Scott Bush

The final day of our trip arrived, bring­ing with it a nasty sore throat. “It’s just the thin, dry air,” I was told Sat­ur­day evening by a few folks. Well, I’m here to tell you it wasn’t. Sat­ur­day night was ter­ri­ble and sleep­less, and Sun­day was dif­fi­cult, both to be excited for the stu­dents (see below) and to have the energy to pack up and travel home.

Write-off awards

Enough of the neg­a­tive and on to the pos­i­tive! We attended the stu­dent write-off award cer­e­mony Sun­day morn­ing. After the usual house­keep­ing notes (includ­ing plugs for the upcom­ing con­ven­tions in Philadel­phia and Ana­heim), it was time for the awards!

Hav­ing been there myself, I know the stress of wait­ing for the cat­e­gory in which you com­peted come up and the nail-biting antic­i­pa­tion as each name in the hon­or­able men­tion cat­e­gory is called. It’s a relief to receive an HM, as much for the award as for not suf­fer­ing through the sparsely-populated Excel­lent and Supe­rior cat­e­gories. To the Hawkeye’s credit, every­one on staff cheers just as loudly for their peers who receive HMs as they do the oth­ers. What’s cooler is how the Hawk­eye, the Apple Leaf, the Jag Wire, the Acad­emy Times, and every other Wash­ing­ton state news­pa­per and year­book are cheered so loudly by each group. Wash­ing­ton state is well rep­re­sented in ball­rooms across the coun­try at these conventions.

I was so excited that a num­ber of our stu­dents received awards, includ­ing both an Excel­lent and a Supe­rior! I had met with both of these win­ners prior to the com­pe­ti­tion (hav­ing judged and com­peted in many cat­e­gories myself) and could tell they would do well. Con­grat­u­la­tions to both of them, and to the three HM win­ners from the Hawk­eye. All told, there were 1,479 write-off con­tes­tants, result­ing in 577 awards: 101 Supe­ri­ors (17%), 196 Excel­lents (34%), and 280 HMs (49%). A full list of write-off win­ners are avail­able at the JEA web site.

One more note: com­men­tary writ­ing, which I judged, resulted in far more awards than I remem­bered. We gave three Supe­ri­ors and six Excel­lents, along with 15 HMs.

Get­ting home

After a round of hugs and pho­tos, we found some lunch (Jamba Juice helped my throat a bit) before board­ing the bus to the air­port. Our flight was (as always these days) over-full, so chap­eron Mark Isak­son opted for a free round-trip ticket in exchange for tak­ing the next flight home. Lucky him, because our flight was delayed twice on the tar­mac: not fun when you’re sick and the tem­per­a­ture in the plan was prob­a­bly 80 degrees. But we made it hope safely, bring­ing to a close the 2007 Spring jour­nal­ism con­ven­tion. See you in Philadel­phia in November!

Day three… tired today, but there was an early ses­sion I wanted to see: “Duel­ing InDe­sign Divas,” which was only half as annoy­ing as the name made it out to be. There were a few good tech­niques pre­sented, though they were more applic­a­ble to year­book or mag­a­zine design than news­pa­per. Later, I sat through what was sup­posed to be a dig­i­tal work­flow ses­sion that turned out to be some guy talk­ing about how he backs up his dig­i­tal camera’s CF cards onto CD before he edits them. Not too excit­ing, but as I was with a stu­dent who chose to sit up front, I couldn’t leave. Oh well. At least I’d had some free hos­pi­tal­ity (i.e., cof­fee, fruit, and a muf­fin) from the advi­sor hos­pi­tal­ity room so I didn’t have to pay Star­bucks today.

Pod­cast sta­tion
Vince and one of his stu­dents set up a pod­cast sta­tion in a high-traffic area of the hotel to record stu­dents’ and advi­sors’ sto­ries about first amend­ment issues in their schools for the JEA Think­First pod­cast series. It was cool and really got some atten­tion, though they didn’t get as many inter­views as they’d hoped they would.

Lunch with Mark
My friend Mark Wong and his girl­friend Julie took me to lunch today. We ate at Maggelino’s, a very nice Ital­ian place. I’m not sure what I enjoyed most: the excel­lent food, cac­thing up with Mark and meet­ing Julie, or just being in a place with­out high school stu­dents every­where I looked. Prob­a­bly it was all three that made it so enjoyable.

The enve­lope please…
The first of the two awards cer­e­monies was held Sat­ur­day, where Pace­maker Award and Best-of-Show win­ners are announced. (The Pace­maker award is the scholas­tic jour­nal­ism equiv­a­lent to the Pulitzer Prize: a “very big deal,” as the pre­sen­ter reminded the audi­ence.)
The Hawk­eye usu­ally places in the top ten at national con­ven­tions. That’s not a con­ceit, it’s the truth. Vince’s pro­gram pro­duces excel­lent results and that effort is often rewarded at these award cer­e­monies. How­ever, the com­pe­ti­tion in the cat­e­gory “News­pa­pers pub­lish­ing 17 or more pages” must have been rig­or­ous because the Hawk­eye did not place. Or, as I told the stu­dents after­ward, “they prob­a­bly placed 11th, but they have to draw the line some­where.” There were some long faces, but Vince reminded them that they don’t write, edit, design, and sell to win awards; they do it to be the voice of the stu­dents and the com­mu­nity. And that, he said, they do exceed­ingly well.
Besides, they took com­fort in the knowl­edge that they received the First Amend­ment Press Free­dom Award at Thurs­day evening’s keynote.

See­ing Den­ver… finally
Fol­low­ing the cer­e­mony, we finally had the oppor­tu­nity see a bit of the city. Most of us (a few remained in the hotel to swim) vis­ited the nearby state capi­tol, the US Mint, and a nice cathe­dral. Con­sid­er­ing it had been snow­ing the day before, the sunny weather and warm tem­per­a­tures seemed out of place but we weren’t com­plain­ing.
Later, we split up for din­ner. Some went to Maggelino’s while others—myself included—ate at the Lucky Strike Bowl­ing alley, which is way hip. Good food that was res­on­ably priced, pool tables, big screen TVs show­ing all man­ner of sports, and of course a few lanes. A quick tour of the shops in the Den­ver Pavil­lion mall rounded out the night.

We’re pack­ing up tonight in antic­i­pa­tion of a quick check-out in the morn­ing before the final awards cer­e­mony. It’s there that the stu­dents receive recog­ni­tion for their efforts in Friday’s write-offs. Then we’ll be headed home. Denver’s been great, but I’ll be glad to be home to my reg­u­lar rou­tine, the thick, thick air of sea level, and of course my lovely wife!

Our sec­ond day in Den­ver was about as packed as a day can be: it began with 8am ses­sions and ended with a 12:30 room check. Here’s a breakdown:

Ses­sions
As per usual, there were a num­ber of stu­dents who needed some gen­tle prod­ding to actu­ally attend the ses­sions. I, being a pow­er­ful chap­eron, can chose to go to ses­sions when I want (and some­times I don’t; I’d rather veg for an hour in the hotel room). But I did man­age to make it to Vince DeMiero’s “Pod­casts and More.” It is an entry-level, novice intro­duc­tion to the con­cept of pod­cast­ing and why jour­nal­ists should care. I had to split a bit early to meet with two Hawk­eye stu­dents who were com­pet­ing in write-offs for the first time and wanted some pointers.

Judg­ing
I expected, as at most pre­vi­ous con­ven­tions, that I would judge news­pa­per (or news­magazine) lay­out. When I approached the judg­ing coor­di­na­tor about doing so again, she said “Nope: we need com­men­tary or review writ­ing judges; take your pick.” Not want­ing to miss out on the free meal that night, I chose com­men­tary writ­ing.
Here’s how the write-off process works: stu­dents in news writ­ing, edi­to­r­ial car­toon­ing, edi­to­r­ial writ­ing, broad­cast news writ­ing, and com­men­tary cat­e­gories show up in a big ball­room for a (some­what) mock press con­fer­ence. After a thirty-minute pre­sen­ta­tion and brief question-and-answer ses­sion, the stu­dents write. Later that night, local media pro­fes­sion­als and the JEA/NSPA folks read, com­ment on, and par­ti­tion entries into groups: no award, hon­or­able men­tion, excel­lent, and the cov­eted supe­rior.
Com­men­tary writ­ing, in a nut­shell, is this: chose a side of the argu­ment and express that opin­ion with strong voice. Sadly, none but a small hand­ful of the 82 entries (the largest cat­e­gory) under­stood this. Suf­fice it to say, I—and my six fel­low judges—had an ardu­ous time slog­ging through the entries. But we did man­age to have some fun, so it wasn’t all bad. And, most impor­tantly, we gave pos­i­tive con­struc­tive crit­i­cism to about 76 stu­dents who really needed it ;-)

Crash­ing
Ususally after the judg­ing, I’ll attend the JEA/NSPA silent auc­tion and recep­tion with Vince. But, as it was so late when we fin­ished (11pm) that I’d missed just about every­thing on the block and I couldn’t eat another sug­ary thing. So I just returned to the hotel, checked that all the stu­dents were in their rooms at cur­few (some needed a bit of track­ing down) and crashed for the night.

Despite the very busy day, I did man­age to cap­ture this image of a giant blue bear attack­ing the con­ven­tion cen­ter (it was Fri­day the 13th after all):

We’re here and we’re a mile high! (No, that’s a not a drug ref­er­ence.) I’m in Den­ver with the staff of the MTHS Hawk­eye attend­ing the JEA/NSPA stu­dent jour­nal­ism con­ven­tion. As always, it’s an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence. This is my twentieth-something con­ven­tion, both as a stu­dent and as a chap­eron. For the record, this group com­prises 14 stu­dents, one advi­sor, and three chaperons.

Thurs­day began with a slow ride on a school bus to SeaTac air­port. When I say slow, I mean about 40 miles an hour on the free­way in first gear. Lois, our dri­ver, con­fessed that she was new. She appar­ently had the train­ing where she learned to switch gears. But, I digress.

We’re at the beau­ti­ful down­town Den­ver Hyatt, which is brand new and one of the nicest hotels we’ve stayed in. It also the offi­cial con­ven­tion hotel, a first for the Hawk­eye. So there’s no long walks or bus rides dur­ing which the stu­dents can be accosted by home­less peo­ple. That’s good, but really reduces how much work I have to do.

The keynote address last evening was given by Jim Sheeler and was with­out a doubt the most mov­ing keynote I’ve ever attended. Mr. Sheeler’s a Pulitzer-prize win­ning jour­nal­ist whose “beat” is obit­u­ar­ies. He tells the sto­ries of the people’s lives in a hon­est, mov­ing way unlike any­thing I’ve heard. While read­ing from his work he got so emo­tional he had to stop. That, he told the crowd of 2,000 silent, rapt stu­dents, is what allows him to inter­view griev­ing fam­i­lies: he really cares. The silence was bro­ken only by soft sobs and sniffs from stu­dents who were so affected by these mov­ing, true sto­ries of fallen sol­diers in Iraq and every­day peo­ple in Colorado.

A quick stop at Taco Bell (see below) and a brief meet­ing in our room rounded out the night. I’ll try and post about Fri­day later. It’s going to be a busy night for me and advi­sor Vince DeMiero. We’re judg­ing stu­dent write-off com­pe­ti­tions, which usu­ally runs late into the evening. Also look­ing for­ward to Sat­ur­day morn­ing when I’ll be hav­ing lunch with my good friend Mark Wong and his girl­friend. I’ve not seen Mark since Crys­tal and vis­ited Love­land, CO in May 2005.

Cra­zi­est Sign — To all my Catholic friends, check this photo out (dis­re­gard the fact that Lent is over; this Taco Bell didn’t have any sauce pack­ets left so remov­ing out­dated signs can’t be high on the list):

iTunes is down­load­ing, as I write, the lat­est album from VNV Nation. This is an event on the order of impor­tance of a new album by Sting, another artist who I fol­low closely. If you’re not famil­iar with VNV Nation—and you’re most likely not—you should imme­di­ately buy a copy of Mat­ter + Form or Empires, two of the best albums I’ve heard in a very long time. If you’re on iTunes and just want a taste, the song that really exem­pli­fies VNV Nation is Arena off Mat­ter + Form. How Ronan Har­ris, the two-person band’s front­man, can craft a song so mean­ing­ful and excel­lently lis­ten­able I just don’t under­stand… but I don’t have to. It just is.

Judge­ment is the duo’s first release in two years, and the first release since I’ve known about them, so I’m quite excited to lis­ten to it. I’ve been wait­ing four months now for it to come out. If you like Arena let me know and I’ll be glad to cre­ate a playlist for you of their best tracks… just be aware that it’ll be a long playlist.

Speak­ing of playlists, here’s the track­list from Judgement:

1. Prelude
2. The Far­thest Star
3. Tes­ta­ment
4. Descent
5. Momen­tum
6. Neme­sis
7. Secluded Spaces
8. Illu­sion
9. Carry You
10. As It Fades

UPDATE: I’ve lis­tened the album twice through now and my ini­tial response is hot and cold. Absolutely beau­ti­ful tracks: Pre­lude (all synth, non-vocal mood-setting track), The Far­thest Star (an uptempo anthem rem­i­nis­cent of Arena), Secluded Spaces (another slow piece that inspires by its vast­ness; its vocals begin halfway through, but are so mel­low as to be almost unin­tel­li­gi­ble), and Illu­sion (a soul­ful, lyricly mature track with just enough edge to remind you it’s VNV Nation). Less-than-wonderful tracks: there’s only one song I doubt I’ll lis­ten to often: Tes­ta­ment (a nearly spoken-word song about dev­ils and angels). Some of the oth­ers, such as Neme­sis and Momen­tum, seem upon first lis­ten­ing less melodic than the rest and there­for not really my style. Repeated lis­ten­ings may change my mind, however.

One of the coolest things about the band is their name: Victory Not Vengence. Suc­cinct and it speaks volumes.

Last Thurs­day I par­tic­i­pated in a usabil­ity study for a local, well-known soft­ware devel­oper. I’d tell you, but they asked me not to in an NDA. While I don’t mind talk­ing a bit about some­thing to my wife, post­ing about it on my blog is a much more egre­gious vio­la­tion. So for­give my allu­sions to these com­pa­nies and products.

The test was well-done, I felt. While study­ing tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion in col­lege, I often par­tic­i­pated in usabil­ity tests and even designed one so I feel some­what knowl­edge­able about the process. I’d been screened on the phone so I knew the test would revolve around the Mac­in­tosh and media. Need­less to say I was pumped.

What I found inter­est­ing about the phys­i­cal setup was the divi­sion of the test between two “rooms” in my “house,” an office and a liv­ing room. I was directed to go between the rooms as I would nor­mally while com­plet­ing the tasks. The tasks them­selves were noth­ing amaz­ing; in fact, they were rather easy. But if they help this big soft­ware com­pany pro­vide bet­ter media prod­ucts for folks, I’m all for it.