Working at a small paper is easy -- if you can multitask.
© Julie de Leseleuc, iStockphoto

LANSING, Mich. — Tom Campbell, publisher of a small newspaper in Owosso, Mich., gave high school students a glimpse of what his newspaper is looking for when it fills journalism jobs. His paper is the oldest family-owned newspaper in the state. The newspaper has been in the family has since 1895.

Know how to write, know how to use technology and be ready to do any job that needs to be done. Errors in cover letters? Piercings for jewelry? Tattoos? Better remove the jewelry and cover the tattoos.

Campbell comes from the business side of the 9,000-circulation newspaper, where folks are responsible for, among other things, printing a lot of high school newspapers. To prepare for his Oct. 19 talk, Campbell interviewed people in the newsroom. He delivered “Finding a Job at the Newspaper of Tomorrow” at the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association‘s fall conference.

Campbell said, “We’ve hired quite a few people in our newsroom this year and many of those people have gone onto other jobs or other newspapers. We have a corps of young writers who work there for a year or so and then they move to a nicer job.

“We get hundreds of resumes for a $10-an-hour job at the Argus-Press, so we can be really picky.”

Campbell compared the business situations at small, medium and large newspapers and called small newspapers relatively safer harbors during this economic and digital storm.

“Small markets offer a lot of job security,” Campbell said, “but you will have to do a lot of things. In our newsroom, if I’m down one person, I’m down 10 percent and if we’re down a key person, I’m down more than that.”

He said that, by the time college is finished, “The high school class of 2010 may land well, arriving with digital skills when the economy has improved and able to undercut more experienced workers on wages.” He expressed genuine interest in bringing people aboard who understand technology better than he does and who can help lead the paper forward.

But they had better not apply with a bad resume or cover letter. “Our first cut at the Argus-Press is people who have typos in their cover letters, in their resumes. If it appears to be innocent, we’ll put them in this pile in case there is no one else who has a perfect application.”

“Make sure your online presence is the best it can be. They will find you, especially if it is a larger company with a human resources department. If they’ve got pictures of you playing Beer Pong, you’ll be over in the no-thank-you pile.”

A FURTHER WORD FROM THIS SMALL PAPER IS TO WATCH WHAT YOU WEAR

“Don’t go in there dressed casually, I can guarantee you,” Campbell said. “Folks who come in to interview with the Argus-Press dress more nicely than they will when they come to work. You go cover the Shiawassee County Fair, you’re not going to dress up.

Take out that nose ring and cover up those tattoos, too “Our policy at the Argus-Press is no piercings except the ears and then, not for the guys. That’s our policy. If that’s important to you, go somewhere else.”

While the dress code in Owosso is not universal, Campbell’s advice about job interviews will work anywhere: “Prepare. Practice. Polish. Perform.”

* How to prepare for a job interview.
* What to wear on the first day of work.

Gemma Givens, Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan and Charly Edsitty on the streets of Tabor, S.D., where they made multimedia productions of the tint towns annual Czech Days Celebration for the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute.

By JOE GRIMM

This summer, I saw young journalists do some great multimedia journalism that their classmates back home might never achieve. These students learned about journalism technology in some intense digital training environments. In some cases, high school journalists leapfrogged ahead of most college students. And some of the college students I saw learned to use multimedia tools that can put them into jobs.

Here’s some of what I saw this summer, some of it as a teacher and some as an observer.

The American Indian Journalism Institute
The Freedom Forum’s Al Neuharth Media Center, University of South Dakota-Vermillion

This 10-day program is run and underwritten by the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute. It has been held since 2001. This summer, Manager of Multimedia Education Val Hoeppner, from the Diversity Institute, flew in from the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center in Nashville with crates of equipment and, with other trainers, went to work on storytelling, photography, audio and video. One of the university’s computer labs became a digital editing room.

The high point of the experience was a day of interviewing, shooting and recording stories at Tabor, S.D.’s, annual Czech Days festival.

Alex Chudler gets prepped for video work by Sarahmaria Gomez, an instructor at the National High School Institute's journalism division at Medill.

Eighty-three top-notch high school students came from across the country and around the world to learn journalism. After several weeks on journalistic fundamentals of accuracy, fairness, ethics, reporting, writing and storytelling, they increasingly turned to shooting and editing video, blogging and photography. At the end, during Web Week, everyone pushed into new areas. In militarily designated teams, they tackled Web design, more video and animated graphics. Their generals ran them all day long, from 9 a.m. until after their 10 p.m. curfew. Instead of taking a break to eat at the dorm, we ate where we were. Some had as much as 24 hours of training and practice in two days.

The Asian American Journalists Association Student Voices
Annual conference, Boston
All students, who came with a variety of proficiencies, produced multimedia. One student recorded, editing and posted his first podcast — with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. Another, who has had extensive international training and experience, beamed as she asked me to watch her first video.

All the instructors were volunteers. In some cases, their companies paid some or all of their expenses and for their time. Others simply volunteered. The newsroom was a generic hotel meeting room near the loading dock. Laptop computers and other equipment were brought in each morning and taken out at night when the work was done. It lasted for less than a week.

In college courses I teach, it takes one or two months to get in 24 hours of training. Chopped up into convenient class-sized bites of one to three hours, you lose a lot of time starting and stopping as, for each class, you boot up the computers, talk about what you’re going to do and refresh material you discussed last week. When you run straight through, the time is more efficient -– provided everyone stays pumped full of sugar and caffeine.

Understandably, students and teachers are big great fans of 12-hour class sessions. Marathon sessions tend not to leave room for other classes, either, and I’d be lying if I said they don’t talk a toll. We got punchy.

Key ingredients of learning digital skills fast

• Baseline skills or knowledge of journalistic basics are absolutely essential. Some are accuracy, fairness, clear writing, ethics and storytelling. These have to be introduced first and reinforced throughout.
• The right hardware and software are a must. It doesn’t have to be top of the line, but it has to work and can’t become an obstacle or a complicating factor.
• In every case, the real laboratory was the community, not some classroom. Those became training centers, studios and editing suites. The real reporting happened in the real world. The Medill cherubs ran all over Evanston, Ill., for stories. The AAJA student journalists covered the convention, the journalism industry and the city.
• Excellent trainers. In each setting, the teachers understand their stuff and conveyed it calmly, patiently and rigorously.
• Students who want to be there. Before you lock up 10, 30 or 80 students for hours of swimming in uncharted waters, make sure they want it. There will be a little drama, but there is absolutely no time for nonsense.

All this is just great if you can get into one of these programs, but what if you can’t? Know that the basics can be learned pretty quickly, though mastery may take forever. Know that a lot of the trainers I saw were largely self-taught and spent hours poring over manuals, reading and watching online tutorials or learning one-on-one from others, You can do that, too. You might be able to learn it in a high school or university program, but most programs seem to be playing catch-up. Until they get there, you may have to learn your journalistic basics in the usual way and pick up digital skills through your own perseverence.

But you can do it and start leapfrogging people yourself.

A Day in the Life from Medill Cherubs on Vimeo.

By JOE GRIMM

It never fails.

Every time I magnanimously think I am doing something for someone else, they do something for me.

This summer, I spent five weeks with 82 journalism “Cherubs” at Northwestern University’s National High School Institute. I did not know what I was getting into, other than teaching some really great kids and working with what I figured must be a great staff.

True, that.

What I was not prepared for was endless, long days, a return to dormitory living and all the drama — imagined and real — that 16-year-olds have to deal with these days.

There was so much to do and it started so fast that it never occurred to me to ask myself what was I trying to do. I was there to teach, but I learned that 16-year-olds can be pretty sophisticated and open-minded — or as silly and resistant as people my age. For the most part, though, they are fearless about trying new things. That is one bifg thing they taught me. Have no fear.

I learned once again that teachers don’t pour anything into young minds, they release what is already there. And I learned that teachers always learn the most.

After Hours from Medill Cherubs on Vimeo.

We told the students that this would be the best summer of their lives. They turned things around there, too, and made it one of the best summers of my life.

The biggest lesson of all: There is generation coming up that is as committed to journalism, truth and service to community as any — and this generation rapidly learns the tools it needs to communicate media. Never built a Web site before? Not a problem. Never used a video camera before? Let me at one. Never did anything in Flash? Give me a couple days.

I was amazed when, with some very good teachers, the Cherubs learned sophisticated production tools in just a couple of (very long) days. If they can do it, why not the rest of us. Turn around. The leaders are coming up fast.

The videos embedded in this page are theirs. Meet the Cherubs and see more of their work here.

Oh, and if you know someone who is going into their senior year of high school who geeks out on journalism, shoot me an e-mail.

Writing the summary lead is as simple as 1-2-3.

And, it can map out your article from A to B to C.

Ernie Boone, formerly a Michigan State University journalism instructor, outlined his three-step process for writing the summary lead:

1. Hook the reader
2. Inform the reader
3. Organize the story

In greater detail, then: Hooking the reader means to seize on the most interesting detail of the story and announce it first. There are many ways to hook readers. Tell them about something that will happen to them. Wow them with remarkable facts. Appeal to their sympathies. Choose your hook from the traditional “who-what-where-when-why-how” lineup that you’re writing about.

Generally, the most important fact of the story will not be where or when something happened, Boone said.

Once you’ve grabbed your readers, inform them by bringing in the other key facts, typically, the remaining W’s. But don’t stop there, said Boone. Go beyond telling readers what happened. Try to tell them the effect or result of what happened. Relate it to them. This will lift your article up out of the past, and spill it forward into the future and into readers’ lives.

Third, use the structure you laid down in No. 2 to organize the rest of your story. Explain things in the order that you used to introduce them. Some will take just a sentence; some will take a few paragraphs, but you have already mapped out the general direction for your story.

Boone offered a few more things to keep in mind, and some things to avoid:

DO write in the active voice (Tracy spilled the beans), rather than the passive voice (The beans were spilled by Tracy.)

DO keep your lead brief. It’s OK to have one-sentence paragraphs — especially here. Keep the full lead — which might run to a few sentences — to 35 words or less.

DO restrict yourself to the essentials. The lead may need the name, but can the title wait till later? Do we have to know the exact time in the lead, or can that wait?

DO tell readers where the information is coming from when it reports opinion, speculation or guesswork.

DO NOT start you lead with the word “There”. (There was a blah-blah-blah …)

DO NOT start with the when of a story. Bore-ing.

DO NOT make your lead a single three- or four-sentence paragraph.

DO NOT load the lead with opinion or judgment (In a stupid move, …)

For high school publication design, a little flair can go a long way.

A long way toward what?

A long way toward catching your classmates’ attention and getting them to read the paper. Colleen Dailey, student teacher at Grosse Pointe South High School, has a passion for design, and shared it with students at a Michigan Interscholastic Press Association journalism day.

Although any of her suggestions can be accomplished with a couple key strokes and a click of the mouse, Dailey advises student journalists to take a slower, more integrated approach to design. She stressed consistency, from page to page and issue to issue, and staff consensus.

Any major design changes have to be OK with the whole staff — or at least the ones who care, Dailey said. Vote on them as a staff. Your staff has to like the way the paper looks.

Dailey studied design as an undergraduate at Michigan State University and went on to graduate studies in education at Detroit’s Wayne State University. She stressed that the look must be one that lasts for a while. That will help your readers get comfortable with the paper and its traditions. Standing items such as column sigs, briefs boxes, regular columns and folio lines should be consistent throughout. Consistency gives a professional look and tells readers they’re in a familiar place.

Consistency, though, does not mean boring.

Newspaper design is almost becoming like an MTV commercial, Dailey said, “we’re the TV generation.” She suggests that newspapers load up on good photography, interesting visual elements and the most effective tool of all: white space.

Some of her tips:

Get the big picture

Dailey said that big photos — if they’re good — are coming back. She recommends making them a quarter or even half of a page. Then, design the page around the visual element. Don’t design the page first and then force the art in last.

Watch the crops and avoid the flops

Crop the photo before you decide what size and shape it should be. Where people are concerned, don’t crop off limbs — or show arms without hands and legs without feet. Get the whole head in — even if the hair is big. And please do use lots and lots of pictures of people. People love to see themselves.

Design pages so photos that lead the reader’s eye in one direction or another lead them into related stories or into the page — not away from the article or off the page. But don’t flop pictures to reverse their direction. It never looks right and it isn’t honest.

Gray-busters

Bust up long columns of gray. There are many ways to do it:

* Use pull quotes that feature important statements or passages. Make the type significantly larger than the body type. Dailey recommends 16- to 18-point liftouts with 9-point body type. Settle on a consistent quote style — just as you do with body type.

* Fact boxes set into the story pop out interesting information and give the page another hook to snag readers who scan. Pop on a label headline, use a screen, and do it the same way every time.

* Put drop caps, or big initial letters, at the beginning of the story and, in longer stories, every 12 inches or so. They work best when they’re placed in gray areas and at significant points or transitions in the article. How big? Big. Try 48 point.

Less is more

White space can be your most powerful design element. The eye is drawn to it, and then to the elements around it. White space should be adjacent to the outside edges of the page, not trapped in the middle and surrounded by photos and type.

Shades of gray

No color available? No problem. You have black, white and 10-15 distinctive shades of gray. Learn what they are, write down the specs, and be — now you’re getting it — consistent about how you use gray.

Little things

Give the paper a striking new look, but keep tradition alive, with small changes to the nameplate on Page One. Change it from four columns to three. Run the nameplate down the left side of the page. Drop it a third of the way down and run a story across the top. Move some of its elements around. (Please, don’t do all of that, or something different each issue.)

Distinctive type

To set off editorials or other opinion pieces run it ragged right and non-justified. Don’t change the font or type size. The distinction will be subtle, smooth and clear.

Where are we?

Get your folios under control. Quill and Scroll contest judges pay attention to them, says Dailey, but a lot of students don’t. Make them all the same. Include the page number, publication’s name, date and, if you can, day. Put them in the outside corners, also called turn corners, or thumb corners.

And thumbs up to sophisticated, consistent newspaper design.