Phoenix Journalism Convention – Day 3

Posted on Apr 17, 2009 in Life, Volunteering | 3 comments

Ah, adviser hospitality. That’s the name given to the room at these conventions where there’s free coffee, pastries and fruit on Friday and Saturday mornings. It’s good to be an adviser, er… chaperon.  Mark and I started our very long day there.
Fridays are always long at the convention; here’s a rundown:

• Sessions from 9 through noon
• A break for lunch
• Keynote address
• More sessions at 2:30
• Break/help students prepare for write-offs at 4
• Pre-judging dinner
• Judging (usually two to three hours)
• Silent auction and reception

Phrew! That’s a lot. Of course, it’s a bit more fun for students. After their write-offs they get to relax and enjoy themselves. Some attend the convention-sponsored dance (though most Hawkeye students have enough sense not to bother [UPDATE: some of or students did hit up the dance on Sat. night ;-) ]. Others go out to dinner, shop, or head out on an excursion depending on what’s in the area. I understand that while Vince, Mark and I are judging, the students will either see a movie or hit a nearby mall with Julie, our female chaperone.

Since sessions are one of the primary reasons we’re here, it’s worth discussing those I attended. At 9am, Mark and I sat in on “Teaching your students to blog,” which was interesting but stymied a bit by the lack of internet access in the hotel (as was the 10am session by the same presenter on “Using wikis in the classroom”). The presentation centered on aligning the tenets of good journalism and English education with the realities of blogging: sourcing, attribution, copyright issues, and posting regularly. Really, the term blogging is nearly synonymous with “citizen journalism” because the ease and access the provided by the internet opens up journalism to those who don’t have the resources or know-how to run their own paper. It was a good discussion, as all the attendees were advisers, not students. A good take-away quote from the presentation: “Politicians should be afraid of bloggers.” (Check out the video shown in the session on YouTube.)

At 10, the same presenter discussed her approach to wikis as a way to manage assignments (both for their newspaper and regular classes), story ideas, peer feedback, and as a repository for resources. (Wikis are collaborative websites that are editable—without any web programming knowledge necessary—by anyone.) But without web access in the room, it was mostly a question-and-answer session. It seemed to be useful to the advisers there, so that’s a good thing.

After a quick refueling stop in the adviser’s hospitality room and a browse through the JEA Bookstore to drool over cool (but expensive) books, it was time for the 11am session. I attended “10 steps to getting your publication online,” which sounded interesting but really was a lot of talking without a lot of detail. Certainly that’s useful for staffs looking to get a sense of what’s available among all the avenues “getting your publication online” can take, but I lost interest after 20 minutes.

The day’s highlight was the keynote at 1pm by Mary Beth Tinker. Name sound familiar? It should if you have any interest in student press freedoms. Better writers than I have laid out the story so I won’t go into too much detail. To sum up, then 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker, along with her schoolmates, wore black armbands to school in Iowa to protest the Vietnam war. This “rebellious” act resulted in her suspension and a court case that ended up in the Supreme Court. The court’s ruling in the case of Tinker vs. Des Moines? Students’ (and teachers’!) rights don’t stop at the schoolhouse gate. It was a huge win for student press freedom and of amazing importance since Feb. 23, 1969; yep, it was 40 years ago and some (many?) journalism programs are still fighting prior review and other forms of censorship by their administrations. All the more reason to support organizations like the Student Press Law Center (SPLC). They’ve been providing legal help to student journalists for a long time… certainly as far back as 1994 when the Hawkeye relied on them for advice about photographs of a “race riot” the police wanted. (I was one of the photographers, along with Larry Harnden, though our editor at the time, Stacey Mulick (née Burns), bore the brunt of the resulting obstruction of justice case against the newspaper.)

But I digress. Mary Beth Tinker, now a nurse in Maryland, continues to advocate for students not specifically through journalism but simply to encourage young people to know and stand up for their rights and the rights of others. It was inspiring to see such a heroic figure and realize she’s just a regular (though very knowledgeable!) lady doing her best to encourage and support  young people. Her two standing ovations were well deserved and I’m happy to have been able to see her.

It’s nearly 6pm as I post this, so we’re off to dinner and judging. I’ll post a recap of that experience possibly tonight or if not, tomorrow

Judging update – This year I was fortunate in two ways. First, I was judging a category with Vince, which is always a treat. Second, it was a category I actually know something about: computer-generated infographic. These are carry-in contests, so they are (or at least have the potential to be) better to judge than work produced during a two-hour contest.

Not this time.

Sadly, the nine entries we judged were pretty lackluster. Many of them were not really even infographics according to the definition. They lacked any real information presented visually; they were really just graphics. Others that did communicate numbers did so poorly. And none showed any real sophistication in their art or software use. But, judging is about emphasizing the positive not tearing down, so Vince and I found constructive ways to frame our suggestions and something good to say about each entry. And we had two cool advisers from Carmel, Indiana, in the room with us that helped speed the evening by.

Mark judged yearbook sports captions and reported the best entry they saw: “Fresh meat makes head coach proud.”
When we’d finished up around 8:45pm we headed to the post-judging reception where we recovered by eating a lot of fancy cheese and bidding on silent auction items (including one that has to be seen to be believed).

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