Ideas for serving to your college students pitch their concepts — and themselves — in a contract world

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Final week I bought to spend some digital time with college students at Clark Atlanta College, an HBCU in Georgia. The younger journalists I spoke with have been particularly eager on getting recommendation about pitching freelance tales to editors, which me as a result of it looks like freelancing basically is such a sizzling matter in journalism proper now.

That’s why I reached out to Jacquie Marino, a professor at Kent State and a featured presenter at this 12 months’s Teachapalooza. This semester, she taught a whole course on turning into a contract journalist, and has written for Poynter concerning the matter.

I requested her to place collectively some pitching fundamentals that we may share with college students, and he or she got here up with this handout that I believed I’d go alongside.

I hope you discover it useful, and that you just’re having a very good week in journalism training.

Pedestrians go the storefront of Gibson’s Meals Mart & Bakery in Oberlin, Ohio, in 2017. (AP Photograph/Dake Kang, File)

Oberlin School in Ohio has been ordered to pay $31 million to a bakery that college students accused of racist actions. Inside Increased Ed and the Chronicle of Increased Training each have good summaries. The difficulty right here doesn’t contain scholar journalism immediately. Moderately, it provides pause for these of us who’re within the enterprise of suggesting that schools don’t have any enterprise regulating scholar speech. That Oberlin could also be out thousands and thousands as a result of it didn’t condemn scholar expression? Ouch. How may different faculties react sooner or later, and what impression may this doubtlessly have on scholar media? This can be one to look at.

Nicely this bought my eyebrows up: “Paperwork present new particulars in ‘sweeping and disturbing’ UNC-Chapel Hill school investigation.” And yep, it’s concerning the journalism college.

Right here’s an attention-grabbing piece from Poynter final week: “Journalists have to rethink their relationship with corrections.” I’m curious how a lot time you spend educating your college students methods to deal with corrections requests. It’s really a very attention-grabbing alternative to have interaction them in discussions about belief, accuracy and ethics. How do you educate somebody to face up in a newsroom and say, “I made a mistake”? In the event you want a little bit extra background, right here’s a chunk from Trusting Information: “Make corrections a constructing block of belief with our step-by-step information.”

Keep in mind this man, the Sarah Lawrence cult dad? He’s been discovered responsible on a number of counts and can be sentenced within the fall. This story was so bizarre that I can’t cease following this case.

Liked this story this week within the Chronicle of Increased Training concerning the tradition of faculty rankings: “Do the ‘U.S. Information’ Rankings Depend on Doubtful Knowledge?” The subhead: “Researchers who undergo the publication say survey solutions are topic to errors, ambiguity, and strain to look good.” Ouch.

This story concerning the continued bomb threats at HBCUs and their impression on the psychological well being of scholars, dad and mom and staff is heartbreaking.

I’m curious in case your college students are utilizing BeReal, an app that shares commonalities with social media however is trying to lower by way of the inauthenticity that plagues different platforms. BeReal basically prompts customers to {photograph} their present realities and keep away from filters, cautious framing, staged lighting and all the opposite methods people use on social media to make their lives look extra attention-grabbing and glamorous than they are surely. Sounds a little bit like, I don’t know, photojournalism? What do your college students consider this app and its implications for authenticity? How does that dovetail along with your classes about good journalism?

Final week, Sarah Scire of Nieman Lab wrote “Alongside a subscriber-only investigation on eviction, USA As we speak publishes a free graphic novel.” Right here’s her intro: “There’s been a whole lot of speak about the necessity to experiment with new varieties in journalism, particularly to achieve youthful and traditionally underserved audiences. That’s why a brief, efficient, and free graphic novel caught my eye this week.

Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, nationwide housing and social providers reporter for USA As we speak, studied hundreds of eviction information with knowledge journalist Kevin Crowe. Their evaluation led them to a county in Washington state the place the eviction price for Black ladies is 5 instances increased than for white renters. The ensuing investigation was printed as a longform article — obtainable solely to subscribers, because of the premium paywall Gannett, USA As we speak’s proprietor, erected in 2021 — and accompanied by unpaywalled tip sheets in English and Spanish. However what caught my consideration was the free graphic novel about eviction written by Ruiz-Goiriena and illustrated by Ariana Torrey.”

Right here’s a group of photographs that received prizes within the World Press Photograph awards. From the AP: “The winners have been chosen out of 64,823 pictures and open format entries by 4,066 photographers from 130 international locations.” There are some nice photographs in there for classroom dialogue or classes.

I’ll strive to not bury you weekly with Teachapalooza solicitations — suffice to say it’s going to be superior and I might merely like to have you ever in individual or just about. Magic occurs in our hallowed halls — and right here’s what I imply. I bought an e-mail just lately from Andrea Otáñez, a educating professor on the College of Washington, who’s serving to to coordinate a Public Curiosity Communications Summer time Institute, which can be at Howard College from June 22-24. The institute will characteristic professors and others who will collect to be taught, share and collaborate in defining and constructing the rising tutorial area of public curiosity communications.

Right here’s why I point out it in the identical breath as Teacha. Otáñez wrote: “I thought of you and Poynter as a result of the group that’s pulling this occasion collectively got here straight out of Teacha. It began when College of Florida’s Ann Christiano introduced her public curiosity communication program at Teachapalooza. … I utterly related with the thought of ‘public curiosity communication’ and we finally renamed our program to change into the Journalism and Public Curiosity Communication Program. Then a couple of years later, a couple of extra Teacha colleagues began speaking, we reconnected with Christiano and her colleague Angela Bradbury and right here we’re: this summer season institute.”

Think about Otanez’s occasion, and think about attending Teacha, too. Who is aware of what concepts and collaborations will spring forth?

The Seattle Instances’ vacation pie undertaking demonstrates the worth of collaborating with visuals groups. (Amanda Snyder / The Seattle Instances)

This week, editor Taylor Blatchford wrote about how vital it’s for scholar journalists to work early and infrequently with their friends who focus on visuals — and he or she shares what she discovered on her personal journey. Sure, there are pies.

Subscribe to The Lead, Poynter’s weekly e-newsletter for scholar journalists, and encourage your college students to do the identical.

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