I loved reading this Q and A with Mary Norris, who works at the New Yorker. Her description of the copy editing at the magazine made me happy that there is a place where the editing is such a process, the people care. But there was one line that I can use in all of my classes: A good writer can make you care about anything.
I have some proof for this, thanks to my editing students. Though the promise of extra credit may have spurred their actions, I’m still laughing about them. One student, Michelle, had her yearbook picture taken with her AP Stylebook. Another, Krista, posted a Facebook photo with her AP Stylebook prominently displayed. A mix of traditional and new media. Thanks to Michelle and Krista for making me laugh. And for providing me with guilt trips for future students.
Obviously, I believe in a college education for journalists. I believe in the institution where I teach, in the value of a liberal arts education. But the growing trend of unpaid internships and what that means for students struggling to pay tutition bothers me. It is a growing practice across the country and apparently elsewhere. I don’t know what the solution is.
The latest Pew survey of people’s attitudes toward the media brings more bad news. Obviously this is troubling for the news media, but less obvious is how can we change this? I have found the same attitudes in my students. The distrust is mainly aimed at the broadcast media, but there is little difference in many people’s minds. It’s part of the reason for my research into corrections, which seem to me to be the absolute least news organizations can do. But what else can we do? What can I tell students?
After an assignment of reading “Eats, Shoots and Leaves,” I challenged my students to come up with new punctuation marks that would fill in the areas not covered by commas, colons and semi-colons. Not surprisingly, suggestions focused on how to make text messages and e-mail messages more clear. One of the best today came from Lindsay Nystrom, who suggested a way to indicate more letters in a word to help denote sarcasm. Her example:Riiiiiiight. The idea: Use exponents. Ri^9ght. Hmmm. ( Or should that be Hm^2). Maybe this needs a little work. I need to find exponents on this dashboard.
Ernest Wilson makes an important point in this essay on Poynter.org where he asks: Where are the J-Schools in the great debate over journalism’s future?
Everyone in the business, from professors to professional editors, has been too complacent. In j-schools and j-departments like mine, we are racing to master new skills, to figure out what to keep and what to jettison. The very basics of journalism must remain. But Wilson of the Annenberg school is right when he says we have to be more entrepreneurial and that we have to adapt or become irrelevant.
I am excited about what we are doing at Creighton. We have to keep pushing forward and keep bringing pieces together in different ways. We have to challenge each other and our students to take risks, now more than ever before.
It is time that someone called out journalism schools and departments.
Stories like this one from NPR make me anxious for our students, but I feel we are doing all we can to get them ready for a changing job market.
Bryan Murley writes an excellent summation of the current state of college newspaper advertising. Our advertising is way down as well. The Creightonian, a weekly, is publishing smaller issues than in the past several years and trying to put more content online at creightonian.com. We are planning to cut the number of issues in the future as a cost-saving measure.
MediaShift . College Newspapers Finally Hit by Economic Downturn | PBS
I always watch inaugurations. I love the history and the formality and then the small touches that aren’t so informal. This one does seem different. It’s so amazing to see all the crowds, see the excitment there. As I watch NBC, I also have to laugh at the anchors, experts all vying for the best anecdote. Not sure who’s the winner quite yet.
