to see who is visiting your blog, who has subscribed to your blog, and what posts they have liked the most. Nothing tells you this more than analyzing your statistics.

If you use Wordpress.com, the stats provided for free are excellent. They will show you how many people visited your blog, what posts they read, and where they came from (the Web page they were on before visiting your blog).

If you use Blogger or Tumblr, be sure to use a free service like Google Analytics or Statcounter and embed the code on your site so you can learn about your visitors. Set this up as soon as possible, as it usually takes a week or so before you will start to see results and what other blogs link to you.

In setting up your blog’s preferences, be sure your blog is checked as public. That means the blogging service you use will let others see that you have a blog.

Wordpress has a feature where other Wordpress blog posts that have the same keywords and tags as your blog post will list your post at the bottom of the other blogs. In order to take advantage of this, you need to be sure to list tags and keywords each time you post to your blog.

Write engaging titles

The title of each of your posts is very important. Search engines like Google will search the Web and then index the title of your blog. If, for example, your post is a review of gaming devices and has the title, “Which gaming device should you get?” you will attract fewer readers than if your title was “Xbox 360: Is it the best gaming device?”

Here’s how we know. Use a tool such as Google Keyword Tool

and you can see the most searched words. Go to www.google.com/sktool. At the bottom of that page select “Or see top keywords across all categories.” On the next page select Hobbies and Leisure. What’s the top searched word in this category -- Xbox 360. One million people had Googled that term. So if your blog had Xbox 360 in the title of a post, your blog would be found by Google and then by the people searching that term. You can click on the magnifying glass beside the word and get more details such as where in the world that word is searched the most.

Include descriptive tags

You have two ways to “tag” your post. You

can set up a list of recurring terms/themes for your blog. After writing a post, you can click which of those terms apply to this post, and those terms will be tags for that particular post. You also can write tags that apply just to a particular post. Those tags also will help search engines find your blog. Because the search engines gather data about your blog from the title and the tags, you want to use as many specific tags that relate to your post as well using highly searched words.

Link to similar blogs

Whenever you find another blog that deals with topics similar to yours, link to that blog or add the blog to your blogroll (the list of blogs you include on your blog). In turn you will find that those bloggers will see that you direct visitors to their blogs and they will link back.

Blogging is a world where sharing brings more sharing. If you learn to read your statistics, you will also be able to tell when other bloggers give you a shoutout (referral) and send readers to your site.

It is not cool in the blogging world to e-mail bloggers and ask if they will put you on their blogrolls. Instead, post comments on other blogs with your own tagline being the URL for your blog. Of course your comments need to be thoughtful, genuine and appropriate to the post and not just to get a link.

Utilize trackbacks

When you have links or embeds in your posts to other sites, podcasts, YouTube or blogs, put that URL in the “trackback” part of your post.

If the other Web sites look at their statistics, they will see that your blog mentioned them and they will read your blog – and hopefully come back to your blog again.

Analyze your audience

Attract blog readers

http://www.google.com/sktool


Barbara Bealor hines

Professor, Mass Communication and Media Studies, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

THE NEwEST bOOkS IN JOURNALISM

Helping photographers get the best with their assignments can be a challenge. Some have a great design sense; others have a strong news sense. Getting the best photo may rely on the photographer’s understanding of the assignment and how it will be used.

Loup Langdon takes some of the mystery and guesswork out of the mix with Photojournalism and Today’s News: Creating Visual Reality. Through 10 chapters, Langton takes the reader from a brief history of photojournalism in the United States to newsroom culture to ethics to the Web and blogs. There’s even a chapter on Iraq Wars (and war coverage).

More staffs are taking advantage of various forms of social media to communicate and this book explains the different platforms and how to write and edit for the various mediums.

Strategic Writing: Multimedia Writing for Public Relations, Advertising and More prepares students for a convergent, multidisciplinary world. The focus is on writing for print, broadcast and online media in a variety of disciplines: advertising, sales and marketing, business communication and public relations.

The book is written in an informal style; there are “recipes” with examples and templates for every document. It’s a book that goes to work when you open the first page.

There are six sections of the book ranging from Strategic Writing to Strategic Writing in Public Relations to Strategic Writing in Sales and Marketing. Each gives examples of collateral using the stated format. This book is a handy reference for both editorial and business staffs as it includes examples of business letters, policy and procedure documents and business reports.

The Introduction to Social Media section includes information on blogs, podcasts, social

What better way to create effective visuals than to see some of the best examples in the world. And staffs can find these examples in the 30th edition of the Best of Newspaper Design produced by the Society for News Design.

Each year, a team of international judges gathers at the S.I Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University to judge the entries in the SND Creative Design competition. More than 12,000 entries are reviewed over a three-day period by teams of judges looking for outstanding examples of photography, infographics, magazine and news design. The best of the best can be found in the 30th edition.

This slick, coffee-table book features outstanding color examples of photography, news, features, portfolios, visuals and more which can generate great conversation with staff members about the way to create and display visual messages. Through concise copy blocks, Best of Newspaper Design showcases examples and explanations about why design work impressed the judges, who represent media organizations across the globe.

Two seasoned professionals have updated Feature and Magazine Writing, a lively book designed to strengthen students’ skills in becoming stronger feature and magazine reporters and editors.

David Sumner, professor at Ball State University and a former “Magazine Educator of the Year,” and Holly Miller, senior editor of The Saturday Evening Post and professional in residence at Anderson University, provide advice on everything from finding original ideas to locating expert sources. In 23 chapters, the authors provide their thoughts on making the

Langton, Loup. Photojournalism and Today’s News: Creating Visual Reality. Wiley-Blackwell. 2009. $89.95.

Society for News Design. The Best of Newspaper Design, 30th ed. Rockport. 2009. $60.

John Carroll, former editor of the Los Angeles Times, says “Langdon’s lucid book tells us where photojournalism comes from – culturally, technologically and philosophically. At its best, photojournalism is a sophisticated and subtle craft, little understood by outsiders; Langton gives us the insider’s tour.”

This book differs from most photojournalism books in that it focuses on the importance of the relationship between the photojournalist and the subject and shares best practices for the reader. From ethics to winning Pulitzer Prizes, this book is down to earth and makes a handy reference for the newsroom.

Marsh, Charles, David Guth and Bonnie Poovey Short. Strategic Writing: Multimedia Writing for Public Relations, Advertising and More. Allyn and Bacon. 2008. $75.60.

networks, content communities and wikis. These are useful tools for all staff members with ideas to increase efficiency.

The section on Tips for Visual Storytelling provides strategies for designing and producing visual stories that generate audience understanding and action.

A copy of this book would be a useful reference in the media room.

Sumner, David E. and Holly G. Miller. Feature and Magazine Writing, 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell. 2009. $47.95.

best choices in writing and editing.There’s a chapter on “How to Find a Magazine

Job” that provides four steps to prepare for a magazine career and three steps to follow when beginning the job search. It also discusses the advantages and drawbacks to living in New York, where the majority of magazines or their corporate headquarters are located.

Another interesting chapter in the book is the chapter on “Finding the Right Market.” All too often writers’ work is not targeted to a specific readership or publication. Feature and Magazine Writing helps the writer develop a strong focus.


Each year, the American Society of Magazine Editors sponsors the National Magazine Awards in cooperation with Columbia University. The winners in that competition - essays, columns,

As Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute said, “No other teacher of the craft has taken journalism so seriously and described it so eloquently.” He was speaking of Melvin Mencher.

Mencher, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, a prolific writer and former newsman, pulls out all the stops to provide substantive guidance to young writers (and old) who are looking to make the best of their work. He uses examples provided by former co-workers and students now at news organizations internationally.

What makes this book stand out? It focuses on simplicity, yet provides the background for those who need assistance with basic math and writing skills. It’s full of checklists and sources for additional information. Each chapter features NRW Plus (News Reporting and Writing Plus) full-text stories and comments from the reporters who wrote them. All of the chapters have interactive activities. You can’t sit still with this book. There’s a workbook and additional online assistance at the News Reporting and Writing Web site.

In the 12th edition, Part Six: Laws, Tone and Taboos: Codes and Ethics and The Morality of Journalism are particularly helpful. The discussion of activist journalism makes the reporter think beyond the single story to make a contribution to society.

American Society of Magazine Editors. The Best American Magazine Writing 2009. The Columbia University Press. 2009. $16.95.

reporting and criticism - are featured in an annual of best work from the nonprofit professional organization for editors of print and online magazines edited, published and distributed in the United States.

Featuring a foreword by Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, this book has some of the finest work that appeared in the nation’s magazines. Two hundred and seventy five judges poured over the entries during a three-day period and 17 of the winners and finalists appear in this edition of The Best American Magazine Writing.

Many of the articles are on topics that appear in scholastic publications: entertainment, politics, sexual identity, relationships, and education. The range and depth of coverage stretch the reader’s imagination and cover important ground in public service journalism as well as feature writing. The stories range from the convoluted life and death of singer James Brown to Sgt. Joe Montgomery’s tour in Iraq and journey home. There’s a narrative about the devastating price paid by cyclists when the legal system and society fail to hold drivers accountable for deadly recklessness on the roads.

There’s an informative piece on Barack Obama’s development as a politician; two reviews on books about feminism. Many of the stories deal with pain: the loss of a daughter, a sickness or a twisted relationship. Each one will captivate the reader.

The beauty in this book, in addition to the range of stories, is how language is used to generate impact. Some of the articles selected for inclusion are not for the faint of heart. They are gritty, yet poignant. A truly good read.

Mencher, Melvin. News Reporting and Writing, 12th ed. McGraw Hill. 2011. $94.38.


Quill & Scrollofficial magazine of theInternational Honorary Societyfor High School Journalists100 Adler Journalism Bldg., Room E 346Iowa City, IA 52242 - 2004

Periodicals

Documents

Quill and Scroll Magazine April/May 2010