A UH grad is looking for a self-confident reporter

First the lead: Tony Hernandez, who graduated a year and a half ago says:

 I’m still looking for a reporter. The guy we interviewed declined the job today. If there are any good, recent graduates looking for a job and willing to pick up and move, have them send their resume’s and clips my way. This is a great opportunity for self-confident reporters that don’t need their hands held and looking to pay their dues in this industry. I’m looking to move on this quickly. 

Tony is now the managing editor of the Southwest Times in Liberal, Kansas. E-mail him at news@swdtimes.com

Now for the rest of his story:

 You wrote in December about journalism graduates working in newspapers. I landed my first job as a journalist a year from next week. I guess I’ve been lucky. I’ve seen first-hand how tough it is to land a job even at small-town newspapers.

A while back you wrote about Lise Olsen. It’s great your class got to meet her. I met her at an IRE training in El Paso last year. I got some great tips from her on covering border/immigration issues. I was working for the Rio Grande Sun in New Mexico at the time. Sadly, I didn’t get to do much in border/immigration stories and stuck to covering education, but I’ve kept everything I’ve learned from that training. Hopefully one day I’ll get to the border. I do recommend that your students join IRE. It’s a great wealth of knowledge. They’ve got thousands  of useful tip sheets among many other things. But I’ll be honest, I mainly use the tips sheets.I got hooked on IRE thanks to Chase Davis and his CAR and investigative classes. As far as what I’ve been doing for the last year, I started at the Rio Grande Sun in New Mexico, thanks to you, David McHam and Chase Davis. I’m very grateful. However, I lasted about four months. It wasn’t a good fit for me. I was lured with the investigative aspect of the position, but in my opinion, it was a very cynical paper and it didn’t focus much on the positive aspects of Española. I felt like it entirely focused finding corruption. A quality in a newspaper, but it shouldn’t be the only. I was expected to cover five school districts and a junior college. I had to write 10 – 12 stories a week, and I had a boss that frequently lost his temper. Some of the reporters that worked there strive on that kind of stress; I did not. Still in the four months I was there, I learned a ton about developing sources and requesting public records. After Española, I landed a job in Liberal, Kansas. The Southwest Times is a small paper, a small editorial staff in a small town. Today the editorial staff is composed of four reporters, including me. The cool thing about this job is that I’ve moved up quickly. Weeks after being hired, I was given the news editor title. Our managing editor left a few months ago. In December, I took over as managing editor, but I still consider myself a reporter. I’m a reporter that’s in charge of the newspaper’s entire editorial content. I’m actually getting ready to hire one more reporter and this newsroom will be full for the first time in two years. On a side note, I’ve been giving my reporters copies of “The Middle Way” handout you gave me in class. It’s one of my favorite reads in how to put together a feature story. I’ve stuck with covering education, but I’m also covering the city. Local governments and their political leaders are polite, but not really used to scrutiny. The city’s administration is not used to public records request. I’ve won a few battles, but I’ve lost a few too, especially when it comes to electronic records.To put it bluntly, Kansas sunshine laws suck.

The other unique aspect about Liberal is that we have a competing newspaper. We publish three times a week. They publish six days a week. There’s been a tumultuous history between both newspapers and it gets nasty. Recently, my newspaper, indirectly me, was called unethical: a complete lie. We always take the higher road and never respond to their op eds and house ads. The fight between both newspapers is fascinating story to me. One that’s too long to type right now, but one that I’m happy to share if you’re ever curious. Competing with another newspaper (out-scooping them, and out-reporting them) has been, and continues to be, a great experience.

Still, I know I have a lot to learn about our craft, our business, and how newspaper’s work. I’m humbled in that my boss sees potential in me as managing editor, but I sometimes wonder if someone with more experience would be better suited. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ll take it and do my best. I see myself in Liberal through the year, before I start looking to move on. I’m anxious to move onto a bigger city with a bigger newspaper. 

Macs required at University of Florida

Students in the journalism program at the University of Florida are going to be required to buy Mac computers next fall. The program director believes that in the future journalists will be expected to provide their own equipment. I find this a bit of a stretch. But it is true that a newspaper will probably expect any viable job candidate to have a lap top and and a digital camera. 

We’re fortunate at UH to have such great computer labs, all Mac, largely because the industry standard for video editing is Mac. But I can foresee the the time when students will be expected to show up at college with a laptop and then use the wireless internet. 

 

 

J.D. Salinger dies

I wonder if students are still reading The Catcher in the Rye. Kids who grew up in the East Coast recognized this precocious cyncial prep school kid. To someone growing up in the East End of Houston, and attending Milby High School, Holden Caulfield was as exotic as someone from France or the Soviet Union. I read him and moved on, but something about him stuck with me all these years. If it’s true that Salinger wrote stories to be published after his death, it will be very interesting to see what they will be like. Here’s the long obit from the Washington Post.

Writing as channeling

There’s an old piece of advice from editors to writers when they’re stuck on how to write a story. Imagine you’re writing a letter to your mom, or dad, or a close friend.

That’s how the Chilean novelist Isabelle Allende started her first novel in 1981 and she’s been using the process successfully ever since. For details see today’s Writer’s Almanac, a great daily source of inspiration, advice and facts about writing. I highly recommend a daily subscription. It’s free.

But channeling won’t work if you don’t have something inside you. For that you have to read, write and think. Allende may be a bit mystical about the process of writing, but she carries a notebook.

Graduation, fall 2009

It takes about two hours for all the students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to graduate, and yes, it is a bit boring to sit there while each student walks across the stage, but I pass the time listening to the poetry of all those names from all those countries. President Khator said 72 countries and 35 states were represented.

As usual the Valenti School had a big class, about 115. Communication continues to be the largest undergraduate major in CLASS, next to psychology. Last night at a party someone asked me again if students aren’t worried about the collapse of newspapers. I pointed out, as always, that most journalism majors won’t be journalists, anymore than most English majors will teach English. But they know the skills of  journalists will be in demand. Few journalism majors should count on a lifetime job at a newspaper, but all of them can count that learning how to report, write and edit will help them in a multiplicity of jobs in all sorts of fields.

We know that newspapers are hurting in large part because advertising is declining. We’re in the beginning of a technological revolution and we don’t know where it will lead. Our students will need technical skills in the digital media for certain. But most of all, they need to know how to get a story. That’s a skill that’s never going out of style.

Department of self-promotion

My piece on the election of Annise Parker as mayor appears online at the Texas Observer today.  

This is also my first published video, show with a high definition Flip camera. I hope to figure out how to use the editing software soon, and get a steadier hand.

Didion & Berendt: two of the best

Today’s Writer’s Almanac features two of the country’s best non-fiction writers, Joan Didion and John Berendt. Didion is a great essayist as well as memoirist.  She visited Houston a couple of years ago for the Inprint reading series after her best-selling memoir about her husband’s death, The Year of Magical Thinking, was published. Berendt wrote a wonderful book called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. What great titles. 

Berendt got a lot of grief about Midnight for altering chronologies, condensing events, and so on. It was not really a nonfiction book, but it was not really fiction, either. He resolved not to be accused of cheating after that, and wrote a fine book about Venice, The City of Falling Angels.

Dickens’ famous lead

No, not the one about the best of times, the worst of times. I mean the lead of A Christmas Carol, which carried a subtitle, A Ghost Story. 

The lead is: “Marley was dead.” The story is all about death and regret. Strange material for a jolly holiday, but Dickens made it work. 

And now the New York Times has posted the original manuscript here. What a great Christmas gift. Dickens, like many a journalist, and he famously had been one, wrote the tale for money in six weeks. There’s nothing like the pressure of a deadline and the need for money to produce good writing. It’s not all about romantic inspiration.

Shield law extends to student journalists

Ever wondered whether a student journalist is different from a “real” journalist? The Student Press Association has released a story that the new shield law applies.

According to the amended text of HR 985, a covered person is, “A person with the primary intent to investigate events and procure material in order to disseminate to the public news or information…”

Frank LoMonte, Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center, said the current definition of a journalist contained in the bill is good news for student news organizations.

“The compromise language is as good as student journalists could expect because it focuses on the news gathering aspect, not where your paycheck is coming from,” LoMonte said. “As long as you set out to gather information to inform the public, you’re protected.”

 

Investigative journalist: “Look for the nerds”

Lise Olsen, investitgative journalism for the last six years at the Houston Chronicle visited the advanced reporting class today, and one of the things she said stuck out. It was “Look for the nerds.” She meant the people who know where information is buried in computers and files. Mostly computers these days.

We had a great time hearing her explain the complexities of doing investigative journalism, and the care with which it must be done.

I’m posting her handout with its advice on websites. A great resource. It’s on the upper righthand corner with Jessica Robertson’s advice for beginning reporters.  So now you have it, beginning and advanced reporting.