csulb newsletter

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Table of ContentsHISTORYDenise Rodriguez explores the roots and everything else that makes this nation’s leading journalist organization, SPJ.

PROBEZien Crusoe explains the WikiLeaks hot topic and asks, What would you do?

PEOPLEDon’t confuse affect and effect. Franc-esca Murray introduces new instructor Robin Jones, the department’s new copy editing instructor.*

TOOLSThe cyber world is an entertaining playground. Bree Cahey shares an easy guide on how you can also make it your first step to finding a journalism job.

SPJ, ETC.Get to know the people we’ve met throughout the fall semester, and get a glimpse to where we’re heading in the spring.

SPJ – Cal State Long BeachPresident Marisol AguilarVice President Barbara NavarroTreasurer Jacqueline AguirreAssistant Treasurer Erin SpandorfSecretary Yoon SongFaculty Advisor Chris Karadjov

SPJ – Chapter NewsletterEditor Barbara NavarroWriters Bree Cahey Zien Crusoe Francesca Murray Denise RodriguezContributor Danny PaskinPhotographers Chris Karadjov Barbara NavarroGraphic Designer Maximillian PirasCopy Editor Tracy McDannald*

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The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is an orga-nization that has been around for some time now. It started in Indiana as a small fraternity over 100 years ago and now is known throughout the country as one of the oldest orga-nizations representing journalists in the United States. More importantly, to fulfill its core objectives, SPJ has established several university chapters, like the one at Cal State Long Beach, to inspire new generations of talented individuals in becoming tomorrow’s dedicated journalists. All of this and more makes it important to understand where SPJ came from and what it’s all about.

In April 1909, the Society of Professional Journal-ists, formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, was established at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Its charter

was designed by student William Meharry Glenn, who was among Sigma Delta Chi’s ten founding members. This organization was created to promote and defend the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press; encourage high standards and ethical behavior in the practice of journalism; and to promote and support diversity in journalism.

Today, SPJ has nearly 300 chapters across the United States. Its membership base is more than 9,000 members of both the media and students.

For college students, involvement in school organiza-tions is highly recommended, and SPJ is one of those orga-nizations serving as an example of why it is important. SPJ is a place to begin networking, which can be beneficial to

HISTORY

Getting to Know the SocietyBy Denise Rodriguez I Contributing Writer

Chris Karadjov, Faculty AdvisorPRO TOOLS: Cal State Long Beach students and Society of Professional Journalists members, above, meet with Nick Ro-man, managing editor of talk-and-news radio station KPCC-FM 89.3 for an exclusive tour.

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those in search of a career. SPJ offers insight on the experience of professionals and, in many events, op-portunities to meet those professionals.

“For people who want to find jobs after finishing at LB State, belonging to organizations like SPJ is important,” says Margaret Sharpe, a former SPJ president for the CSULB chapter. Sharpe, a features writer for South Bay magazine San Pedro Today, has built her network of contacts to include the likes of Bay Area NBC station re-porter George Kiriyama, who was the featured guest for the fall semester’s opening SPJ meeting at CSULB.

SPJ continues to promote its mission in various other ways, like by being a part of or involved in a variety of initiatives. SPJ helped foster the creation of the American Reporter, which was the first electronic internet-only newspaper. Similarly, SPJ initia-tives include a Legal Defense Fund wages court battles to secure First Amendment rights, and the Project Sunshine campaign that is dedicated to improving the ability of journalists and the public to obtain access to government records. To pay tribute to where it all began, SPJ annually hosts the Sigma Delta Chi Awards, which honors excellence in journalism.

It’s a competitive industry for journalists, but SPJ is the pre-eminent, broad-based membership organization that allows members to be a part of a friendly environment. This organization has come a long way and will continue on the long journey of contributing to the lives of journalists and to the profession of journalism.

Situation:

WikiLeaksBy Zien Crusoe I Contributing Writer

WikiLeaks is an international new media and non-profit organiza-tion that has published thousands of documents since 2006 with the chief intention of exposing corpo-rate and government corruption using anonymous news sources and leaks.

Since July, WikiLeaks has been under heavy criticism by politicians, however, after a leak of about 90,000 U.S. military records regard-ing the war in Afghanistan were sent to and then published by three leading international newspapers, The Guardian, The New York Times and Germany’s Der Spiegel.

The documents detailed individ-ual incidents, from friendly fire to ci-vilian casualties, consequently send-ing politicians and military officials in an outrage, calling WikiLeak’s creator, Julian Assange, a “cyber terrorist.” More recently, politicians have voiced their own missions in shutting down WikiLeaks and have demanded the persecution of Julian Assange. The U.S. government is now also pressuring companies to stop funding WikiLeaks.

In a broader sense, WikiLeaks has sparked huge public debates on topics like free speech and the role of journalism. The media is split on these issues, because one side sees WikiLeaks as a non-journalistic organization that leaks documents without permission and further diminishes the trust of foreign country leaders to U.S. diplomats with private information, fearing

any more leaks. On the other side of the debate, the media believes that the leaked documents show the government’s actions of holding information from the public wrong in a democratic society.

The Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) Code of Ethics clarifies that journalism is supposed to be about seeking the truth, being accountable and minimizing harm.

But today, reporters are timid on what to report, maybe for the fear of retribution from govern-ment officials. It makes it ever more evident how WikiLeaks has made a huge impact

in the business of reporting news and facts. Members of the press must ask themselves this: If investigative journalists and news organizations were doing their jobs, would there have never been a need for WikiLeaks?

The current WikiLeaks situation is interesting for journalism students to learn from and is a way to ask themselves what they would do, using what they know in the ethics and morals of journalism.

Emily Bell, journalism profes-sor and director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said it best. “Journalists need to know what they think about the mission of Wikileaks and oth-ers like it, and they need to know where they would stand if the data dropped onto their desks and the government pressured them to be silent.”

PROBE

In April, San Diego will host “The New Wave of Journalism: 2011 SPJ Spring Conference.” For more information, go to http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/region11/

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By Francesca Murray I Contributing Writer

Robin Jones is what she wanted to do and eventually landed a copy editing job at the Auto Club’s magazine, Westways. She climbed the lad-der from copy editor, to features editor, to managing editor, and she worked there for 11 years before leav-ing in August to work freelance in order to spend more time with her family.

One might ask, what is copy edit-ing exactly? The Publication Editing and Makeup course covers basic gram-mar – including the age-old conflict of distinguishing the difference between who and whom – and AP Style, as well as proofreading and line editing. The course also trains students to develop a keen eye for spotting com-mon errors. In the newsroom, a copy editor serves as the last line of defense before an issue goes to print. Copy edi-tors are there to catch grammatical and style errors, including any formatting issues, and does the last pass on the story before it goes into design. Although they don’t rewrite or ask for ma-jor revisions, they do ensure that the story is organized, flows, has a good lead and a good nut graph.

Copy editing is a dynamic career that facili-tates skills that are valued in various other pro-fessions outside of journalism. Copy editors are

sometimes known as “report edi-tor” or “technical editor,” and a copy editor can find work in corporate and government communications offices. For a career in a news-room, sharpening editing skills is a great idea, as copy editors get a better starting salary than reporters.

If there is something students can learn from Jones, it is that a degree in jour-nalism and mass communications gives you valuable skills that make you competitive in other fields out-side of journalism, and in this trying economy it may not be a bad idea to broaden our hori-zons and pursue a career in a variety of areas.

“The arch can take you so many different places,” Jones says. “You can take these skills – writing, reporting, editing – to all different kinds of places. You just have to think sometimes a little bit outside the box. Don’t think just about newspapers and websites. There

are all kinds of places out there that need people who can edit and write. My career kind of proves that out.”

Barbara Navarro contributed notes to this report.

Barbara NavarroINTRODUCING Professional copy editor Robin Jones is the department’s new instructor for a class that’s all about the art of editing, Publication Editing and Makeup.

PEOPLE

Editing Guru

In an era where language is fading, copy editors play a bigger role everywhere. Can Robin Jones save us all?

he journalism department at Cal State Long Beach has undergone a lot of major changes within the last year. Broadcast,

radio, public relations and traditional print jour-nalism students seeking a degree in journalism – who are now studying under the newly named, Journalism and Mass Communication Depart-ment – are suddenly a part of an in-demand major that’s become impacted.

Adding to the puzzle pieces, the department has seen faculty come and go, leaving department chair Raul Reis to tap into his network of profes-sionals, in search of new, cutting edge faculty who could maintain the department’s high expecta-tions and standards of teaching.

In the spring, William Mulligan, who many students got to know as one of the department’s law professors, left mid semester, indefinitely. Reis was pressed to hire a new professor, even if temporary, who could teach one of Mulligan’s other classes, Publication Editing and Makeup – a class about the art of editing. He made a call to a friend of the department, John Canalis – a former Daily 49er editor in chief and later on part-time instructor. Canalis was busy making changes in his own professional reporting career, leaving Long Beach’s Press-Telegram for a chief editor position with Los Angeles Times Community News. But he knew exactly who to recommend. Canalis happens to be married to Robin Jones, a professional copy editor.

Jones currently works as a freelance copy edi-tor for a handful of local organizations, like the Cal State Chancellor’s Office. It seems like that’s far from working in a newsroom, except Jones has worked in various newsrooms and can tell how editing, in particular, has led her through to her success today.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in English

from UC Berkeley, a decision that she still values to this day. “Now that I look back it was a good decision, because I read all of the greats – all of the great authors – and I wrote a lot of essays,” Jones says. “It taught me how to write clearly and to make a coherent argument, and both of those things are really valuable in journalism.”

While at Berkeley, she worked as a sports desk reporter for the university newspaper, the Daily Californian, and eventually moved up to the sports editor position. After graduating, she began her career at a small newspaper in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. The publica-tion had four reporters and one editor, which increased the demand to crank out news. “I was just churning,” says Jones, who was producing about eight stories a week. Although her rep-ertoire consisted mostly of sports coverage, she was assigned to cover a lot of news, which added to her skills set, because she covered everything from breaking news to city council. A year after she had began working, the newspaper decided to create a magazine to pump advertising, which led Jones into magazine journalism, “which is what changed my life.”

“It was so much fun,” Jones says. She wrote round-ups, features, “news you could use,” and Q&As. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is where I belong.’” This revelation led her to the University of Missouri, where she obtained a master’s degree from the magazine writing program. “Nothing could have been more valuable for getting me into the magazine world, because when I was there I got to write for a magazine, I got to edit a magazine, I got to copy edit the magazine. It was awesome.”

When Jones took a required editing class, ev-erything fell into place. “I was like the star pupil in my class. I loved it,” Jones says. She knew this

Learn more about editing with Robin Jones in the spring. Publication Editing & Makeup is still open.The course catalog description: Study of methods in newspaper, magazine and online production and practice in preparing copy for publication, including editing, proofreading, headline writing, using photographs and other display materials, handling news service copy and basic page design.

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By Danny Paskin I Journalism Professor

Twitter may be the current buzzword among media professionals. Learning how to tweet properly is a challenge; building followers is another one. But an even trickier task may be to decide whom to follow among the 175 million users currently on Twitter. Here’s a list of must-follows for anyone in the media:

@BPGlobalPR The PR account for BP, the infamous oil spill company. A good insight into rebuilding one’s public image.

@PublicityGuru With 25 years of PR experience, Bill Stoller is one of the most followed PR professionals on Twitter.

@steverubel The Senior VP and Di-rector of Insights for Edelman Digital is on Twitter, offering… insights!

@PRsarahevans One of the most active – and followed – PR profession-als on Twitter.

@cnnbrk CNN, the news network, was one of the first to fully embrace Twitter, being the most followed media corp on Twitter

@latimesbreaking Breaking news from the L.A. Times, so you can stay in tune with local news also

@nytimes The staple of journalism goes to Twitter, showing how to pro-mote stories through social media

@GuyKawasaki For those who know, Guy is considered the guru of social media. Follow him.

@dooce The mommyblogger from

Dooce migrated very successfully to Twitter

@mashable The people behind Mashable take over Twitter

@Alyssa_Milano The actress is one of the most active celeb posters on Twitter, winning a VH1 award for it

@DanPatterson The ABC Radio News reporter covering the UN shows how to use Twitter while in the radio

@MichaelAusiello Former TV Guide and EW writer, he now offers insider info on entertainment on his own

@StephenAtHome It’s Stepehn Colbert’s account. Enough said.

@bydanielvictor Patriot-News re-porter who knows how to use Twitter to involve the readers

@macdivaONA Washingotn Post online diva

@ksablan The OC Register online guru (and speaker last year at J-Day)

@paulapoundstone If you’re tired of thinking, and just want to laugh!

@megangarber Assistant editor of Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab, giv-ing tips on the future of the business

@markbriggs Author of some of the latest books on new media journal-ism

@charlesapple The famous news design blogger takes a crack at Twitter

A Follower’s HolidayThe list: Journalism professor Danny Paskin shares his favor-ite Tweeting personalities in the media world. Twitterrifico!messages known as “tweets,”

so their followers can know what they’re up to. Follow your favorite company or organization and keep updated on their latest products and ideas.

BloggerWith Blogger you create a page

where you can share your thoughts about current events, your personal life, or any other topics. This is a free site where you can customize the look of your page and post texts, photos videos, and more. One of Blogger’s new features allows you to earn money by placing AdSense ads onto your blog. Also, they have a program called Amazon Associates, where you can earn commission by posting links to products that you recommend. By adding the “follow-ers gadget,” readers can follow your blog and give feedback by leaving comments. Blogs are a great way for journalism students to begin showing their work and ideas and gain follow-ers who are intrigued with what they have to say.

If you use what these social networking sites have to offer while following these tips, you will become a networking professional, and your chances of having a successful career in journalism will greatly improve.

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The use of social media has be-come a great phenomenon where it is almost uncommon for a college student to not have at least one account with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Blogger, to name a few. The frenzy is ubiqui-tous among university students. Take Facebook for an example, which, alone, connects more than 2,600 U.S. colleges, according to the Career and Develop-ment Center (CDC) at Cal State Long Beach. Facebook reports more stagger-ing figures: It currently has more than 500 million active users around the world, who, collectively, spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the site.

At the Monday, Nov. 8 meeting for the Society of Professional Journal-ists (SPJ) of CSULB, online journalism professor Danny Paskin presented a special lecture, “How to Self-Promote & Network with Social Media.” He expressed the importance of using the various faucets of online media to our advantage, calling it “one of the most essential tools for any future media

professional.” The key, however, Danny says, is to know how to properly use these digital channels for the best exposure.

To learn how you can improve your virtual profile for all things career, read on for more tips from Paskin, our social media expert.

Facebook Paskin advises students to use

Facebook as a self-promoter by having a lot of friends to show you are trying to network with as many people as possible and to captivate people who would want to be your friend. Also, he suggests adding great photos with interesting captions, and using posts, links, and photo albums to show people who you really are. These features can help create a platform for the informa-tion you want people to know about you, and, in return, people will want to pay more attention to you. However, inappropriate status updates, wall posts, or photos, could affect a future em-

ployer’s impression of your personality and work ethic. The CDC suggests changing default privacy settings, and having separate personal and profes-sional profiles as ways to use Facebook successfully.

LinkedInLinkedIn is a favorite among the

career-thinking crowd looking to expand their social networks. It allows you to find past and present colleagues and classmates, and network to find job opportunities. LinkedIn allows you to post your websites, information on past jobs, emails and list of references. This can be used as a great tool to make connections, and let employers know your accomplishments and outstand-ing qualities before even having an interview.

TwitterTwitter, although commonly used

to follow our friends and favorite celebrities, can also benefit journalism students. Twitter allows users to send

TOOLS

Cal State Long Beach industrial de-sign and entrepreneurship senior, Tyler Rogina, has benefited greatly from using social media. Last year, Rogina created a company called Book Swapp, defined by its profile as a “revolutionary way for students to buy books.” In short, Book Swapp puts two students in touch for buying and exchanging textbooks. One can register free at www.bookswapp.

com, and begin posting books to sell or search for ones to buy. To promote his company, Rogina made Book Swapp its first social media account on Facebook – it was a way for him to advertise everything his company has to offer. “Facebook has helped me spread the word and get Book Swapp noticed by my peers without having to pay for ad-vertising space,” Rogina says. Currently,

Book Swapp has about 175 friends – its popularity still climbing, though especially in the Greek system. “Social media has been a great way to get noticed and reach out to an immense amount of people for free,” Rogina says. “Facebook has made my business more successful in that I am able to get people familiar with Book Swapp.” B.C.

CSULB Student Finds Success via Facebook

Social Media 101: Focus on the By Bree Cahey I Contributing Writer

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ETCETERA

MAKING CONNECTIONS: Past SPJ-CSULB presidents Amy Paradise (left) and Margaret Sharpe (center) meet with cur-rent president and print journalism student, Marisol Aguilar.

HANGING OUT: In September, new members gathered in the Lee Brown Reading Room for casual socializing and pizza.

MEETING THE PRESS: KPCC 89.3 Senior News Editor Cheryl Devall greets SPJ-CSULB members who visited the Pasa-dena station in October.

COMING IN SPRING

1 More field trips 2 More exciting guests 3 More member benefits

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CSULB CHAPTER MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION

Name ______________________________ Student ID______________

Address ___________________________________________________

Phone(s) ___________________________________________________

Email(s) ___________________________________________________

Facebook Address___________________________________________

Twitter/Blog Addresses ______________________________________

Can We Add You To Our Facebook Page? Yes_________ No_________

Major ____________________________ Minor ___________________

Expected Graduation Date ____________________________________

Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm in joining the Cal State Long Beach chapter for the Society of Professional Journalists. Please sign your name below and include your $14 dues to gain membership for the fall and spring 2010-2011 semesters. CSULB’s SPJ will meet on Mondays in SSPA-029C at 6:15 to 7:15p.m. Keep in touch with the chapter via Facebook (search: “Society of Professional Journalists CSULB Chapter”) and with the organization via Twitter @spj_tweets.

Signature ______________________________

Date __________

DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION

ETCETERA

csulb newsletter csulb newsletter

This is the premiere newsletter issue for the Cal State Long Beach chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). The campus organization hosts a variety of biweekly meetings, field trips and mixers throughout the fall and spring semesters, reflecting objec-tives set by the national organization. © 2010