Showing posts with label journalism school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalism school. Show all posts

Thursday, January 2, 2014

J-SCHOOL: Speak up now; it'll help later

I wasn't a natural talker when I was in college in the 1970s. I'm still pretty quiet, but I learned to talk when I need to.

Going to Radford College (now Radford University), I took journalism under Charles Millsaps (I'm fairly sure of the spelling), and Charles (yes, I called him Charles, but not in class; his call) required J-school students to talk.

Every time he made a statement, I rebutted it. If he asked a question, I tried to answer it. It got to the point where Charles would say something, then smile slightly and lean his head my way, assuming I was going to speak up. And I usually did, if I could think of anything to say.

It surprised me, but I actually learned a lot from having to talk. It forced me to think, something necessary for journalists. I learned to do the same in other classes, and it helped there, too.

I watched a lot of my friends and classmates go to class after class and never speak up. They were probably making B's and were happy with them. I'd take a B if I had to, but I was always shooting for an A.

I remember one special A. The class was Journalism Law, and my average was hovering around 93.5 (you needed a 94 for an A in that class). I was taking 17 hours that quarter, and J-Law would decide whether I'd make the dean's list.

I needed a 95 on my final test to ace the class. When I got the test back, I noticed that Charles had given me one point and added a note that said that he gave me the point for speaking up in class. It turns out the point gave me the 95 on the test, and that gave me an A for the class.

And that helped me get an A for the quarter, plus my only visit to the dean's list. I had a good GPA, but I was more interested in working for the college newspaper and the college information office; that's where you learn.

The moral? Talking at the right time made a difference in college, and it's helped me through a long (and sometimes distinguished) journalism career.

Time to be quiet again.

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ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
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Friday, September 28, 2012

More eyes on your stories

It was always obvious to me; get as many sets of eyes as possible on every story. But many "professionals" don't do that.

I worked at two non-daily newspapers with small staffs. Someone would backread my page, I guess for libel, but stories didn't get a good once-over. (I later realized that I needed to hear what an editor thought of my writing. When I later got that editing, I improved.)

That changed when I moved to my first daily newspaper, one with 18,000 six-day-a-week circulation. The sports editor would read my stories, and I'd read his. We also had two former sports editors on the news copy desk, and they'd often backread our local copy. A huge improvement. And I got better as a writer while I was there.

My next newspaper, one with about 45,000 seven-day-a-week circulation, had one man who laid out the sports section. He read everything, and at least one other person would backread him. At least I did. When I took his place on his days off, I had less help; I wasn't there to help me. And my writing slumped. I didn't have anyone to point out the flaws in my writing.

My fifth newspaper, one with about 100,000 daily circulation, did it right on some days. We'd have as many people read a story as we could. We had one careless writer who needed as many eyes as possible. We might have six people read his stories, and the sixth person was still finding two or three mistakes.

There were days, though, when I'd lay out a page with my own story or column on it, and I'd have to beg my friends on news side to read it for me. I did not want to send out one of my stories without someone else reading it. As many someones as possible. If I got better as a writer during that period, and I did, it was because I was freelancing with magazines. It was good to hear their critiques.

The best thing about this paper editing-wise was the "fly." Someone would stay late to check final, and he'd look for errors. If one deserved fixing (this was an expensive proposition), he'd make the change on the fly. (It was called that because the press wasn't stopped.) I probably did a fly eight or 10 times in 10-plus years there.

It seems ironic now, but the worst paper I've ever worked for had the best idea. We had a small staff (eight or 10 men), but we'd have four to six people read every locally-produced story. No exceptions. We found most of our mistakes.

My other two newspapers, one large one and one small one, were hit-or-miss on editing. If a story came in early at the larger paper, the sports editor or his assistant would read it. Otherwise, one person might read a local story, and there were nights when we had to shovel copy. If a story came in late enough, only one person would read a story, and all he did was to catch anything obvious, cut it to fit, avoid widow lines and put a headline on it. There was no real editing.

With my ninth paper, we had a terrific editor. If he could backread my stories, I felt safe. Sometimes a young man would edit my stuff, and he did a nice job, too. But there probably were times when my pages went to the printer with only me seeing them. That's frightening.

The biggest problem with this terrific editor is that I couldn't convince him that he needed more sets of eyes on stories. The more the merrier.

And much, much safer.

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ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
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