2013 Winter Adviser Update

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Dow JoneS newS FUnD wInter 2013 VolUme 53, nUmber 3

https://www.Newsfund.orgCopyright © 2013 Dow Jones News Fund, Inc.

inside: Hurricane Sandy coverage - Pages 16A/17A

BY ELLEN AUSTIN

It is a great and hum-bling honor to be addressing you today. I would like to talk this

afternoon about leaps of faith.

I teach English and jour-nalism at Palo Alto HS. We have a journalism fleet at Paly, where I work with some astonishing colleagues: Paul Kandell, a good friend, outstanding teacher and my anchor; and colleagues Mike McNulty, Esther Wojcicki and Margo Wixsom.

About 20 to 25 percent of Paly’s 2,300 students pass through the doors of our jour-nalism programs.

We are building a bond-funded media arts building, with doors slated to open

‘don’t be afraid to leap’next fall. That building rep-resents tangible support from our parent community, which is willing to take another bite in taxes because they under-stand that our schools are our futures.

Let me paint a picture of what it looked like yester-day in Viking’s classroom as editors staffed up weekend coverage for the football play-off game: video and DSLR cameras being checked out; sideline reporter’s passes getting picked up and distrib-uted; editors organizing the timeline expectation for the game recap and photos — by midnight? 1 a.m.? Friday night. A crisp discussion of how tweets, real-time game photos and videos and Face-book posts would flow and converge together through-

out the evening to create a hybridized stream of cover-age from kickoff through final buzzer.

If I could read minds, I’m pretty sure a Tumblr meme floating in the air right now might read, “Sweet: living in California’s wonderland of student free expression, with a new building and rooms full of students singing ‘KumBahYah’ and then writ-ing and posting all weekend long.”

So I’d like to tell you, as radio commentator Paul Har-vey used to say, “the rest of the story…”

I live my life by sev-eral mantras that drive me: “Leap, and the net will appear” is the primary one.

The text of the speech from the News Fund’s

2012 Teacher of the Year Ellen Austin delivered at the Advisers’ Luncheon at the

JEA/NSPA Convention in San Antonio in November.

Update photos by Bradley Wilson and Randy Swikle

See LeAP on page 2A

These Struck Our FancyStudent news sites:Looking good, providinggreat content

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a wInter 2013 adviser UPdate

I grew up in Illinois, the Land of Lincoln; moved to Europe in my 20s; spent two decades in Minne-sota; and moved six years ago to the nation’s hub of innovation and entrepreneurship, the Silicon Val-ley. But as writer and academic JRR Tolkien put it well: “Not all those who wander are lost.”

Neither of my parents were writers or journalists. My dad, a mechanical engineer and week-end pilot, passed away eight years ago. I am thankful for his gifts. He taught me how to take a photo and to fly an airplane and always to take leaps of faith.

My mother is here today and has been a teacher since 1957 — and still teaches today. That she still is a teacher at 77 in a career that has gone for more than half a century is a wonder. She is the inspiration, support and template of much that I do in my classroom and my life.

And Mom — I hope you’ll help me enter a stack of quiz grades back at the hotel after we finish here.

My path to journalism advising started with a camera.

I grew up in Rockford, Ill. In 1976, when I was a seventh grader, the Rockford government, facing a budget crisis, proposed a property tax referendum, much like Paly’s. It failed. Our K-12 schools were stripped of all sports, music, orchestras, choirs, bands, all journalism, all art. Over 400 teachers lost their jobs, includ-ing my mom, whose position as a music teacher was eliminated.

There were two impacts on my life of that failed referendum. First, I vowed never ever, ever to become a teacher; secondly, I picked up a camera and fell in love.

My dad, an amateur photog-rapher, built a darkroom in our basement to give me something to do. I took to the chemistry, sequence and magic of photogra-phy with joy. I found my voice — with film.

Although my AP Lit seniors wouldn’t believe it if they heard me right now, my heroes are not Jane Austen (unless it’s my mom — yes, it’s the family punch line) and Shakespeare — whose birthday I share. My heroes were

legendary midcentury photojour-nalists: Gordon Parks, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa and Dorothea Lange. Their lenses were courageous, creating a dia-logue about social issues with images that leveraged change that needed to come.

I was 6 months old when JFK was assassinated, 4 years old when Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis and in first grade when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. What would our collective memory be without the iconic photographs of those moments?

After finishing at the Univer-sity of Illinois, including stints as a photographer on the Daily Illini campus paper and the “Illio” yearbook, I spent time living in Europe teaching English as a foreign language, then moving to Minnesota, where I set up a small photo studio in a warehouse in St. Paul. Somewhere along the way, bowing to family pressure, I also got my teaching certification —“just in case.”

My camera has traveled into Kentucky coal country to docu-ment the proud but poverty-laden lives there. I’ve run from mobs in South Africa when I visited that nation in the last days of apart-heid and turned my lens on the villages in the homelands which were looking towards a coming freedom.

What has traveled from pho-tography into my life as a teacher is an emphasis on capturing strong visuals in our stories. I coach my students to think with their eyes as much as their ears, using the mantra from early pho-tojournalist Cartier-Bresson: “The decisive moment.”

Viking staffers decided early to publish a photography-forward magazine because images are integral to the “story” of sports. Photos also reach members of our community for whom printed words are hard to access. Visual journalism is a tool of inclusion.

The verse my Kentucky grand-mother taught me from the New Testament provides the second mantra by which I live: “Knock, and the door shall be opened.”

I’d add: if it doesn’t open, you may need to kick it [gently], because change often means pushing against the status quo.

Back to that young girl, the photographer.

I thought it would be nifty to take pictures for the school paper when we finally got elec-tives back two years later. One day in the fall of freshman year, I went to the “Pub Room,” to meet longtime newspaper adviser Joan Schmelzle and asked to join the newspaper staff.

She looked me up and down, and said, “I don’t take girls as photographers.”

I’d heard about glass plate neg-atives. I didn’t realize I’d just met a glass ceiling for a freshman girl. I walked up to the school counsel-or’s office to ask if that sounded right to him. I have no idea what went on behind the scenes, but suddenly I was on the staff — as a photographer. And a girl.

That experience of someone trying to shut a door stays with me as a teacher. Who are we miss-ing on our staffs right now? Who are we missing out there in the world of our audience? How do we kick open those doors and invite those kids in?

Alan Lamarque, current Viking co-editor, entered Paly journalism through an alternate summer journalism internship program based in East Palo Alto and started by Paul Kandell five years ago. East Palo Alto, or EPA, borders Palo Alto and has histori-cally been black, Hispanic and economically struggling.

Alan, who’s Mexican-Amer-ican, completed the summer EPA program, joining Viking as a sophomore, the youngest staff member ever. He has won awards for his writing, was named man-aging editor his junior year, and this year, as a senior, is one of the three co-editors in chief.

Alan says, “I wasn’t even on this path to being where I am now, but I can’t imagine what it would be like if I hadn’t been here. I’m the first Latino editor on Viking. To be standing up in front of people telling them what we’ve done, much of the time the stu-dents are Asian or white and they don’t usually look much like me. It makes me proud to be Latino.”

Film also matters more to inclusion and connections. Marys-sa Sklaroff, co-executive producer of INfocus, Paly’s broadcast pro-gram, says, “The capabilities of film are extraordinary. Film is accessible to everybody; the Internet is accessible to every 2011 teacher of the Year aaron Manful with 2012 teacher of the Year

ellen austin.

Update photos by randy swikleellen austin and her mother, Jane austin. “she is the inspiration, support and template of much that i do in my classroom and my life,” says ellen about her mom who continues to teach at age 77.

LEAPContinued from page 1a

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high school student. If you have access to that, it doesn’t matter what cultural back-ground you come from, what languages you speak or how far apart you are.”

But back to the story. Becoming a teacher took a leap of faith.

And a well-timed phone call.In 1999, a photo client and school board

member in the small town of Cannon Falls, about an hour away from Minneapo-lis, pitched me a job. The district needed an AP Comp teacher for a year, and I need-ed health insurance. I took the job.

The story of the subsequent creation and success of the Cannon Falls Lantern is a “Friday Night Lights” tale of kids without resources creating a legacy, but it’s equally a tale of professional journal-ism advocates making the net appear in mid-air for those newspaper kids when they leapt.

Those advocates were integral to a beginning program staying alive: Ann Akers, then at NSPA, provided constant support and advice; Sandy Woodcock from NAA Foundation awarded two NAA grants. And Lynda McDonnell, of Min-neapolis’ Journalism 360, wrapped my poor rural kids into her program centered around urban kids of color. In its lack of access to resources, poverty is its own color.

Separately, ASNE’s fellowship in 2003 at Ball State was transformative, giving me the training and tools a new adviser needs to do and keep the job.

Emily Banks, former co-editor in chief of The Lantern, said: “Ellen learned along with the rest of us.” Emily ended up major-ing in print journalism at the University of Minnesota. As of last month, she is the managing editor at the rapidly-expanding social media company Mashable.com in New York.

I had thought the “teaching thing” would be doable — for a year or two. But somewhere along the way, the courage of kids, the energy of young minds at work, and the intellectual challenge of the class-room turned me into a career teacher.

After five years, I took a job at a small private school in St. Paul, closer to my Minneapolis home. Generous private school teachers on the Listserve, like Tracy Anne Sena from San Francisco, became long-distance mentors. Tracy reminded me that private schools exist without the same First Amendment-protected rights, and also live under the realities of an “at will” employment contract.

In late winter 2007, I took the leap which has led — here.

At this point, I need to thank the two “godfathers” of scholastic journalism from

Northern California who are dear to me and so many other advisers here, Steve O’Donohue and Nick Ferentinos.

Steve O. sent me an email in March, sternly writing I should give up frigid Minne-SNOW-ta and head west to ever-sunny Palo Alto. I’d heard about Paul’s cutting-edge work with the PalyVoice site, even though I knew him only from reading Voice online.

I’m probably not the first teacher to put a “For Sale” sign on a house, pack up a car and drive cross-country for a guy she’s only met online. What I took with me from Minnesota to California was the continu-ing friendship of a tight group of advisers whose generosity and kindness embody the “aw shucks” ethos of Minnesota cul-ture. Laurie Hansen, Liz Keeling, Lori Keekly, Kathryn Campbell — I’m looking at you.

I also packed along a fervent belief in student free expression, having seen first-hand the challenges posed by prior review and challenges in Minnesota, a Hazelwood state.

When I arrived, I was welcomed and included by JEA Northern California’s board of colleagues and rock star advisers Sarah Nichols, Michelle Balmeo, Tracy, Don Bott, Karl Grubaugh, Randy Hamm and the other great people on that board.

I also got my new assignment at Paly: the school decided to add a regularly-published, all-sports print magazine. Paly produces world-class athletes on a regular

LEAPContinued from page 2A

see LEAP on page 4A

Trying new things is a core part of Viking’s culture, even if new

things don’t always work smoothly, or well.

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Update photos by randy swikle

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basis, like 49ers football coach Jim Harbaugh, Stanford soccer star Teresa Noyola, and NBA point guard phenomenon Jeremy Lin.

Me? A pre-Title IX girl, I have never played a sport formally. But the young men and women on Viking (and later INfocus) let me in, welcomed me and taught me about sportsmanship, stats and spirit. They taught me about dedi-cation — and why “team” equals “family.” A door that could have slammed on me, they instead opened.

Phil Taylor, Sports Illustrated columnist, told my class a couple of years ago, “Start with sports and use it as a jumping- off point into social issues.” And we have.

From the beginning, the Viking has used its platform of sports to include pieces on race, HIV/Aids, concussions, Title IX and gender discrimination, cancer, the mur-der of a Paly Olympian, danger-ous diet practices of athletes, drug use and recovery and the money of high school sports.

The second issue cover of the Viking published in October 2007 featured a big story on hazing in sports at Paly. I wondered how likely (or not likely) it would be for me to keep my post as a “probational” teacher. This story would kick at a lot of doors.

We got the 5Ws and an H. Our administrators supported our right to publish (thank you, Cali-fornia Educational Code 48907), and we vetted our story with SPLC and Logan Aimone, execu-tive director of NSPA.

The hazing story became news in the professional media in our community and the Bay Area and led to a school policy that tight-ened anti-hazing regulations.

I’m proud of the editors who produced that piece, Noah Sneider and Peter Johnson, two varsity athletes who received the Courage in Journalism Award from JEA in spring 2008 for tak-ing a stand.

Knock on the door, or kick it open, but let people — and impor-tant issues that matter — into your publications.

I repeat this next phrase often to myself and to my students. I borrowed it from Facebook, a

saying on the walls at their corpo-rate office: “Go fast — and break things.”

Trying new things is a core part of Viking’s culture, even if new things don’t always work smoothly, or well. Viking began augmenting its print offering in 2010 with social media, add-ing Twitter as a way to provide instant sports scores. Soon we added a Facebook account, Tum-blr and Instagram. The next spring, Viking leadership decided that it was time to take a bigger

leap and build a 24/7 all-sports website. We went live — two weeks later — in March 2011.

Money isn’t the barrier to going after a 24/7 presence in publications. It’s handling the change, the uncertainty and the chance that it might “break” and need fixing. Viking co-editor Kevin Dukovic says the key to leading a publication invested in this approach means “feeling a little uncomfortable on a nearly daily basis.”

While my Paly students

may sound more amped up in approach, what they do is now attainable almost anywhere in this country where kids are will-ing to take a shot at it, whether a tech hub like Palo Alto or a tiny town like Cannon Falls.

Talking about the “what could be” as advisers, though, is imma-terial if we don’t talk right now about climate change. I’m not talking about glaciers. I’m talking about the great chill on student free expression that we’ve lived with for the past 25 years: Hazel-

wood v. Kuhlmeier.If we could collectively go fast

and break something together, I’d like to see us break Hazelwood. Soon. Let’s help Frank LoMonte and the SPLC. Hazelwood is a cancer, and we need to get rid of it and find the cure.

I guess I belong to the church of journalism. Perhaps the Found-ing Fathers also recognized the close relationship of the core values of the country they were building, including religious beliefs and the rights of a free press and free expression next to each other in the same 45 words.

My sister Beth, who had a long career as a journalist and writer before taking the leap into the political world as a speechwriter, sent me this in an email the day she heard I had received this award and would be making a speech here today. This comes from the Book of Common Prayer:

“For those who Influence Public Opinion Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise, its mind sound, andits will righteous … ”

I don’t have a charter or a punch list for you today. Just go home and do one thing that makes you a “little uncomfort-able.” It can be a small leap — you don’t have to sell your house, hitch up the covered wagon with your trusty dog, and drive over the Great Salt Flats on your way to the promised land of journal-ism.

As Alan says, “You have to take innovation small steps at a time. Take the steps that you can with what you have.” And if you’ve already taken that leap of faith, mentor someone who hasn’t.

What’s in it for us? I’ll leave you with this visual metaphor from one of my favorite writers, Annie Dillard, from “An American Childhood,” writing about learn-ing to play football:

“It was all or nothing … you have to fling yourself at what you’re doing, you have to point yourself, forget yourself, aim, dive.”

Don’t be afraid to leap.

LEAPContinued from page 3a

above: ellen austin, holding her teacher of the Year plaque, joins friends from her past advising days in Minnesota. From left to right: Jeff Kocur (dJNF special recognition adviser); Lori Keekley (who received an NsPa Pioneer award in san antonio); ann akers (Herff Jones); Kathryn Campbell; Laurie Hansen (Jea Minnesota state director).left: 2009 News Fund teacher of the Year Paul Kandell intro-ducers 2012 teacher of the Year ellen austin at the adviser Luncheon.


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By RICHARD J. LEVINE

Superstorm Sandy altered my life and news-consumption habits for a week last fall.

Princeton was hit hard, though it didn’t suffer the massive dam-age of many of New Jersey’s shore communities. Without power, heat, phones, cable, Internet and WIFI for a week, my wife and I spent days in pursuit of such essentials as warmth, food, gas for the car and electricity to charge the bat-tery for my BlackBerry, our sole source of information and commu-nications in the immediate after-math of the storm.

Journalism has been my life’s work. But once we were plunged into darkness on the Monday evening Sandy unleashed its fury on Princeton, we were the news. I wasn’t reading it, watching it, or covering it. Nevertheless, those dark days provided valu-able insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the new media landscape that has emerged in our digital age with its emphasis on the instant availability online of text and video reports as well as

our expectation of constant con-nectivity.

Perhaps the most important lesson was the most immediate and obvious: the delivery of online news is heavily dependent on the

availability of electrical power, which seems more fragile than ever. Not surprisingly, in the after-math of Sandy, the weakness of the U.S. power grid has been the subject of increasing attention and concern, as well it should.

For example, former New York governor George Pataki called for major improvements in a column in The Wall Street Journal four weeks after the storm:

“Superstorm Sandy exposed perhaps the greatest flaw under-pinning the American way of life: the insecure and unreliable electri-cal infrastructure … To make our electrical grid more reliable, seri-ous consideration has to be given to burying electrical-distribution networks underground. This costly but critical investment would eliminate the need for utility poles and overhead wires, drasti-cally reducing the need for repairs caused by wind and tree damage.”

Like many other homeowners, I am not confident that policymak-ers and utility executives will

move quickly and have decided to install a generator that runs on natural gas as a backup source of power in future storms. Looking beyond the power grid, however, Sandy underscored for me the continuing value of both television news and newspapers.

We returned to Princeton from western New York State earlier than planned on the Sun-day before the storm to make preparations. We bought food, removed objects from the deck and backyard likely to blow away and waited anxiously for Sandy’s arriv-al. As New Jersey battened down on Monday, I canceled a board meeting scheduled for late in the week, worried that if I delayed we would lose computer communica-tions, which turned out to be the case. Then, we glued ourselves to the Weather Channel on televi-sion and AccuWeather.com on the Internet, hoping for the best.

Much of the live television coverage from lower Manhattan, which focused on the rising level of the Hudson River and the prospect

when the lights go out

Hurricane sandy coverage by the Pilot’s Log of Hasbrouck Heights (N.J.) Hs. see this struck My Fancy on page 16a.

rIchard J. leVIne is president of the board of direc-tors of the dow Jones Newspaper Fund inc. in five decades with dow Jones & Co., he has served as vice president for news and staff devel-opment, executive editor of dow Jones Newswires, vice president of information services, editorial director of electronic publishing and Washington correspondent and columnist for the Wall street Journal. He holds a B.s. from Cor-nell University and an M.s. from the Columbia University graduate school of Journalism. He can be reached at [email protected].

PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

see LIGHTS on page 11a

By LINDA SHOCKLEY

Fall journalism conferences always bring me in touch with a group of people who are nothing short of extraordinary. I’m talk-ing about high school journalism teachers.

Most of the best confluences of these gatherings was at the Online News Association meeting in San Francisco, where I saw Ellen Austin, the 2012 National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year, her colleague at Palo Alto HS and 2009 Teacher of the Year Paul Kandell, and 2012 Distinguished Adviser Beatrice Motamedi of the Urban School of San Francisco. Motamedi has a unique arrange-ment which allows her to teach at the school, report and write and instruct students at Castlemont Academy across the bay.

Austin and Kandell brought student volunteers from their award-winning staffs to serve as volunteers during the convention. Motamedi was on a mission to recruit a singular journalist for the 2013 spring high school journalism convention. Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer-Prize winner, addressed the opening session. He is also the founder of Define American

(http://www.defineamerican.com/), a campaign that seeks to broaden and uplift the conversation around immigration. Born in the Philip-pines, Vargas graduated from Mountain View (Calif.) HS and attended a Fund-supported work-shop at San Francisco State Uni-versity, his alma mater. He spoke rapturously about the transforma-tive power of journalism in his life and declared it’s time to stop using

the term “illegal immigrant.” ****

Media advisers belong to the league of extraordinary educators. They shepherd student journalists through, stage and manage the most enriching “field trip” experi-ences in education – journalism conferences and conventions.

Kudos to Baruch College’s Katina Paron of the New York City Scholastic Press Association for a

well-attended, highly diverse fall press day last November. Though Hurricane Sandy had left some students homeless or without power, many came from several boroughs to learn and contribute to the discussion. Robert Thomp-son, the editor in chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, was the keynote speaker. The Newsies, celebrating the best in New York City high school journalism, were presented at the conference. Here’s a link to the awards: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/educa-tion/newsies.

The Garden State Scholastic Press Association had to postpone its Fall Press Day, the first time in its history because the hurricane hit that same day. The conference was rescheduled for Dec. 17 at Rutgers University.

At the national fall conven-tion in San Antonio, we honored DJNF’s Teacher of the Year, Dis-tinguished and Special Recogni-tion Advisers. They are not Victori-an literary figures. Although Ellen Austin, the 2012 Teacher of the Year, teaches British literature, as did her predecessors Jack Ken-

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By NORMA SUMARNAP KNEESE

Is it just me, or is it the sign of the times? After 25 years of teach-ing, I see values shifting in stu-dents’ expectations. Parents seem to promote the tangible rather than the intrinsic value of grades. Even the state demands a tangi-ble number or percentage to show “growth” in student achievement. Unfortunately, that is what has become important in education.

And yet as a teacher, the occa-sions that make teaching worth it all are the ones that are intan-gible. It’s the ‘aha’ moment when a student has an epiphany, when a child figures out the answer for himself, or when a kid finally gets it. That’s what makes teaching so rewarding. When a student recognizes the intrinsic value of a job well done, only then will he/she know that knowledge is not measured by a letter grade.

How can we instill in students, probably parents and adminis-trators, too, that learning goes beyond the report card? As edu-cators, we must first agree that intrinsic value has worth for itself and for no other reason. Whereas, non-intrinsic or extrinsic value is a means or vehicle to something else.

Some intrinsic values every-one, not only students, should possess are wisdom, knowledge, honor, integrity, happiness, duty, respect and virtue. This is not a complete list. Many cultures and other groups may identify other areas that they may consider as intrinsic values.

One of the ways to instill intrinsic values in students is to model behavior that reflects its importance. If one values integ-rity, then one must be honest in

everything and with everyone. If one values respect, then one must respect others to gain their respect. If one values knowledge, then one must gain knowledge for the sole purpose of learning and not for extrinsic values, such as grades or notoriety.

The American educational system requires a grade that sup-posedly represents a student’s accounting of his/her performance within a class. A better reporting of a student’s achievement is to ask “What did you learn in taking this class?” “How will you apply what you have learned?” and “Of what value is the knowledge that you acquired?”

When parents place a mon-etary value on grades, they are not doing their students any favors. They are sending a wrong message. Teachers and parents

should be applauding the stu-dents’ efforts, accomplishments and commitment to their respon-sibilities. A student’s self-actu-alization, the drive a person has to be everything that he/she can be, to take full advantage of his/her talents and abilities, should be the ultimate goal rather than grades, money, position or appear-ance. Intrinsic values should be emphasized.

When intrinsic values become the focal point of a student’s career, the extrinsic will follow. Life is too short and too valuable. The “older generation” through hindsight reveres wisdom, knowl-edge, honor, integrity, happiness, duty, respect and virtue. Its mem-bers realize that these intrinsic values are what make a person human. These are the values that can be passed on from one genera-tion to another. It is the essence of life. It is what perpetuates the soul of man.

director’s chair

the league of extraordinary People

diversity

Jose Antonio vargas with Beatrice Motamedi at right and venise Wagner, san Francisco state University journalism department chair.

lInda Shockley is deputy director of the dow Jones News Fund where she has worked since 1988. she administers the teacher of the Year program, the business reporting internship pro-gram and the summer high school journalism workshops. shockley handles the Fund’s media rela-tions including its website, news releases and Adviser Update. Before coming to dow Jones & Co., she was an education reporter, news editor, suburban bureau chief and city editor for the gannett-owned newspapers in Westchester County, N.Y. shockley holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. Contact her at [email protected] or 609-520-5929.

beyond the report card

norma SumarnaP kneeSe is Multicultural Chair for JeA and has taught english, speech, read-ing and journalism at snake river Hs in Blackfoot, idaho, for 26 years. she advises the school’s newspaper and yearbook. Active in the idaho student Journalism Association, she is CJe and MJe certified by JeA and has taught at numerous diversity workshops at the state and national levels. she can be reached at snake river Hs, 922 West Hwy. 39, Blackfoot, id 83221. she can be reached at [email protected].

see PEOPLE on page 11A

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REGISTRATION FEESJEA or NSPA members• $90ifreceivedby

April4,2013• $100whenreceived

April5,2013orlaterNonmembers• $110ifreceivedby

April4,2013• $120whenreceived

April5,2013orlaterNonmember professionals(notstudentsoradvisers):$150

HOTEL ROOM RATES• San Francisco Marriott

Marquis: 55FourthSt.

Room Rates: $209/nightsingle/doubleoccupancy;$229/nighttriple/quadoccupancy,plus15.5percenttaxperroompernightHotel Deadline:April2,2013

www.jea.orgnspa.studentpress.orgApril 25-28, 2013 • San Francisco Marriott Marquis

JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention

IT’S WHATEVERYONE’S

TALKINGABOUT

National Scholastic Press Association2221 University Ave. SE, Ste 121Minneapolis, MN 55414

JEA/NSPASpring National High School

Journalism ConventionApril 25-28, 2013

San Francisco Marriott Marquis

• Keynote addresses by some of the nation’s top newsmakers

• More than 300 learning sessions in newspaper, yearbook, magazine, broadcast, online, advising, media law and more

• Pre-convention workshops in leadership, writing, photography, team storytelling and more

• Media and sightseeing tours to top attractions and media outlets

• On-site critiques and competitions, including NSPA Best of Show and JEA Write-offs

• Swap Shop and Break with a Pro events for sharing experience and gaining career information

• Products, services and educational opportunities at the trade show

• Special strands for middle schools, new advisers, digital media

Go online for more information:www.jea.org • nspa.studentpress.org

conventionbehaviorBefore their formal photo is taken, former News Fund teachers of the Year demonstrate behind-the-scenes convention behavior. Front row: Linda Ballew, 2005; Candace Per-kins Bowen, 1989; Ellen Austin, 2012; Aaron Manfull, 2011; and Paul Kandell, 2009. Back row: John Bowen, 1983; H.L. Hall, 1982; Elizabeth Ann Fitts, 2003; Brenda Gorsuch, 2004; Nick Ferentinos, 1994; Steve O’Donoghue, 1990; and Linda Shockley, News Fund deputy director.

Update photo by randy swikle

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lifetimeJeA Lifetime Achievement honorees: Janice Hatfield, Mount Morris, pa.; and sue Farlow, Climax, N.C. standing: sharleen K. Ball, Omaha, Neb.; Marie parsons, tuscaloosa, Ala.; patricia turley, Junction City, Ore.; Jill Farkas, Window rock, Ariz.; sarah Nichols, rocklin, Calif.; and Janet K. raddish, Omaha, Neb. Other honorees included sam Bidleman, Bloomsburg, pa.; edward Bray, Canon City, Colo.; phyllis Cooper, Asheville, N.C.; Cornelia Har-ris, Charlotte, N.C.; Yvonne Johnson, Mesa, Ariz.; sheila Jones, Littleton, Colo.; Joy Lessard, ellensburg, Wash.; susan Miller, greensboro, N.C.; steve slagle, Walnut, Calif.; and Kathleen d. Zwiebel, pottsville, pa.

PioneersLogan Aimone, NspA executive director, with NspA pioneer Award honorees, Jim streisel, Carmel, ind.; Jane Blystone, erie, pa.; peggy gregory, surprise, Ariz.; and Lori Keekley, saint Louis park, Minn. Also honored was vincent F. Filak, Oshkosh, Wis.

admin of the yearNick Ferentinos with susan enfield, JeA Administrator of the Year from Highline public schools, Burien, Wash., and steve O’donoghue. enfield was Ferentino’s student teacher then successor at Cupertino (Calif.) Hs. Ferentinos and O’donoghue were News Fund teachers of the Year in 1994 and 1990, respectively.

Distinguished advisersNews Fund distinguished Advisers Jim streisel, Carmel, ind.; rod sat-terthwaite, dexter, Mich.; Beatrice Motamedi, san Francisco, Calif.; and Bretton Zinger, Chantilly, va. Fund special recognition Advisers Melissa Wantz, ventura, Calif.; rebeca Zimmerman, Albuquerque, N.M.; and Jeff Kocur, Minnetonka, Minn., were also recognized.

carltowleyawardrobert greenman accepts JeA’s Carl towley Award. His san Antonio speech can be seen on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2r4Yziqcn-w).


Jea / nSPasAN ANtONiO 2012

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By DAVID LITTLE

Those doomsdayers predicting the end of print journalism won’t like this story.

It’s about a group of newspa-per lovers who aren’t about to let their newspaper die. And they aren’t a bunch of gray-haired people, supposedly the newspaper demographic.

They’re all teenagers.When student journalists at

Pleasant Valley (Chico, Calif.) HS were told their venerable news-paper, the Saga, was being killed, they responded like any aspiring journalist would: They rebelled.

Nobody was going to steal their First Amendment right, even if the school cut off their access to funding and computers, and eliminated the five-unit class that attracted a couple of dozen students every year to put out the student newspaper.

A handful of students, led by a couple of incredibly motivated and intelligent upperclassmen, met after hours off campus and pieced together their own print edition. The front-page flag says, “The Saga Independent.” In smaller type: “A Former Pleasant Valley High Publication.”

The lead story, written by Umran Haji, is headlined “The Saga rises from the ashes.” It talks about how PV’s administra-tion wants the journalism class to focus on an online newspaper and killed off the print edition, which has been around since 1965. Administrators felt the future was online.

“The thing I always disagreed with from the beginning is, why are they mutually exclusive?” said Alex Scott, editor of the Indepen-dent Saga. They aren’t. Newspa-pers should have both print and online components. The students value, as Haji told me this week, “the reward of making a tangible product.”

He quoted sophomore Indepen-dent Saga staffer Laretta John-son as saying, “While an online newspaper may be more modern, it doesn’t give you the same ink-on-paper satisfaction of your com-pleted work on distribution day that a print newspaper does.”

The journalism class at PV (the online Saga) has 15 students. Scott and Haji recruited 10 from that class, and three others, to

help with the unauthorized print newspaper, the Independent Saga.

They produced a 16-page broadsheet by themselves, with-out adult help, over the course of four long nights. Scott said students brought laptops or used desktops at his father’s office one Saturday, working noon to mid-night. There were fewer people the following weekend. Then on the last two nights, it was just Scott and Haji.

The final night of production, they finished at 3 a.m. Then they drove the pages to Marysville, where 1,200 copies were printed for $400.

Scott said his father paid for the first printing, but the rest of the school year, they’ll have to sell ads. Scott and Haji think they shouldn’t have any problem cover-ing the print bill for another three or four issues.

Principal John Shepherd said he understands the students’ pas-sion and doesn’t consider it an underground newspaper. He said he wanted the Saga to become an online-only publication because it was an English class and the students should be writing more

than four to six times a year. (On the other hand, the yearbook class survives and it comes out only once a year.)

The same story has played out for years around the state. Stu-dent print publications are dying because of a lack of enthusiastic administrators, teachers — it requires many extra hours — and funding.

There are, however, students willing to do it still at PV. And these are good students.

Scott and Haji said 10 of the 13 students who helped with the print publication are part of PV’s renowned International Bacca-laureate program. Scott, a senior, has a 3.76 grade-point average and is applying to Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley and others. Haji, a junior, has a 4.3 GPA and plans to apply to Ivy League schools and Georgetown. His goal is to be elected president — not of his school, but of the United States.

I asked Scott why such bril-liant people are attracted to some-thing — print journalism — that school leaders think is dying.

“That’s a wonderful question, and I don’t think I can answer,” said Scott, who has been involved

since he was a freshman.Haji said good students don’t

mind staying the extra period after school to work on a newspa-per. “The good students want to do extra things,” he said. “Staying an extra hour after school was fun for them.”

Haji also said the things learned in journalism — dead-line pressure, asking questions, improving your writing — help you become a better student. And there’s a reward.

“In most classes, you sit there, you open a book and you learn,” said Haji. “In journalism you get to make a tangible product and you get to see the result of your hard work.”

You also get that with an online product. But to Haji and Scott, that reward is so much more satisfying when it’s sitting in front of you — in print.

Copyrighted article reprinted with permission. David Little is editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record/Oroville Mercury-Register in Chico, Calif. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ER_DavidLittle.

Update photo by Kyrsti douglas-Ferdanisaga independent staff members (left side) sharon Liu-Bettencourt, sacha deJong, Mason Wong and (right side) Umran Haji, alex scott, Haresh Kumar at work on a recent issue. says staffer scott, “it requires 36 hours of straight work and much sleep deprivation to reach our final product.”

Students won’t let their newspaper diePost your state, regional or

national association’s activities in adviser roundup by dropping editor george taylor ([email protected]) a line with your information. Photos with captions from events are welcome. Next deadline is March.

correctIonin our Fall 2012 issue, we incor-

rectly spelled scholastic research writer anne Conaway’s last name. We apologize for our error and any inconvenience it may have caused.

calIFornIaadvisers looking for a learning

opportunity for themselves or their staffs this summer need look no further than digital reNOvation, a summer workshop hosted by Jea Northern California at the reynolds school of Journalism at the Univer-sity of Nevada, reno June 16-19. Courses offered include: Photo/video, Print design, Web design, and editorial Leadership. registra-tion begins March 1, with an early registration discount through april 30. visit jeanc.org for more infor-mation.

Jeathe Journalism education asso-

ciation has announced the 2012 winners of its annual individual fall awards. the recipients were hon-ored at the Fall Jea/NsPa National High school Journalism Convention in san antonio.

robert greenman, a retired publications adviser and author from New York, won the Carl towley award – considered Jea’s highest honor — given each year to the organization’s member whose work has been of superior value to the Jea.

administrator of the Year: susan enfield, superintendent of schools, Highline Public schools, Burien, Wash.

Medal of Merit award: vincent deMiero, media adviser, Mount-lake terrace (Wash.) Hs; Mary Kay downes, MJe, media adviser, Chan-tilly (va.) Hs; and Peggy gregory, CJe, language arts specialist, dysart Unified school district, surprise, ariz.

Friend of scholastic Journal-ism: the sacramento (Calif.) Bee; William dussling, board member, township Hs district 214, arlington Heights, ill.; Phyllis

ROUNDUPNatiONaL

see ROUNDUP on page 21a

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for major flooding, originated a few feet from the condominium in which we had once owned an apartment. The Weather Channel’s intrepid drenched and wind-blown reporters brought home dramatically the storm’s increasing severity.

Once we lost power, we were dependent on my BlackBerry. While valuable, its effec-tiveness declined as the winds built and the destruction expanded. Moreover, I limited my Web searching to conserve the battery. Our fiber phones were not much comfort. They went dead for days when in a matter of hours the backup battery in the base-ment was exhausted.

With many highways and local roads blocked by downed trees and other dam-age, there was understandably no driveway delivery of either the Journal or the New York Times on Tuesday morning. After I ventured out late in the day in hopes of recharging my mobile phone, I started to go online for news, limiting myself to checking the Princeton Township Website for critical information about power-restoration work and other immediate storm-related issues.

By Wednesday, the newspapers were back on our driveway. But with tempera-

tures dropping, no electric lights and long hours buying gas for the car and one or two cold meals, I only glanced at them occa-sionally, preferring to go online for quick reports of the storm’s effects on the entire region.

On Thursday, we were able to visit our son and his family in nearby Pennington, N.J. They had limited electricity provided by a small generator and for the first time we were able to watch live television cover-age of the destruction wrought by Sandy on the Jersey shore, Staten Island and lower Manhattan. Nothing had prepared us for the damage we saw.

After our power was restored, I finally found time to cull through the week of newspapers that had piled up. It was only then that I understood fully the dimensions and implications of the storm we had lived through. Like so many who grew up in an era when newspapers, magazines and net-work television were the dominant sources of news, I have come to appreciate and depend on the speed and breadth of deliv-ery of news and information to desktops, tablets and mobile phones.

But Sandy reinforced the vulnerabilities of digital delivery as well as the value of the old media in tough times when it is criti-cally important to absorb a complex, mas-sive story.

LIGHTSContinued from page 6A

nedy and Nick Ferentinos. Nick was hailed along with Steve O’Donoghue, 1990 Teach-er of the Year, as “godfathers” of Northern California scholastic journalism.

Distinguished Adviser Jim Streisel also received a Pioneer Award from the National Scholastic Press Association at the confer-ence and Rod Satterthwaite, another Dis-tinguished Adviser and Journalism Educa-tion Association board member, received Master Journalism Educator certification.

The fall convention struck a special note for Aaron Manfull, our 2011 National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year, as he handed off the annual title. According to his sister, Megan Ortiz, a convention orga-nizer who teaches at Summer Creek HS, this was their first scholastic journalism convention together. She is a former pro-football reporter for the Houston Chronicle. She wasn’t able to get to Minneapolis when Aaron accepted his award. Both had their mom Donna Manfull, a legendary Iowa journalism teacher, as an adviser.

DJNF Fun FactsMegan won a free subscription to The

Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition in 2009, the same year Aaron was selected a Distinguished Adviser.

Megan’s husband Jesus Ortiz, a Chron-icle sportswriter, was a DJNF copyediting intern at the paper in 1995.

If you didn’t know, Bob Greenman is not

just the JEA Carl Towley Award winner but a fine comedian. Catch his San Antonio monologue on YouTube (http://www.you-tube.com/watch?v=2R4YzIqcn-w). Anyone who’s used the JEA listserv looks forward to his posts about stories in the New York Times. He had this caveat.

“Many other wise and eloquent things are often said on the listserv by modest and self-effacing advisers … Well, if you are one of those people, don’t diminish the value of what you say. Can you imagine Abraham Lincoln on the listserv saying, ‘And the gov-ernment for the people, of the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth. Just my two cents?’”

Speaking of the JEA listserv, users can find Words on Words from Distinguished Adviser Bretton Zinger. Here’s an example.

“I write in order to try to capture my bet-ter thoughts, to freeze them in time so that they may be processed by others. I write so that in the future I can look back at my ear-lier self in a form of mental time travel, to see exactly where I was both in my ability to think and in my ability to communicate. In immortalizing our words, we take a central risk — that our words will be used to represent us as a whole, to be misused, misrepresented, and when we’re gone, to be left undefended.” - Charles Limb

The spring JEA/NSPA convention in San Francisco in April and the Columbia Scho-lastic Press Association convention New York City in March afford opportunities to network with other members of this league of extraordinary educators.

PEOPLEContinued from page 7A

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Update photo by Michael ReevesSan Antonio’s skyline at night.

Update photo submitted by Noah LevinConestoga HS (Berwyn, Pa.) Spoke and TETV editorial staff Drew Gottlieb, Heather Ward, Haley Xue, Shwetha Sudhakar, Jenna Spoont, Allison Kozer-acki, Suproteem Sarkar, Margot Field, Lavi Ben-Dor, Keith Petersen and Noah Levine.

Update photo submitted by Noah LevinConestoga HS (Berwyn, Pa.) Spoke’s editors in chief Heather Ward and Haley Xue hold the staff’s Pacemaker Award in front of the Alamo after the awards ceremony.

Jea / nSPaSAN ANToNio 2012

PAGE 12A / 13A wInter 2013 ADViSER UPDATE

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Update photo by Michael ReevesMembers of the Akins HS (Austin, Texas) newspaper and yearbook staff stop for just enough time for a photograph before racing into the annual Journalism Education Association dance held on Saturday night of the convention. Akins doesn’t hold school-wide dances except prom so for all of these students, this was their first informal dance.

Update photo submitted by Noah LevinConestoga HS (Berwyn, Pa.) Spoke’s editors in chief Heather Ward and Haley Xue hold the staff’s Pacemaker Award in front of the Alamo after the awards ceremony.

eDItor’S note: Photos on this page were submitted by advisers and staffs answering a request for photos on the JEA Listserv.

left: Marie Parsons, JEA men-tor, former Alabama Scholastic Press Association director and ASPA consultant, receives the JEA Lifetime Achievement Award in San Antonio at the national convention. one of her ment-ees, Tyrone Jones of Central HS in Tuscaloosa, Ala., sits next to her.

Update photo submitted by Meredith Cummings

right: Seven journalists from Walla Walla (Wash.) HS after a tour of the Alamo: online editor in chief Quinn Anderson; staff writer Bryson Gobel; sports edi-tor Madyson Gabriel; A&E editor Melissa Nelsen; features editor Emma opsal; business manager Madeline Brooks; and print edi-tor in chief Julia Cosma.

Update photo submitted by Gay Buissink

PAGE 12A / 13A wInter 2013 ADViSER UPDATE

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By KATHY CRAGHEAD

All journalism teachers work hard. That’s a given. Despite a few small squabbles on the JEA listserv in the fall, our profession has a greater respect than most for the jobs we do.

Because we are generally the only media advisers in the school, or one of possibly two/three other teachers in our field, we have few comparable fellow teach-ers. That’s why we need to stick together.

We all teach reporting, design, photography and technology. We all develop strong bonds with our students, lose sleep on a regular basis and have days we don’t feel welcome in the teacher workroom.

The most amazing part of our communal job is in the details. Our schedules, class assignments, number of publications advised, and compensation received are the areas in which we differ.

Learning about each other’s job descriptions can make us

happier in our assignment, or per-haps more depressed. Knowledge can make us thankful for what we have, or perhaps more resentful. But most importantly, learning about the structure of other advis-ers’ jobs can make us better at what we do, and more directed in what we ask for — just in case anyone ever asks us.

A discussion on the listserv about class schedules began with a request for information to help with a proposal for next year’s

class assignment for an adviser. How does block scheduling/tradi-tional scheduling work best, she asked?

Many advisers were quick to point to the advantages of block scheduling. Longer class periods work great for journalism classes, they said. The “day off” between class periods was custom made for interviewing and taking photos. Ninety minutes was the perfect amount of time for a com-puter session.

Other advisers strongly advo-cated the value of every class meeting every day, whether it was the traditional six/seven period day, or the “extended” block, or whatever jargon the principal learned at his/her latest workshop to describe the school’s schedule.

How in the world can you update the website, keep up with mini-deadlines or just function in any way without seeing students every day, some decried?

Then, tentatively, a few advis-ers weighed in with their sched-ule — no classes at all. News-paper, yearbook, online, lit mag — with no grade to hold over the heads of students? Listservians asked, “How does this work?” The thought of volunteers showing up (or not) to meet a deadline (or not) is too much for many advisers to comprehend.

Or what about smaller schools where staff members for all the publications are dumped into

Because we are generally the only media advisers in the school,

or one of possibly two/three other teachers in our field, we have few

comparable fellow teachers. That’s why we need to stick together.

making us better at what we doJEA ListErv

kathy craghead has retired after 32 years of advis-ing Missouri high school yearbooks and newspapers. she is a past National Yearbook Adviser of the Year and a former member of the Journalism education Associa-tion Board of directors. she is the recipient of the pioneer Award from the National scholastic press Association, Medal of Merit from JeA and is a Master Journalism educator. she is currently the Newspaper in education coordina-tor for her hometown newspaper. she can be reached at [email protected] BETTER on page 15A

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By CYNTHIA MITCHELL

Four times since 2004, high school students and teachers nationwide have been surveyed about their knowledge of and atti-tudes toward the First Amend-ment. The results are alarming. In the most recent 2011 study, 41 percent of students thought the press should have to get govern-ment approval before publishing, and 24 percent said the amend-ment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

Against this backdrop, sev-eral groups have launched First Amendment education efforts aimed at K-12 students. The broadest and most ambitious effort was the “First Amendment Schools: Educating for Freedom & Responsibility” (FAS) project, launched in 2001 and funded by the Freedom Forum-funded First Amendment Center (FAC), which co-directed it with the Association for Supervision and Curricu-lum Development (ASCD.) By the project’s end in 2006, it had signed up 24 project schools, 80 affiliate schools, and reached some 75,000 students. The goal: Turn the schools into Laborato-ries of Democracy, where students have a say in school policies and not only learn about but use their First Amendment freedoms.

Because of its scope and ambi-tion, a case study of the project was undertaken in which the founders and co-directors were interviewed at length and pri-mary documents and archival records were examined.

When the FAC and ASCD announced the project on March 16, 2001, the guiding principles were outlined as:

1.) Create Laboratories of Democratic Freedom.

2) Commit to Inalienable Rights and Civic Responsibility.

3) Include all Stakeholders.4) Translate Civic Education

into Community Engagement. In hindsight, project founder

and FAC scholar Charles Haynes and former project co-directors Sam Chaltain, now a writer and education activist, and Molly McCloskey, of the ASCD, said they learned four key lessons:

FAS didn’t build in enough sustainability. Partly because the FAS leaders didn’t antici-pate that funding for the project would end in five years, Haynes, Chaltain and McCloskey all see a major failure in not building in sustainability that would enable a cultural change strong enough to withstand the departure of a principal or other project lead-ers. They spent too much time on principals and lead faculty rather than on the institution or its dis-trict.

“The reality is those individu-als may not stay in those institu-tions,” Chaltain said. “We didn’t prepare them to pass the baton.” Too many schools viewed Chaltain

and McCloskey as the “change agents,” he said, so “once we left and the money left, they didn’t have the capacity to sustain it.”

FAS didn’t build enough ways to spread the lessons beyond project and affiliate schools. All three leaders said tending more to how to spread the lessons beyond the project schools would have helped solve the sustainability issues. Techni-cally, the schools were supposed to spread what they learned to other area schools, but the FAS leaders didn’t push it or follow through. They said they wished they’d set up “lead schools” tasked with spreading the gospel.

Similarly, with the Affiliate Schools program, Haynes wishes they’d thought to give lead schools grant money and task them with bringing along other schools as affiliates.

They also regret not having invested more in communications and marketing. McCloskey said she wishes they’d “sought out the national platform … really raised the principals up as speakers, engaged more with the superin-

tendents … We worked in a little bubble with certain schools.” Added Chaltain: “We got decent press, but it was all reactive … We didn’t really go out and gener-ate it, and we had great stories to tell.”

FAS didn’t build in impor-tant types of accountability. No Child Left Behind was being launched at about the same time the FAS leaders had started plot-ting strategy, and social studies was not in the mix.

FAS leaders built in qualita-tive measures of accountability that each project and affiliate school had to meet, and the co-directors conducted twice-yearly visits and evaluations, but the results were observational.

“We weren’t able to speak to the currency of the day,” McClo-skey said. “We couldn’t say we increased graduation rates or attendance.” She wishes they’d done initial and annual “climate surveys,” because “scores, atten-dance, graduation – everything – rolls out of a good climate … That would have given us more nation-al credibility and a different plat-form to expand our reach.”

Haynes wonders if some heard all the talk of freedom and thought, “You’re not going to be … correcting the fact that people aren’t graduating and don’t know how to read or who the president is … We’ve got to make the case that what we’re talking about is rigorous … and that it works to help academic achievement. If we can’t make that case, then we won’t be taken seriously.”

FAS leaders needed exper-tise in cultural change. With the project’s end, Chaltain secured a fellowship from the Knight Foundation to cogitate on his FAS experience and to then

figure out what it meant for the larger goal of creating democratic schools, putting his conclusions in a book. He concluded the fun-damental problem with FAS was that the founders and directors hadn’t had the knowledge they needed to instill permanent cul-tural change – whether they’d had a bottomless pit of money or limitless time.

“We were experts on the First Amendment, not on comprehen-sive school change,” he said, “and what we most needed for what we wanted to do was to be experts on comprehensive school change.”

First amendment Schools Leaders of ambitious plan to turn schools into “laboratories of freedom”

glean valuable lessons for school reform efforts

IMPLICATIONSschool leaders intent on creating a more democratic learn-

ing environment that honors First amendment principles – or who want to launch any broad-scale school reform effort – need to make sure to build in sustainability, to provide ways to spread their lessons beyond the schools initially targeted for reform, and to build in key measures of accountability that will help broader constituencies see the value of the reforms. it also will help enormously if leaders of any school reform pro-ject bring with them a deep understanding of organizational change and leadership theory.

scholastic research

cyntHIa mItcHell spent 14 years in the newsroom – at the Wall street Journal and the atlanta Journal-Constitution – before turning her career toward the classroom. she’s an associate professor of journalism at Cen-tral Washington University, where she also advises the student sPJ chapter and the Observer, CWU’s weekly student newspaper and a finalist for the Pacemaker award for general excellence in 2011 and 2012. she also serves on the board of the Washington Coalition for Open government. Her ser-vice and research passion is First amendment education. Cynthia can be reached at [email protected] (note just one “L”), or at 509-963-1063.

one class? Not convergence, such as the advisers at Lake Central in Indiana and other schools do, but just plain one class for many publications. Due to small enroll-

ment, increased emphasis on classes which “teach the test” or perhaps for counselor scheduling convenience, many advisers have seen their journalism class peri-ods shrink in number.

And a final point of difference is that of how much the stipend is for extra duty. I remember my

very first superintendent telling me there was no extra duty pay because the school was “letting” me do the yearbook and newspa-per “during the school day.” Uh, thanks.

Every year someone starts a stipend conversation on the listserv. The responses are amaz-

ing. Some stipends are based on experience, percentage of base pay or union-negotiated extra duty pay. Some stipends differ for online and print publications, or for newspaper and yearbook advisers in the same school. Some stipends are significant; some are laughable.

And then there are the advis-ers who advocate for release time instead of a stipend.

The takeaway of this listserv conversation is simple: The best advisers do whatever it takes to get students in their programs and get classes in the schedule. It all works. That’s another given.

BETTERContinued from page 14a

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Covering a super stormThe chaos wrought by Superstorm Sandy — the destruction

of homes along the Jersey shore, the weeks without power, the lack of gas and the closing of schools — left the students of Hasb-rouck Heights (N.J.) HS literally in the dark. The staff of the Pilot’s Log wanted the students to read the storm stories and understand that they were not alone, that millions of people in our area suffered because of the damage caused by the hurricane. In order to do this, they produced a 12-page magazine in just four days complete with interviews of first responders, eyewitness accounts, photographs and editorial cartoons. “I think that the biggest thing that the magazine did was get the news out on the real situation so they could see the impact of the storm. Many students came to me and wanted to know more about my story and what they could do to help,” Bill Thorpe, history teacher, said.

The PilotHasbrouck Heights HS365 Boulevard, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604.Lora Geftic, [email protected]

Advisers: Did a particular spread, story or photo strike your fancy? If so please send us a PDF of that item and a one-paragraph summary of what struck your fancy. Send your submissions to [email protected]. We pay $25 for a published item.

George TaylorEditorAdviser UpdateDow Jones News Fund

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After the stormIn response to the disaster in New York

and New Jersey, Valor put together a ser-vice group of students and staff members (29 students and 13 staff/faculty) in a little over a week’s time. An announcement of the trip was made at an assembly and over 80 students signed up to go, but in the end 29 actually committed because the service dates interfered with Thanksgiving break. Students made a commitment to raise their own funds to cover most of their expenses and a donor sponsored a portion of the trip’s cost. The group served in Tom’s River, N.J., and stayed in a local church in town. The

guys were in one group (felling trees, etc.) and the girls were in another (tearing down dry wall for FEMA inspection). Our editor in chief was interviewed by our local NBC station about the trip and why he chose to serve. NBC’s Nightly News also did a piece on the group that aired on national news. Our editor, Conner Clay, wrote about his experience.

Valor Christian HS3775 Grace Blvd.Highlands Ranch, CO 80126Leslie Bogar, [email protected]

DeterminationOur October issue (which actually came

out Nov. 1) was one of the most difficult I’ve ever had to produce. Usually The Beacon comes out on a Friday, but we have to get it to the printer by Tuesday midnight in order to have it delivered on Thursday so we can pass it out in the morning. That means staying late at school on both Mondays and Tuesdays. Sunday morning the EIC called me and said that the editors didn’t think it was going to be possible to get it out because of the storm. I explained that we couldn’t quit before we had even tried. We brought the computers and equipment to my house so students could come on Sunday and get the first day done. Fortu-nately, we never lost power so we were able to finish it on Tuesday. The result? It actu-ally came out on the same day we initially planned to publish. All this is to say that our coverage isn’t the thing that is so strik-ing about the attached paper. The fact that we managed to get it out was the heroic part.

The BeaconWoodrow Wilson HS,Washington, DCMary Stapp, [email protected]

Out of harm’s wayDuring the hurricane, we asked our

reporters to go out and photograph any visible effects of the storm (downed trees, fallen wires, etc.). For the cen-terspread, we compiled photographs received from an alumnus who had been volunteering with a local fire company at the time of the storm and integrated data collected by local gov-ernment with the pictures. This content was also posted online at stoganews.com in coordination with TETV. Their video coverage can be found here: http://stoganews.com/news/hurricane-sandy-

blasts-through-the-main-line/8143/. We also created a photo gallery here: http://stoganews.com/news/photo-gallery-hurricane-sandy/8235/.

Though, fortunately, the storm didn’t cause excessive damage in our area, students benefitted from a region-wide approach to the storm coverage.

The SpokeConestoga HS200 Irish Road, Berwyn, PA 19312Susan Houseman and Cynthia Crothers-Hyatt, [email protected]

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By GARY CLITES

Friday evening, the high school football team beats their county rival in the state football playoff. Your staff rushes to write up the victory and upload the article to their news web-site. Trained as clever headline writers, they post it under the title and page name, “Hur-ricanes crush Yellowjackets in stormy finale.” You are justifi-ably proud of their journalistic acumen.

The next morning, Internet users throughout your com-munity search Google for cover-age of the game. They type in searches like, “Southern High School state football playoff.” They get varying results, but not one receives the link to your students’ story. Meanwhile, an elementary student three states away working on a science project about Colony Collapse Disorder searches “honey bee disappearance weather” and receives a top link to your state championship football game story.

This is an example of one of the biggest problems both professional and students jour-nalists have transitioning from the printed page to the web. Journalists have always valued wordplay, especially in head-lines. A truth that is often stat-ed regarding search engines, however, is that Google, Bing, Yahoo and others simply have no sense of humor. Since one of the biggest complaints by online student publications is the lack of traffic our sites garner, solv-ing this problem should be a priority.

The science of improving a site or page’s position in search engine rankings is called Search Engine Optimization, SEO in

common parlance. Companies spend a fortune hiring SEO spe-cialists to optimize their site’s rankings. The student press

doesn’t have that luxury. It is important, therefore, that we, as teachers, learn the basics of the science ourselves so that we can better inform our student journalists and webmasters.

How important is it to grab a high ranking in web searches? Studies have shown that the top ranked site in a Google search gets over 36 percent of click-throughs. The top three sites garner over 58 percent of clicks. Sites ranked six to 10 average only about 3.3 percent of hits. This proves a major truism in the SEO world – that searchers don’t scroll. They click on the links that appear in their open screen frame.

Why concentrate on Google? While there are dozens of search engines, Google has over 80 percent of market share, Bing is in second place with a 9 per-cent share, with Yahoo in third with 7 percent. Add to this the fact that Bing works largely by searching Google itself, then reorganizing those results using a proprietary Artificial Neural Network, and you’ll realize that Google can represent nearly 90 percent of Internet searches.

Following, then, are five big SEO skills for increasing your pages’ search engine rankings.

1. Understand how search engines search

Google employs a search tool they call the Googlebot to “crawl” the web and rank sites. The Googlebot does not, how-ever, necessarily crawl every word of a site. It emphasizes, in order, reading a page’s name, its headline, its metatags and tags (see sidebar), and the first few lines of a document. It is crucial,

therefore, that the key content a user might type in a Google search be contained in those elements. Journalists creating clever, but oblique, headlines and burying the nut graf in the second or third paragraph are, essentially, hiding their pages from search engines.

2. Create headlines search engines will like

Google has recently created a metatag system you can use to make an article with clever, but unclear, headlines usable (see sidebar). That said, headlines

using Seo to increase your web trafficsearch engine Optimization basics are key to online success

It’s in Google’s best interest to make the sites its Googlebot crawls clear and easy to understand. The company, there-fore, works to help webmasters under-stand its methods. Hearing journalists’

problems regarding the creative headlines we love, they recently created a new News Metatag system to make sites with such headlines more easily searchable.

A metatag is a line in the html code

for a page that lists searchable terms for the page divided by commas. It is given a higher priority in Google search crawls than other searchable elements and is, therefore, a very valuable tool. To use a News_Metatag, add a line like this to your html code: <meta name=”news_keywords” content=”Frankfort High School, Short Gap, West Virginia, homecoming, king and queen, dance”>

To better understand this and other Google SEO techniques, visit the Google Webmaster Tools site at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. It also offers a downloadable PDF of their incred-ibly useful Google Search Engine Optimi-zation Starter Guide. The link is about a thousand characters long, so you’ll be bet-ter off just Googling it.

gary clIteS has been technology columnist for Adviser Update for over a dozen years. He served for over a decade as president of the Maryland-dC scholastic press Association, received a Columbia gold Key Award in 2008, and was a 2004 distinguished Journalism Adviser in the dJNF National Journalism teacher of the Year program. His first novel, “seneca Wood,” was published this year. there is an archive of his articles on his web site, www.garyclites.com. He can be reached at [email protected].

technology

google metatags may actually give the site a sense of humor

see SEO on page 19A

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By CANDACE PERKINS BOWEN and JOHN BOWEN

Name the most important [con-tent] for a journalism educator to know.

If you said, “Law and ethics,” you agree with the Bowens, who require 70 percent or higher on that test — the only test they give — in their Teaching High School Journalism classes at Kent State.

You also agree with those who set up the certification tests for the Journalism Education Asso-ciation. According to the jea.org website: “The Certification Com-mission believes that support is rooted in a comprehensive exam measuring basic knowledge and application of the JEA teaching standards. Of those, the law and ethics standards are the founda-tion upon which all scholastic journalism programs are built.

“In addition, the Commission has determined that passing the law and ethics questions is essential for earning Certification (CJE). Candidates must score 75 percent or higher from the law and ethics questions — in both multiple choice and short answer sections — to pass.”

For the next level, the Master Journalism Educator, the legal and ethical issues question is the only one of the five topics those

taking the test are required to answer. In that exam, they write essay responses to four of the five topics: (1) Content, writing and editing; (2) Graphics, design and production; (3) Staff and adminis-tration relationships; (4) Business and advertising; and (5) Legal and ethical issues.

An adviser’s students can pro-duce the most attractive graphics, the best investigative journalism, compelling photos or video — you name it. But libel, copyright viola-tions, even questionable ethical decisions will trump that every time.

Thus it might seem logical for the new journalism content area Praxis test to have a similar emphasis. Sorry — did we bury the lead? Yes, Educational Testing Services, the folks who bring you Praxis II, Principles of Learning and Teaching, required for pre-service teachers in many states, and the content area tests for a long list of curriculum, is now offering Journalism (0223), first offered in Fall 2012 in one state — Iowa.

Our concern is its apparent lack of law and ethics. “Repre-sentative descriptive topics” and other information on the website indicate the test is copyrighted

in 2010 by the Texas Education Agency and licensed by ETS. The 100-question multiple-choice test has the following categories: Mass media and communication; Jour-nalistic Writing and Photojour-nalism; Student-Produced Media; and Journalism in the School Community.

There’s not a whole category about law and ethics although the student media area has some hypotheticals. Those sample ques-tions are worrisome, though. For instance, in one about a “contro-versial” story, the correct answer is to go ask the principal what he thinks — and an incorrect answer is to seek legal advice, indicating it’s too early in the process to ask for this.

Iowa isn’t the only state that appears headed to using this test. In a “standard-setting” meeting in January, representatives chosen by the departments of education in seven states will be asked to indicate passing scores for their soon-to-be-teachers: South Dako-ta, Kansas, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Iowa. Although some who are attending do — and others may — share our soapbox about what’s important, it’s unclear what impact they can have on a test that’s already writ-ten.

It’s also a test the folks at ETS described this way in respond-ing to our email when we tried to explore what was going on: “The Journalism test was written and reviewed by committees composed of educators, faculty from educa-tor preparation programs, and other experts in the field. For additional information about the test, please visit our website at http://www.ets.org/praxis/prepare/materials/0223.”

Consider this a fact-finding col-umn. Exploring ANYTHING that has to do with education across the nation means checking 51 different places, and finding out about the use of the journalism Praxis is no different. If more and more states are going to require this test, we think it’s imperative to know the philosophy behind the test developers’ content choic-es and emphasis.

A test that lets teachers enter the journalism classroom or, worse yet, the area of student media advising, without showing they have proper legal and ethical training may be worse than no test at all.

If you have anything to do with the Journalism Praxis in your state or at the national level and want to discuss this, please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

Thanks.

a lack of law and ethicsets teacher test content questionable

candace PerkIns bowen, mJe, directs the Center for scholastic Journalism and the Ohio scholas-tic Media association and is an assistant professor at Kent state University. she can be reached at school of JMC, 201B Franklin Hall, Kent, OH 44242. Phone: 330-672-8297. e-mail: [email protected].

John bowen, mJe, chairs the Jea scholastic Press rights Commission. He is an adjunct professor in journalism at Kent state University. He can be reached at school of JMC, 201B Franklin Hall, Kent, OH 44242. Phone: 330-672-3666. e-mail: [email protected].

PRESS RIghTS

that reflect the words users will actually type into search engines are still a good idea.

Potential readers search: “high school students on church mission trips”

Bad headline: “Tigers see the world”

Better headline: “RHS stu-dents see the world on mission trips”

Potential readers search: “effects of caffeine on students”

Bad headline: “Hyped up for the day”

Better headline: “Does caf-feine help or hurt students?”

3. Create separate titles for your story pages

Most student publications use templated sites and, most commonly, Wordpress sites to build their web presence. (Remember that, although Wordpress posts stories in a continuous blogroll, it also cre-ates an individual searchable page for each post.) By default, Wordpress uses your post head-line as the page title. You can, however, change that title. If your individual provider doesn’t offer this as an option, there are free plugins available on the Internet you can download

to add individual titles to your Wordpress pages. If you want to use the headline “Night in the Tropics is a hit” for a Homecom-ing story, consider “King and Queen named at NHS Home-coming Dance” as a page title.

4. Write searchable tags Most sites allow you to add

tags – searchable terms sepa-rated by commas – when you write posts. Still, many student sites simply leave these blank missing an opportunity to make their pages more findable. Some rules:

1. Always include your school name, town and state. Many readers will include these in searches. So, “northern

high school, owings, maryland” should be your first three terms.

2. Add three simple search terms specific to the story: “homecoming, king and queen, dance.

3. Limit yourself to about six tags. Spammers tend to add dozens of tags to their pages. Searchbots, therefore, tend to ignore long strings of tags.

5. Avoid Flash linksSearch spiders (like the

Googlebot) like pages that are linked to others. They can-not, however, read links from images using Flash. Many of the cooler student websites use tons of neat-looking Flash image menus to link to stories.

Professional news sites like CNN.com or NBCNews.com never do. Why? Because their SEO experts know that using a Flash link makes their pages less searchable. Instead, they use easily searchable headline menus as links.

These are just a few rules to get you started. Tremendous SEO resources are available online. Search them out (their sites had better be easy to find). Access Google’s free webtools using the link in the sidebar. With a little work, we can make our students’ sites as searchable as anything the pros are creat-ing.

SEOContinued from page 18a

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By STEVE ROW

As a general rule, we don’t see enough good sports writing, thoughtful and useful reviews, and effective surveys and polls in scholastic publications.

We also don’t see enough good profile stories based on good face-to-face interviewing.

The scholastic publication can introduce its readers to interest-ing students in the school com-munity — not just the football captain or the head cheerleader or student government president, but the Science Club member whose project has earned a top award from the local university, the singer whose talents have landed her a spot in the All-State Chorus, the delegate to Girls State who was elected as state vice president, the senior who received an appointment to one of the military academies, the photographer whose work will be shown in the local art museum. On occasion, the newspaper might do a profile on an adult in the school community, perhaps the new principal or head coach or guidance counselor. (One impor-tant tip: always ask the adult for his or her resume. This saves asking a lot of biographical ques-tions.)

A school community contains many interesting members, and the school publication has the opportunity to identify those students and tell their stories to a wide audience. One difficulty is that editors and reporters often don’t know how a profile story should be written, and they resort to a fill-in-the-blank question-and-answer format that barely gets under the skin of the subject, much less close to the soul of the subject. This often is done via email, which too frequently suf-fers from lack of any depth. While Q&A mini-profiles can be a valu-able part of the paper (especially on the sports pages, such as boy and girl athlete of the issue), you should look for a way to highlight at least one student each issue and give that story a more in-depth treatment.

This assignment likely should be given to one of the more experienced reporters on staff (a first-year student might be a good choice to do a Q&A), and the reporter should plan to spend

more than 15 minutes with the subject. Here are some other tips on writing the profile:

• The profile story does not start with the person’s birth date and is not necessarily written in chronological order — either the subject’s life chronologically or the order of information gained in the interview. You can highlight something at the beginning of the story that happened recently in the person’s life or came at the end of the interview. Avoid jump-ing around in time, however, or else the reader might become confused about when key events took place.

• An effective way to introduce the subject at the beginning of the story is through an important or unusual event in the person’s life, or with a summary descrip-tion of the person (physical or personality or character traits). If the person has an interesting, unusual, humorous or embar-

rassing moment from his or her background, that often will work as a way to get the story started. So will a summary of the person’s goals, hopes, dreams. (The lead can be written in the present tense, by the way.)

• Even in a small profile, casu-ally toss in biographical details, without making a big deal of any of them (“Smith, who was born in St. Louis in 1992, transferred to Northwest last year...” or “After earning a bachelor of science degree from East Carolina Uni-versity, she...”)

You are under no obligation to use everything the person told you in the interview, no matter how long you spent with the per-son. Use only what is necessary to make the story —and the person — interesting. Don’t throw in the kitchen sink.

• The best profile lets the subject explain at length in his own words who he is, why he

thinks the way he does and why he does what he does, often using anecdotes (stories within stories) to explain. In other words, the subject of the profile story is talk-ing directly to the reader, not the reporter. The reporter still must control the flow of this informa-tion, but the reporter should not give the reader his opinion of the person he is writing about.

• Master the use of transitions between speakers or between top-ics or both, because they will help you move easily from one speaker to another or from one topic to another. Don’t let the quote that follows the transition merely echo the transition, however. (The words in the transition should be different from words in the quote.)

• The more quotes the better the profile, but don’t start the story with a quote. Instead, put a really good quote in the second, third or fourth paragraph. Also, include an occasional indirect quote (paraphrase) and partial quote.

• Each quote should begin its own paragraph. Don’t bury a quote in the middle or at the bot-tom of a long paragraph. Really long quotes from the same person should be broken up into one- and two-sentence paragraphs.

• When using quotes, put the attribution at the end of the quote, not the beginning, and use “said” or “says” as the speech tag in just about all attribu-tions, not “commented,” “noted,” “stated,” “expressed,” “stressed,” “observed,” “quoted.”

• Even in small profiles, include quotes from other people (teachers, coaches, friends, etc.), which means that you need to talk to more people than just your subject.

• When using quotes, commas and periods, always go inside clos-ing quotation marks; semicolons, question marks and other punctu-ation might or might not, depend-ing on whether the punctuation mark is part of the quotation.

• The writer can perform minor editing on a direct quota-tion, primarily to clean up bad grammar. However, do not change anything that would alter the context, meaning or intent of the quote.

• Call back, and call back again. While writing the story,

don’t hesitate calling the subject to seek clarification of material you don’t fully understand, fill in holes or gaps, or update informa-tion that you gained some time earlier. A profile should not be out of date when published.

In lengthier profiles, use your powers of observation to fill in details about the person and his or her environment — the per-son’s dress, mannerisms, office or workplace appearance, etc. Casually toss those details into the story, too. If the person pauses before answering the question, you can put that detail into the story. (This tip might not apply to student profiles.)

• The best way to end a profile story is with a quotation, prefer-ably one that summarizes who the person is or how the person got to where he is today or what the person foresees happening in the immediate future. The quota-tion should be from the subject of the story, not a third party.

writing the interview/profile storywriters’ block

sometimes space considerations limit a newspaper’s ability to publish profile stories, and a good alternative is the ques-tion-and-answer format. these often are boxed, and they often appear on sports pages. But they could appear on any news or feature page.

the key to a good Q&A is the quality of the questions. i’ve never liked “What is your favorite color/food/television show/movie/Cd,” etc., though such responses are easy to get and likely attract readers. On the other hand, i also would not ask, “How would you end dependence on foreign oil?”

You might start off a Q&A box with biographical information, such as full name, age, school activities, school honors (a little like a senior listing in the yearbook), maybe hobbies and interests. then, if you are interviewing a student who has been accepted to a military academy, for instance, you get to the better questions, such as:

What made you want to attend West point/Annapolis, etc.?What interests you about being in the military?What excites you about becoming a military officer? What

worries you?do you see yourself making the military a career? Why or

why not? the key is to ask questions that require a good, detailed

response, something that shows, in a brief space, who this person is and what makes him or her tick.

the handy-dandy all-purpose Q&a

SteVe rowis currently a journalism instructor at east Carolina University. He was journalism education coordina-tor at richmond Newspapers inc. from 1992-2003, after working 24 years as a reporter and editor at the richmond News Leader. He was assistant director of the dJNF’s Urban Journalism Work-shop at virginia Commonwealth University and chairman of the virginia press Association’s journal-ism education committee, and he has been an instructor at state, regional and national scholastic journalism conferences. He served as associate editor at Cityview magazine in Knoxville, tenn., 2004-05 and is doing freelance writing and editing from his home in greenville, N.C. He can be reached at steverow_editor @hot-mail.com.

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Twelve media teachers have won free subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition through a con-test offered by the Dow Jones News Fund and the publishers of the newspaper.

The Classroom Edition, a co-sponsor of the National High School Journalism Teacher Awards program, is also provid-ing subscriptions to the 2012 Teacher of the Year and seven other honored teach-ers. This is the fourth year of free subscrip-tions.

Each essay winner will receive cop-ies of The Classroom Edition, a Teacher Guide, unlimited use of WSJclassroom and full subscription access to The Wall Street Journal Online.

Jason Gomez, a graduating senior at York (Pa.) County School of Technology, submitted an essay instead of his teacher Nicki Stiger. In part, he wrote: “.. . I am a student in the Graphic Arts division of York Tech and we study many different types of

typography. Because the school lacks funds for a newspaper subscription, I decided to take matters into my own hands to fur-ther our education in both journalism and graphic arts. It would be an honor if I could win this free subscription for my fellow students.”

The winners are: Annamarie Warren, Waxahachie (Texas) Global HS; Julie Stricklan, Rigby (Idaho) HS; Karen Ford, Holton (Kan.) HS; Taisha Matthews, Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, Astoria, N.Y.; Sonya Boyd, Shaw HS, Columbus, Ga.; Russell Hill, Coronado HS, Lubbock, Texas; Diane Hofsess, Southfield (Mich.) HS; Lynne Moore, Nativity School, Hollywood, Fla.; Nicki Stiger, York (Pa.) HS of Technol-ogy; Mary Kay Downes, Chantilly (Va.) HS; Leslie Bogar, Valor Christian HS, High-lands Ranch, Colo.; and Mark Eaton, T.C. Williams HS, Alexandria, Va.

Excerpts of the winning essays are linked on the Fund’s website.

teachers win free wSJ classroom edition subscriptions

Highland Highlight opinions editor Pilar Martinez reviews an issue of the Wall street Journal Classroom edition. Highland is in albuquerque, N.M., that is known for its diversity, with Navajo, Pueblo, african, african-american, Hispanic and anglo among others.

Fletcher, KUOW Puget sound Pub-lic radio, seattle, Wash.; William Macfadyen, founder and publisher of noozhawk.com, santa Barbara, Calif.; and Bobby Malish, Canon Usa, dallas, texas.

Lifetime achievement award: sharleen K. Ball, Omaha, Neb.; sam Bidleman, Bloomsburg, Pa.; edward Bray, Canon City, Colo.; Phyllis Cooper, asheville, N.C.; Jill Farkas, CJe, Window rock, ariz.; sue Farlow, CJe, asheboro, N.C.; Cornelia Harris, Charlotte, N.C.; Janice L. Hatfield, CJe, Mount Mor-ris, Pa.; Yvonne Johnson, Mesa, ariz.; sheila Jones, CJe, Littleton, Colo.; Joy Lessard, ellensburg, Wash.; susan Miller, greensboro, N.C.; Marie Parsons, tuscaloosa, ala.; Janet K. raddish, Omaha, Neb.; steve slagle, CJe, Walnut, Calif.; Patricia turley, Junction City, Ore.; and Kathleen d. Zwiebel, CJe, Pottsville, Pa.

kemPaFive new Kettle Moraine Press

assocaition board members were elected, including one Jea mentee, rachel rauch. New officers are President sandy Jacoby, vice Presi-dent Joe Koshollek, Membership vice-President tom Juran, secretary audrey Kemp and treasurer Jeff Wil-lauer. the new summer workshop

directors are Patrick Johnson, CJe, and Jamie Born. Johnson continues as day workshop and sandy Jacoby continues as fall conference direc-tor. Linda Barrington, MJe, and Jill Cook direct the Winter advisers seminar.

Winter advisers seminar will return to the beautiful grand geneva resort in Lake geneva, Wis., March 1-2, with steve Mat-son, MJe, as the keynote presenter. Breakout sessions will offer addi-tional topics and viewpoints from KeMPa member presenters. New this year, advisers will have the option to get graduate credit for the seminar. registration information is at www.KeMPaonline.com. On saturday, advisers will also have the opportunity to take the Jea certifica-tion exams.

National recognition: KeMPa member advisers Keith Carlson (Naperville Central Hs) and Kim Praser (thornton Fractional south Hs) were awarded their CJes at the san antonio Convention. Carl-son’s newspaper was also named a Pacemaker winner. at KeMPa 10 newspapers, three online newspa-pers, and 10 yearbooks received highest honors in the yearly critique: all-KeMPa.

Fall conference: in spite of tight school budgets and an adversarial climate toward educators, more than 900 students and advisers attended the fall conference in October at UW-Whitewater which

featured a new digital media track. sandy Jacoby is the conference director.

KeMPa is going back to basics with a little twist for the summer Journalism Workshop 2013: telling stories, Making History. By being a part of student media, students become the storytellers of the school and tell the history of the students, faculty and staff. the summer Journalism Workshop will help students become the best sto-rytellers they can be. sJW wants to help you write history. New classes will be offered, including an adviser course with a grad credit option. More information at www.kempa-summerworkshop.com.

new york cItyWinners of the the Newsies!,

the only high school newspaper competition for New York City stu-dent journalists, were announced in November during a lunchtime cer-emony hosted by Colin Myler, editor in chief of the New York daily News, at Baruch College.

school News: “Blackout,” by Ninaad dave and Nicole Clemons, Curtis Hs

Community News: “safety after stabbing,” by adelina Zhang, edward r. Murrow Hs

National/World News: “Pack-ing Up Help,” by sasha Williams, edward r. Murrow Hs

entertainment/arts: “roadracer on the run,” by Nicole Javorsky,

Benjamin N. Cardozo Hsillustration/Comics/Political Car-

toon: excuse by richard Chicaiza, aviation Hs

in-depth stories: “affirma-tive action sparks debate during College season,” by Catherine Moskos, townsend Harris Hs

Photojournalism: “early playoff exit frustrates players,” by ayah aly, Curtis Hs

Opinion/editorial Writing: “the africa stereotype,” by Karem smith-stone, east side Community Hs

sports: “this game Changed My Life!” by Marlon Hernandez, Hs for Contemporary arts

Features: “students Hooked on Hookah,” sarah aly, Curtis Hs

Multimedia storytelling: “Con-nected,” by Kristina Weis and sonya reyes, Curtis Hs

Media enhanced reporting: Hon-orable Mention “Larger debt, Higher risk” by James tschikov, Brooklyn technical Hs

Headline Writing: Baltic Blast, the school for international studies

Lede Writing: the Log, aviation Hs

Best New Newspaper (less than 2 years old): the Madison Moment, James Madison Hs

Best Overall Print Newspaper: the Murrow Network, edward r. Murrow Hs

Best Overall Online Newspaper: the verdict, Benjamin N. Cardozo Hs

nSPathe board of directors of the

National scholastic Press associa-tion has three new members whose terms began Oct. 1. they are Laura York guy of garden City Community College in Kansas, diana Mitsu Klos of virginia and ann visser of Pella Community Hs in iowa.

the three new directors bring the board membership to 12. directors Linda drake of Chase County Hs in Kansas and sam terilli of the Uni-versity of Miami in Florida have left the board, each having served the maximum three two-year terms.

Laura York guy is a humanities instructor and student media advis-er at garden City Community Col-lege in Kansas. she has 17 years experience advising the student media staffs and teaching journal-ism classes at a two-year commu-nity college in garden City, a town located in southwest Kansas.

diana Mitsu Klos is an experi-enced nonprofit association man-ager and journalist now working as a consultant. For 16 years she managed projects at the american society of News editors.

ann visser has taught english and journalism and advised the yearbook and newspaper at Pella Community Hs in iowa for 30 years. she served in numerous roles within the Journalism education associa-tion, including regional director, vice president, president and past presi-dent/convention consultant.

ROUNDUPContinued from page 10a

The Dow Jones News Fund, Inc. Invites advisers to apply for

2013 National High School Journalism Teacher of the YearGo to https://www.newsfund.org

Application deadline: July 8, 2013

The Dow Jones News Fund, Inc.P.O. Box 300 Princeton NJ 08543-0300https://[email protected] @DJNF609.452.2820 Fax: 609.520.5804

The program offers:• Scholarships for

students• A laptop for your

newsroom• Adviser Update column• Attendance at

academic, scholastic and media conferences

• Poynter Institute seminar and webinars

Thanks to Our Sponsors

Ellen J. Austin2012 DJNF National

High School Journalism Teacher of the Year

Palo Alto (Calif.) High School

Co-adviser to INfocus and adviser to

The Viking sports magazine,www.vikingsportsmag.com Photo: Bradley Wilson, 2012, San Antonio, Texas

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By FRANK LOMONTE

When you pick up a copy of John Gro-gan’s bestseller “Marley & Me” for $3 at a garage sale, you are the proud owner of 304 sheets of paper and some ink.

You can lend that bundle of paper to your friends. You can give it away. You can re-sell it at your own yard sale. But what you can’t do – without the permission of Grogan’s publisher – is redistribute all (or most) of the author’s words to a larger audience.

The right to control what happens to those words will rest exclusively with Grogan and his publisher, not just for the rest of his life, but quite possibly for the rest of his grandchildren’s lives. Copy-right protection for the 2005 book will not expire until Grogan has been dead for 70 years.

This reality of copyright law has not, however, stopped a host of online “reunion” companies from snapping up high school yearbooks and republishing their photo galleries online. Access to these galleries is offered as an induce-ment for customers to purchase member-ships entitling them to network with their fellow alumni and otherwise relive their glory days.

Is this legal? Not without permission, if the yearbook remains protected by copy-right. And that depends on when the book was published.

A book published today will enjoy that same virtually-forever copyright dura-tion as “Marley & Me,” 70 years beyond the death of the last co-author. (And it doesn’t matter whether the book has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, which under federal law no longer is a necessity.) That is true of any book pub-lished since March 1, 1989.

For books published before the magic legal cutoff date of March 1, 1989, it gets complicated:

(1) If the book was published with a visible © copyright notice and registered with the Copyright Office, then the book remains protected for 70 years beyond the death of the last co-author.

(2) If the book was published without a copyright notice and without having been registered with the Copyright Office, then the book has lapsed into the public domain, meaning it may be republished by anyone.

Just to make it more complicated, there was a brief window – which closed in 1994 – during which books between 1978 and 1989 could be retroactively protected by a post-publication copyright filing. Although very few schools took advantage of that window, it’s at least possible that some did. The federal data-base of copyright filings is easily search-able at: http://cocatalog.loc.gov/.

The trickiest question – one that the courts have not directly addressed – is who has the right to grant permission to republish all or part of a yearbook.

Arguably, the school is “the publisher” of the yearbook – though it’s equally arguable that the “publisher” consists of an “unincorporated association” of the student staff members themselves. That question depends on a host of factors, including whether the work is performed as a graded class assignment, where the proceeds from sales of the book go and other variables.

But it may not be necessary to go down that winding road. Online class-reunion companies typically want to republish one specific part of the yearbook: Senior portraits. If those photos were shot by a professional studio photographer, as is

what about republishing yearbooks online?

Leaving aside legal issues, many yearbook advisers – and students – feel understandably

proprietary over their work, and are annoyed to see it redistributed, without permission, for someone else’s profit.

Frank D. lomonte is executive direc-tor of the student press Law Center in Arlington, va. He can be reached at 703-807-1904, ext. 121 or [email protected].

“

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see YEARBOOKS on page 23A

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By DONNA GRIFFIN

Pinch me.I met my heroes – Pulitzer

Prize-winning, president-exposing, country and media-changing men.

Woodward and Bernstein.Forty years ago, they broke

the Watergate story that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. I was in middle school. I studied them in college and now they are part of the fundamentals of my curriculum in Journalism IA. My class watches “All The President’s Men,” faithfully, albeit, grudgingly each year.

It says a lot about the charac-ter of these men that they spent almost an hour in early November simply “talking shop” with young journalists from the Urban Media Institute at Arsenal Technical HS and Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.

But thanks to the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, which granted my request for this spe-cial session, what they had to say meant even more.

“As Bob has said many times, all good reporting is done in defi-ance of management,” Carl Bern-stein told the nearly 20 students gathered at the Indiana Conven-tion Center before the two spoke at the Chamber awards dinner later that evening.

Bob Woodward added his own warning.

“We really do have the First Amendment; but they will try to censor you. Don’t let them. The First Amendment applies to you too.”

Less than a week before the 2012 General Election, the two journalists, who have covered administrations ranging from Nixon to Obama, displayed their insight, wisdom and a give-and-take honed over decades of col-laboration.

“Readers/viewers are not interested in knowing the truth,” Bernstein said. “They only want information that reconfirms their previously held beliefs; this is the terrible thing about today. It is the overriding reality, being unrecep-tive to the truth – it’s part of our political culture and the larger cul-ture – it is poisonous; it’s toxic.”

Granted this is a lifetime dream of mine to meet these journalists and it is heartening to know they are exactly as I admired – honor-able, ethical and committed to standards and principles of their profession on which this country was founded.

“Because the media is so focused on what’s next, they are going to miss a giant story,” Wood-ward said. “Right now, it is all about manufacturing controversy and name-calling, which is easy to do in the highly politicized parti-san atmosphere we have today; it masks the real complex issues.”

And they gave hope, not only to me as a member of the old guard, but also to those who will take the lead in the future.

“Yesterday, we had the amaz-ing opportunity to speak with two of the greatest journalists in the world, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. As a young journalist, it was a once-in-a-lifetime oppor-tunity to hear them talk even if it was less than an hour, and I felt like everything they said was sacred knowledge,” said senior Brandon Real, editor in chief of the Arsenal Tech Cannon newspaper. “Normally when we learn about people like them, it’s in a textbook, or they’re long dead, but I got to talk to them, and that is a privi-lege few other journalism students will have.”

And the privilege continues to provide inspiration and faith for the inner city young journalists.

“It wasn’t until I walked in and sat down in the same room as

them that I truly began to under-stand how remarkable Woodward and Bernstein are. I could do little more than admire the sheer amount of courage and hard work that it must have taken these journalistic legends to uncover the truth behind the biggest political scandal the nation had ever seen,” said senior Lucy Knorr, online opinion editor. “As they spoke, I began to realize that their frustra-tions with the current state of the media were the same as mine. Increasingly, it feels as if the news has become less of a place to find truth and information, opting instead to be yet another biased entertainment source. Meeting Woodward and Bernstein remind-ed me that at one point great jour-nalists did exist and they broke hugely important stories. Perhaps, with great role models like these, there is hope for my generation to bring the era of great journalism back.”

“What about the future of print reporting?” One student asked.

“You have to do more stuff indepth – put time against the problem,” Woodward said.

The tools of the reporter have not changed since Woodward and Bernstein broke the Water-gate story: Do your homework – research, get information through documents, interviewing and then there is the one aspect the duo said that often gets lost in technol-ogy’s virtual shuffle.

“You have to go there. What can you witness? You have to see what it is,” Woodward said. “Get the best obtainable version of the truth.”

‘you have to see what it is’Woodward and Bernstein make deep impact on young Hoosier journalists

donna griffin with Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward at a “shop talk” with young journalists from the Urban Media institute at arsenal technical Hs and indiana University-Purdue University, indianapolis.

BIODonna grIffIn, student publications adviser at arsenal technical Hs in india-napolis, ind., has 18 years in media production, including nine as owner/manager/editor and 13 years as an educator at the high school and university level. she served on the steering committee for the diversity sports Media insti-tute at indiana University-Purdue University, indianapolis (iUPUi) and volunteered during web production in the summer of 2010 and 2011. the Urban Media institute is a part-nership between arsenal technical Hs and iUPUi with professional media as collaborators. the objec-tive of the Urban Media institute is to give indianapolis Public school students the chance to be exposed to media careers at this critical juncture of the profession. the focus is on diversity by giving urban and minority journalists a chance to explore issues and ideas from their rich and varied perspectives. griffin can be reached at dgriffins@ netzero.com.

customary, then that photog-rapher almost certainly signed a contract with the school that spells out who may consent to the republication of the photos.

Because studio photographers make their profit on the resale of individual portraits, a standard contract normally will give the photographer – not the school – the right to decide how and when the photos may be used. And that means consent to republish senior portraits may not be the school’s consent to give.

Unless it can be confirmed that no contract applies, it probably is safest to politely decline any offer from a vendor who wants to redis-tribute portions of a yearbook that were shot by a professional contractor.

Leaving aside legal issues, many yearbook advisers – and students – feel understandably

proprietary over their work, and are annoyed to see it redistrib-uted, without permission, for someone else’s profit.

Although it is not necessary to register a book with the Copy-right Office for copyright protec-tion to apply, it is necessary to register before filing an infringe-ment lawsuit. The Student Press

Law Center has set up a website, www.yearbooklaw.org, that walks through the steps to register a book with the Copyright Office. In recent years, the process – which requires a $35 fee – has become greatly simplified, and a book’s contents can simply be uploaded without the need to submit a hard copy.

YEARBOOKSContinued from page 22a

By SAM GARDNER

When I was a kid, I was read-ing the sports page of the local newspaper before I was reading books. I could analyze a box score before I could do my multiplica-tion tables. I could tell Shaquille O’Neal’s autograph from Penny Hardaway’s before I even knew how to write my own name in cursive.

I loved sports growing up. And it wasn’t enough for me to just casually observe them, either. I had to eat, sleep and breathe them. It didn’t matter what the event was. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey – you name it. If there was a game going on, I was engrossed in it.

Following sports was my pas-sion, and I always dreamed that one day I’d be able to turn that passion into a career. Fast-for-ward to now, and I’m living that very dream. I cover the Orlando Magic beat for FOX Sports Florida, and I couldn’t be happier doing it.

I make my living interacting with and writing about the team I idolized as a child, and I know that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now had it not been for the four years I spent studying journalism at Boone HS in Orlan-do, Fla., with Renée Burke.

The work I do today is fre-quently featured nationally on the front pages of FOXSports.com and MSN.com, but it was when I

was writing for a group of 3,500 of my closest friends on campus that I began to learn the nuances of sports journalism and fell in love with the craft.

I spent my first three years in Renee’s journalism program wait-ing patiently – and sometimes not so patiently – for my chance to be the Legend yearbook sports editor. Like a sponge, I absorbed everything I saw and heard, and by my senior year, I had finally reached my goal of becoming the head of the sports section.

During my time at Boone, I covered everything from football, baseball and basketball to wres-

tling, golf and water polo, and it was that diversity in high school and my eagerness to both improve and impress that gave my profes-sional career a kick start.

During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I completed my first internship at the Orlando Sen-tinel, covering events like the ESPN Great Outdoors Games and Tampa Bay Buccaneers training camp. When I got to college at the University of Central Florida, I turned that high school intern-ship into regular freelance work covering high school, college and professional sports all across the

southeast.Any sport you name, I probably

covered it. There was nothing I wouldn’t do and no amount of work I couldn’t handle, and by the time I graduated from UCF in the fall of 2009, I had amassed more than 120 freelance clips from papers such as the Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Birming-ham News.

In the spring of 2009, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of covering the Orlando Magic in the NBA Finals, and my career has been on the rise ever since, but when I look back, I feel I owe it all to what I learned in high school from Renée Burke.

Renée was not only an extremely gifted journalism teacher and a true expert in her subject, she also instilled confi-dence in me as a writer, but still encouraged me to never be com-placent with my work.

She taught me to love journal-ism, and her constant support and high expectations of me gave me the drive I needed to be success-ful, and I consider myself both lucky and honored to be where I am today because of her.

To nominate someone for a Scholastic Profile, send the nominee’s name and contact information to George Taylor, Update editor, at [email protected].

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I03 PAge 24A wInter 2013 ADvISeR UPDAte

Address Service RequestedAdviser Update is published by the Dow Jones News Fund andis provided freeof charge. to be placed on the mailing list, to request informa-tion about DJNF or to correct this label, contact:

Dow Jones News FundP.O. Box 300Princeton, NJ 08543-0300609-452-2820

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newS FUnDaDVISer UPDaten who are we?the Dow Jones News Fund, a nonprofit founda-tion supported by the Dow Jones Foundation and other newspaper companies, encourages young people to consider journalism careers.

n adviser Update’s missionAdviser Update, a newsletter published by the Dow Jones News Fund for high school journal-ism teachers and publications advisers, is a free quarterly serving the inexperienced as well as the veteran. It will be the seminal free resource for these educators, a clearinghouse of practical, topical information.

n contacting the news FundMail: P.O. Box 300, Princeton, NJ 08543-0300Phone: 609-452-2820Fax: 609-520-5804e-mail: [email protected]

n news Fund staffRichard Holden, executive directorLinda Shockley, deputy director Diane Cohn, director of finance

n contacting adviser UpdatePlease address all news items to george taylor, Adviser Update editor.Mail: 200 North Lehigh St., tamaqua, PA 18252Phone: 570-668-4451e-mail: [email protected]

n article submissions, story ideasAdviser Update welcomes story ideas and arti-cles from its readers. Some articles are reprints from other publications in the field of scholastic journalism. Original articles should be between 400 and 600 words in length and on topics of importance or interest to Update’s targeted audience. Articles can be sent to george taylor via e-mail (Word, RtF or text file). Color photos (high resolution jpegs) or PDF graphics are welcome. Authors must include a paragraph biography and a color mug shot. Copy and graphics can also be sent to the editor on CDs. Writers are paid based on the depth of the article, accompanying artwork and placement in the publication. Please address all news items to:george taylor, Adviser Update editor.Mail: 200 North Lehigh St., tamaqua, PA 18252Phone: 570-668-4451e-mail: [email protected]

n editorial reprints/permissions, subscriptions, back issuesto be placed on the Adviser Update mailing list, to report a change of address, to order reprints of articles or to obtain permission to use any part of Adviser Update, contact Linda Shockley at the News Fund at 609-452-2820 or [email protected].

n web site servicesInformation about the News Fund, its services and programs and selected articles from Adviser Update are available at the News Fund’s Web site: https://www.newsfund.org.twitter.com/djnf

n Updategeorge taylor, editorDavid Rowe, designerMary Kay Davis and elsa Kerschner, production

Sam garDner is an Orlando-based journalist who covers the Orlando Magic for FOXSportsFlorida.com. Before working with FoxSports-Florida.com, gardner spent four years as a freelance sports writer, covering high school, college and professional athlet-ics for publications across the southeast, including the Orlan-do Sentinel, Daytona Beach News-Journal and Birmingham News. Prior to his start in sports writing, gardner was a freelance writer for the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial page and was named to the Sentinel’s board of contributors for his efforts in that role. gardner graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in journalism and can be reached at [email protected].

scholastic profile

learning the nuances of sports journalism

T H E S E S T R U C Kour fancy ADVISER UPDATE WINTER 2013 PAGE 1B

Cheryl Pell is the former executive director of Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, which is housed in the Michigan State University School of Journalism. She teaches design and is involved in the new Media Sandbox curriculum in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences and is a co-founder of the MSU Society for News Design affiliate.

Jeremy Steele is the new executive director of Michigan Interscholastic Press Association. Steele worked at newspapers and in public relations before coming back to his alma mater this summer to take over the MIPA reigns. He teaches visual journalism as well as a capstone course at the MSU J-School.

I t hasn’t been that many years since schools started publishing online sites. And, let’s be honest. They weren’t that good at the beginning. Wide, short paragraphs were strung across the screen

— usually centered — with tiny photos perched above each one. And you’d have to keep scrolling down, down, down to make sure you caught all of the story links.

Today, and we have to thank WordPress for this, most student on-line website are doing what online news sites do best: they give their readers plenty of options and they organize the content so readers can find what they are looking for.

We also have to appreciate scholastic journalism organizations, state and national, for their leadership in providing training and support. For example, JEA has its outstanding Digital Media site: jeadigitalmedia.org, a wonderful oasis in the desert of figuring out best practices in creating and maintaining vibrant media sites.

A look through some sites provided us with plenty of visual treats and examples of key elements of online news sites (and digital whiz Aaron Manfull gave us some tips to share too). These news sites get it — they’re providing breaking news online, engaging with their audience, exploring multimedia storytelling and embracing social media (many while still cherishing their traditional print products).

LOOKING GOODScholastic journalism websites

have come a long way By Cheryl Pell and Jeremy Steele

HiLite Onlinehilite.org Carmel HSCarmel, Ind.

Carmel High School’s student newspaper was an early adopter

into the online world when they started their website in 1996. It contin-ues to set standards for what works. No doubt, it wasn't as sleek and clean as it is today. The organization of this

site is excellent. If you visit, click on Special Coverage in the menu bar and select election coverage. Although the election is over, they did a great job of covering the election for their student readers, even better than some profes-sional sites did.

WINTER 2013 ADVISER UPDATE ADVISER UPDATE WINTER 2013

The Royal Newstrnwired.org Prince George HSPrince George, Va

Wayland StudentPress Networkwaylandstudentpress.com Wayland HSWayland, Mass.

The Rider Onlinetherideronline.comLegacy HSMansfield, Texas

News websites give student journal-ists new opportunities to report across

various platforms and for student media organizations to collaborate with each other in new ways. The best websites reflect this by presenting a solid mix of text-based and multimedia work.

At Prince George HS in Virginia, this results in a student newscast getting a high visibility spot on the home page for the newspaper, The Royal News. It’s a great opportunity for newspapers to broaden their coverage into new formats — and entice students who might not otherwise be drawn to a traditional newspaper.

At some schools, the opportunity to open a digital media outlet that can mix written words, photos, video and audio is result-ing in new journalism programs. Wayland Student Press Network was launched in 2007 at Wayland HS in Massachusetts as a purely digital media outlet.

WSPN’s website reflects this digital-only history, giving videos a prominent role on the website. Too often, multimedia and video feels like an afterthought — but not here.

This kind of diversity of mediums helps prove to an audience that the student media outlet isn’t simply shoveling content that’s already appeared in print to the Web.

People like to have fun — and to click things. It’s one of the reasons why folks love tablets. You get to get in

there with your finger and tap, swish and pinch. The staff of The Rider Online figured that out and ex-

periments with alternative storytelling by making interac-tive graphics, including a clever package about all things 12. Move your cursor over one of the numbers and you get a teaser and link to the full story.

The staff also takes on fashion, spirituality and which presidential candidate best fits your own beliefs.

All the while readers get to click happily away and interact with the story they’re experiencing.

Any of these concepts could easily translate to tablets and mobile devices — if they don't require Flash.

Manual RedEyemanualredeye.comduPont Manual HSLouisville, Ky.

So much attention gets paid to the top of pages on the Web that sometimes the bottom ends up a disorganized

mess (or a giant block of unhappy white space).The Manual RedEye, however, carried its organized

design all the way to the bottom.Templates make it easy to set up stories and features in

this kind of grid, but it can often be difficult to make sure that each block aligns with the next — especially when there’s a left or right rail that can vary in size because of ads or other features.

RedEye readers can also appreciate the scrolling school Google calendar neatly embedded into the site. There’s no reason to re-enter this kind of data into your own calendar system or onto a static page if you can get embed code to work with your site design.

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T H E S E S T R U C Kour fancy

Multimedia Items in this category can range from simple audio files and raw video clips to polished video feature stories and interac-tive graphics created on a site like thinklink.com. The Web allows you to tell stories in ways that print alone cannot — make sure you’re taking advantage of that.

Photo galleries There are a couple reasons photo galleries are great for websites. 1) In the day of digital your staff may be taking 500 photos at the JV soccer game. Two at most will prob-ably be used for publication, leaving many decent photos to potentially never see the light of day. Give them some life and create an online photo gallery. 2) Photo galleries will likely be one of the most visited portions of your site by the students in your school. Know what your audience wants and make sure you are giving it to them.

Interaction with readers Whether it’s through polls, contests, interactive graphics or simply through comments on stories, work to have multiple ways for readers to interact and leave their mark on the site.

Breaking news and frequent updates While you can have a variety of content on the Web, it’s a great tool for staffs to do something they can’t generally do in print - cover breaking news and sports stories.

In-depth analytic tracking While this is not a content item per say, every news site really needs to be using an in-depth analytics tracking service like Google Analytics to find out what students in your school are clicking through to. It will allow you to set goals and measure their progress and it will allow you to adjust coverage according to what your school commu-nity really wants.

Things every student news site must have5

By Aaron Manfull

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Aaron Manfull was the 2011 Dow Jones Fund Journalism Teacher of the Year. He is the director of student media at Francis Howell North HS in St. Charles, Mo., and is the chair of the JEA Digital Media Committee.

The Lancer Linkthelancerlink.comCarlsbad HSCarlsbad, Calif.

ManestreamNewsmanestreamnews.comMcKinney HSMcKinney, Texas

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Jour-nalism said last year that 62 percent of U.S. adults with

a smartphone use them at least weekly to get news. Since young people tend to be early adopters, it’s a safe bet even more students use their mobile devices to get news than their parents.

Many student media outlets are paying attention to this trend, creating websites for mobile devices.

Online student media organizations on the cutting edge of Web design are making sure their sites are easily viewed on all sorts of devices — regardless of the screen size.

That doesn’t mean they have to design a separate site for laptops, desktops, iPads and phones. A growing number of templates use responsive design to automatically adjust a page to fit any screen. That’s the technology behind The Lancer Link, which maintains its visual appeal on any device.

The template automatically restacks the various modules of the site to fit any screen. On skinny screens like phones, those modules are stacked vertically — but they maintain all photos, fonts and other design elements. Awesome.

T he students of ManestreamNews care as much about how their site will

look on tiny screens as they do on big ones.

The site operates on WordPress and automatically detects when you’re on a mobile device, switching to a mobile ver-sion design for small screens. These types of mobile sites can easily end up looking like little more than a plain text RSS feed of headlines. That’s not compelling to look at on a 17-inch monitor and is even worse on a 5-inch phone screen.

The design of the mobile Manestre-amNews, while lacking the color and dynamics of the regular site, recognizes the importance of strong visuals. Photos are easily viewable and help draw read-ers into the stories.

We like their tag cloud too — a great way for readers to visually find what they are seeking on the site.

PAGE 4B / 5B WINTER 2013 ADVISER UPDATE

Trendsettersto follow on Twitter:

@mashable Tweets by CEO and founder of Mashable, Pete Cashmore

@smashingmag Online magazine for Web designers

@jasonsantamaria 312,000 followers can't be wrong. His profile says: Designer by day, designer by night

@nytgraphics Yes, they have staff and money, but we can all dream and drool

WINTER 2013 ADVISER UPDATE ADVISER UPDATE WINTER 2013

T H E S E S T R U C Kour fancy

FHCTodayfhctoday.comFrancis Howell Central HSCottleville, Mo.

Explore Journalism in New York CityExplore Journalism in New York City

Scenes from CSPA events

Students, advisers and administrators

attend our workshops, conventions and

conferences.

with Columbia Scholastic Press Association March 20-22, 2013

http://cspa.columbia.edu

View Crown winners in CSPA’s In Their VoicesBeginning mid-January, CSPA will publish the second annual set of In Their Voices, a publication featuring 2013 Crown finalists. View two of their publication’s spreads and read the observations they share as to why they believed their publication was elevated to Crown status. Issues will run through March. The Awards Convovation on Friday, March 22, will reveal which staffs receive a Gold or Silver Crown.

Attendance is open to student editors and faculty advisers to newspapers, yearbooks, magazines, video productions and online media from schools throughout the United States and Canada, as well as overseas schools following an American plan of education.

Convention delegates can choose from 350 or more sessions organized in sequences for newspaper — print and online, yearbook, magazine, photography, social media, law and ethics, video, advisers and digital media. All sequences will run simultaneously throughout the three days of the convention.

Free on-site critiques will be offered throughout the three-day convention.

CSPA is also planning Student Swap Shops throughout the 2013 Scholastic Convention. These will be offered for newspapers, magazines, yearbooks and digital media.

For more information on registration and program content, please check the CSPA web site at:

at the 89th Annual Spring Convention on Columbia University’s campus

T his is a site that doesn’t look like most others, and we applaud the

FHCToday staff for that. Readers enter the site through a large photo and can go directly to the story, or they can click the menu bar to go to any one of a number of sections, including a more traditional front page.

The front page, shown top right, is a nicely organized table of contents to the other sections of the site, all with clever names: Delve, Be Heard, Sweat, etc. Click on one of these and go to that section.

The strong vertical section header is a nice graphic element found on all of the sections. Click on a headline on any of the section fronts, and you get a single story, complete with social media con-nections and a list of related stories and other top stories in the section.

Color is used to help readers know where they are at all times. When you’re reading a sports story, the word Sweat at the top is highlighted in blue. Nice navigation.

FHCToday doesn’t forget its print product and even has a section devoted to that. An Issuu plug-in allows readers to read print issues or exit back to the online content.

PAGE 7BPAGE 6B

WINTER 2013 ADVISER UPDATE

The Chroniclehwchronicle.comHarvard-Westlake SchoolNorth Hollywood, Calif.

Click on ‘Print Edition’ and the whole top module turns around to show stories from the most recent newspaper.

T he Chronicle staff are doing a lot of things right. College and professional papers — not just high school publications — could pick up a few tips

from this site.It’s easy to see what stories are new on the site because

each one comes with the day, date or time clearly marked on the main page in red. There’s nothing worse than go-

ing to a news website and not being able to figure out what’s actually “new” news.

There’s also a strong showing right up front for multimedia work, which is featured prominently on the

front page. The Web opens new doors for storytelling, al-lowing newspaper students to do audio and video stories, and vice versa.

The Chronicle also stands out, however, for the way it proudly features its print newspaper. Even though the site prominently displays breaking news, just a quick click transforms the top module on the site to display the most recent print issue. This is a great way to balance the pride students have for their print edition with the advantages of operating on the Web.

TWO COOL THINGS YOU CAN DO BECAUSE YOU’RE ONLINE NOW

“Forget your camera? We didn’t,” The Harbinger proudly claims in the banner of its home page. Click through to see a variety of photo galleries (which people love). And you can even buy those photos (which parents presumably love). It’s clever, reader-friendly and a brilliant business move.

This media outlet doesn’t limit itself to text and photos. Use podcasts, video and narrated photo essays to tell stories in a variety of ways. Your audience will appreciate it.

PAGE 8B

The Harbingersmeharbinger.netShawnee Mission East HSPrairie Village, Kan.

2013 Winter Adviser Update

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