BFC: NHSJC 2017

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Dan’s Session Notes

Leadership Session

Social Media Workshop

How to make writing interesting

Controversial sources

How to get people to work

Thinking of stories

Survival of the Fittest - Making deadlines and the overall staff more efficient

Editorials

Surveys

Before Seattle, I wasn’t very excited. I was intrigued by the idea of seeing a new city and people from all over the nation, but not by the conference itself. I honestly thought I knew all I needed to know about writing for a school newspaper. This trip, however, showed me that I was completely wrong.

On day 1, Tommy and I did a 3 hour session on leadership at the bright-and-early time of 9 am. I thought this would be just a standard powerpoint session that I would try not to fall asleep in, but it did not turn out that way. When we sat at our seats, the woman running the session shocked me. She told us to get up and talk to the person next to us for 1 minute. “Oh god,” I said in my head. “This conference is not going to be fun.” But although I had a painfully awkward conversation with a 30 year-old-man from Hawaii, it wasn’t that bad. It set me up to get outside of my comfort zone for the next 3 days.

Later that day, Tommy, Eric, Mike and I went to a long, four hour session on Social Media.The speaker was hilarious and had us do things like instagramming a photo and caption of a random person and create a Spotify playlist that described our school (ours was a weird mishmash of No Nay Never, Shipping up to Boston, and Chance the Rapper). I gained so many new ideas that I never would have thought of myself. Our social media definitely needs to get an upgrade, so I’m glad I could learn about it to use next year.

The next day, Friday, was a whirlwind of sessions. My hand hurt from all the notes I was taking. I was amazed at how great the speakers were and how many practical ideas they gave us. There was also a “Swap Shop” session where I got to talk to other publications and how they operate which was very helpful.

The next day, we had our Quiz bowl competition. Our squad did much better than expected, making it to the Final Four. Admittedly, I never actually answered a question correctly, but no one needs to know that.

Next was our presentation. I think doing more preparation beforehand would have been beneficial for me, but nonetheless it went well. The Space Needle was also another highlight of the day.

Overall, I learned a ton (which is recorded in my 4 pages worth of notes) that can be applied to next year. However, I also had a great time with all the guys. It was a trip I won’t soon forget.

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As a last minute addition to the National High School Journalism Convention in Seattle, I learned quite a bit from our Blackfriar Chronicle crew.

Walking 12,000 to 18,000 steps daily on Seattle’s clean streets and amid the busy halls of the Washington Convention Center beside these brilliant, young scholastic journalists and their dedicated adviser Kate Plows reminded me that to do something well, beyond creating a nationally recognized newspaper, it takes time, teamwork, family, and dedication.  

Since the English teacher in me tends to capture snapshots in words, I tried to articulate a slice of what I learned from these folks and the convention in the following list poem:

It’s the Little Things

Arrive Early

Greet people, focus on them

Capture eyes

Be playful

Surprise them

Act like you know what you’re doing, especially when you don’t

No upspeak, speak up

Without ramble

Communicate with authority

Fill the frame - get close

Be there, Play, Choose your attitude, Make their day*

Criticize Correctly

Watch your body language and tone of voice

Their body language speaks louder than words

Smile - you can even hear one over the phone

White space lets the eyes breathe

Take a breath, too

Establish coaches, not bosses

Never talk over your group

The speaker deserves attention

Stand by your work and your team’s work

Building excellence means building relationships

Work backwards, Avoid obstacles, Plan for setbacks

Go beyond the predictable

Never lie; be sincere.

Real Change takes real effort

Tell the whole story

Somebody cares

*FISH Philosophy - very appropriate considering our convention was in Seattle, steps away from the Fish Market of Pike’s Public Market!

Thank you Mike, Dan, Tommy, Brian, Ethan, Chase, Aidan, Eric, and Kate for warmly welcoming me into your journalistic family and for teaching me how those little things are actually quite big and go way beyond a printed paper. :)

-Mrs. Giordani

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KP’s Session Notes

Notes linked at the title of each session. Within those notes, some highlights are keys I’d like to try yesterday.

First off, there is no note taking that could do justice to Tim Harrower’s presentation. In the absence of any notes, his website is chock-full of useful journalism info.

Administrators + Assertive Student Journalism: Embrace It

Susan Enfield is the Superintendent of Highline Public Schools in Washington. Incredibly powerful perspective on her transition from a journalism educator to a school leader, and on seeing student journalism from both sides.

Blackfish, Murrow, Time Warner... Oh My!

Annette Deming presented a six-week unit on media literacy, which would be super-sweet if I had A) class every day; B) a class, period, linked to the publication. But maybe someday...

Doing one thing really well

Possibly my favorite session of the convention. Jack Kennedy made the case for continuing to do print journalism really well, despite claims of a failing industry and pressure to go online. Ever think about who is claiming the ‘industry’ is failing, and whether it’s in their best interest to claim this loudly?

Photojournalism Basics for Advisers

I really need to take a digital photography class that’s longer than one hour. Mr. Satterthwaite teaches at Palo Alto H.S.

Not another InDesign Session

I want the hours of my life spent without these shortcuts back. Students and advisers were literally crying during this sessions. Notes don’t do it justice, but I learned about ten drastic timesavers.

1+1=Our Staffs

The student EICs of Southwest Career + Technical Academy presented some tips on balancing workload and time commitment with a small staff (just 11). Awesome stuff; their site is knockout. (Then again, they have a daily full class meeting time....)

Investigative Reporting: Covering hot topics without getting burned

Presented by two reporters from the MVHS Oracle who tackled hazing, sexual assault, and the dismissal of a teacher. “Don’t tell your adviser,” they said, atop some other stories that made my heart pound.

Conversations with Risk

Eric Thomas from the University of Kansas may listen to more podcasts than me, and that’s saying something. This session got me thinking about a new way to think about and present interviewing. Some great sharable clips - never thought about using This American Life to teach before, which felt like a ‘duh’ moment.

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What if we thought of our audience as one bright sophomore at a time, seeing the world a bit differently?

Jack Kennedy, MJE

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Design Sessions

The beauty of being a designer at a conference like NHSJC is that even if you don’t necessarily learn any new fancy techniques in Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator, there’s an abundance of design inspiration for new content to integrate into your own publication.

In fact, I think these sorts of conferences are far more valuable as ways to see other work and develop your own publication’s actual content or to think more in-depth about how to employ important design elements than as a way to learn new techniques to operate those programs.

Don’t get me wrong, you can learn a lot about a given program at a specific session about that one program, but you can gather design inspiration and ideas at any session. Not to mention, the internet is full of easily found, great tutorials on how to better use such programs, but it’s harder to find good examples of high school journalistic design to try out in your own publication.

For example, I can think of 2 or 3 separate sessions that I went to, both pre-convention and during the convention, that were primarily about design principles and how to apply them. Sessions like these were incredibly valuable ways of making one think about how they employed these elements in their own work. Of course you could probably find a decent explanation of those principles on the internet after searching for a while, but having an engaging speaker who you can ask questions of and network is infinitely more valuable. To use an analogy, are you more likely to be a interested student by reading from a textbook, or by having an expert in the subject having a conversation with you about it?

Even though these sessions that were primarily focused on explaining how to use things like contrast, alignment, repetition, and patterns, they were full of examples from magazines, yearbooks, and other newspapers that we can start using in the future. For instance, a presenter may be talking about alignment between a story and an accompanying infographic. While they may be focused on the alignment, as a designer I was fixated on that infographic and wanted to try out that style for myself.

Regardless of what any session was specifically intended to teach, I was able to get ideas and inspiration out of each one.

-Ethan

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Similarities

One of the things that always fascinates me with conferences or other events like this is incredible diversity of people there. By diversity, I mean the many different backgrounds, geographical locations, school types, school sizes, interests, etc.

For example, at our presentation alone there were people from Idaho, Nebraska, and Washington state, and that only accounts for <10 of the ~20-30 people who were in the room.. Those probably aren’t places that regularly cross your mind, especially as northeasterners, but it was incredibly interesting to me to speak with people from all over and to compare their everyday lives with your own. Of course there are minor differences in things like mannerisms and lexicon, but there wasn’t any massive divider that set us apart from each other in the end.

Being able to interact with peers that come from a totally different background and perspective than your own is an incredibly valuable and fun experience. I’ve always found listening to other students’ opinions of Malvern and private school students in general, and to discuss their differences of different types of schools with them.

One of the most valuable parts of these conferences is the opportunity they present and expose students to new perspectives with each other. It is quite easy to think that since we as students live in vastly different areas and have such a variety of backgrounds, we’ll be vastly different from each other in nearly every way. The opposite is true, however. Although we may live thousands of miles apart, we share many similarities. We share many of the same worries, passions, and thoughts, and without the opportunity to encounter entirely new people that events like NHSJC present, I’m not so sure that I or others would be able to understand just how similar we really are.

-Ethan

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Politics & Branding

If there is one thing that stuck out at this convention, to me at least, it was the influence of Trump’s election in the presentations. In four out of the ten presentations I attended, the election was referenced at least once, and out of those four, twice the election was the main topic of the presentation. 

In the second presentation I attended, with speaker Tim Harrower, from the very start recent politics were introduced. He used childhood fables to convey comical, yet serious messages to the audience about Trump’s recent election. I would have preferred if he had left politics out of it, but with all the “fake news,” chatter that's been going on, it seemed almost mandatory for him to do that. He did an excellent job of keeping it under control; he backed his statements with hard cold facts and handled critical questions from the audience carefully. At a time like this, when politicians have such easy access to the public, many things can be hacked, photoshopped, and falsely claimed that can discredit news publications. Harrower was very smart to bring awareness to a new reality.

Make your publication a brand. The most important advice I learned on this trip. In order to make our newspaper more than just a paper we must learn as a staff to brand ourselves in school and in the local community. We should be able to walk into the LC and see kids who aren't on the staff with BFC merchandise. In order to do so I think the first step is deciding on one name for the newspaper and the online site. This makes it 10x easier when it comes to branding. Secondly, we should have fun contests around the school and get involved in supporting other clubs. Also, giving away free t-shirts, pens and other labeled items is great for free advertising.

In addition, getting involved with local charities as a team is a great way to draw attention and create a strong reputation in the community. This will make it easier for us to approach local businesses with propositions for selling ad space because they will have a better understanding of who we are. But it’s not just ad spaces in your paper that you can sell. Sponsored t-shirts, flyers, signs and other ways are great for bringing in cash.

-Aidan 

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Tommy’s album of photos from NHSJC Seattle, April 5-8, 2017. Add your own to the album...

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Writers' Workshop Notes

Notes from "The Writer’s Lab" Dan Austin, Casa Roble High School April 5, 2017 - JEA/NSPA National Convention -Brian

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Game On: Ethics in Action

Ethics in journalism has been on my mind since I first joined the Blackfriar Chronicle staff back in Fall 2016, as it has been a pretty grey area for me. The closest I have come to questioning ethical boundaries came when I wrote an article on the Malvern chorus’ trip to a Melania Trump rally, and I did not even conduct the interviews for that piece. So, with my freshman year with the BFC coming to a close, I thought a course on journalism ethics would be perfect to prepare me for more controversial stories next year.

The first thing I noticed when the presentation began was how enthusiastic the two speakers were about ethics. One of the instructors called it a “boring” topic, but in the same sentence said she couldn’t imagine herself teaching anything else. The other pointed out how ethics lay the foundation for sound journalism, and without basic morals to guide us, the media would be obsolete.

We were presented with four guiding principles, specified by the Society of Professional Journalists, that act as a code of ethics for journalists to follow: Seek the truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent.

To seek the truth and report it is the primary responsibility of any honest journalist. We must take responsibility for the accuracy of our work, and verify any information before we release it. That is why it is always important to check with multiple sources whenever possible. If someone gives you a false quote, and you publish it, the blame is placed on you. Providing context for a quote is also vital for a sincere reporter, as it is very easy to take a quote and apply to an entirely different topic.

Minimizing harm is the second tenet of the journalism code of ethics. Though our job is to report the truth and nothing but the truth, slander for the sake of slander can often be distorted or exaggerated so that it is no longer accurate. In other words, we need to balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort. In stories about natural disasters, military conflicts, tragedies, etc. we must show compassion towards those victims. And finally, just because we can report something, does not mean we should. Legal access to info differs from an ethical justification to publish or broadcast it.

As journalists, we must always act independently and cannot be influenced by outside factors that may compromise the integrity of the story. This can include conflicts of interest, where a reporter could have a personal bias toward a specific group. An example of this could be a lacrosse star reporting on a recent losing streak of the lacrosse team. We must also make sure to refuse any gifts, favors, or special treatment from any subjects, as this will implant a bias in our heads in favor of that person during our writing.

To be accountable and transparent means to be able to stand by your work, as well as the work of all your staff, and to be clear when explaining your ethical decisions to the public. We also have a responsibility to expose the biased or unethical work of other journalists, as reporting the truth is the duty of all forms of media. We should also be able to acknowledge our mistakes to the public, so they know they can trust the paper.

With a clearer understanding of the basic moral values of journalism, I will be more prepared to tackle heavier, more substantial topics in the coming years.

-Brian

[bfcseattle]

My experience in Seattle was like no other with my school. I got to meet a lot of really cool people and build even stronger bonds among my brothers. I was able to meet people from all around the country and even the world (from Taiwan!!). 

Seattle was a ton of fun especially with all our photo shoots. Tommy brought the BFC camera and he for sure came in clutch with some really nice photos of the trip. Seattle is different than cities that I have been to mainly because it seems almost sadder, if that’s a thing, because its always raining and gray. But when we were there, we lucked out with some nice weather which was really rad. The convention center was really big and it was really cool to see so many other journalists and designers like myself.

I was able to go to so many different sessions and learns tons about journalism and design. I went to multiple design sessions and let the record show that right now, I am so ready to crank out our next paper and fill it with amazing graphics and info graphics. Timelines, graphs, charts, ANYTHING, I’m ready and I can’t wait to do a design overhaul on our paper. 

I went to a really great session called “For your info(graphic)” and I have never been so inspired by a session. The speaker gave tons of great advice for what we can implement in our paper and showed us lots of great examples so we can grasp a good example of info graphics. I really want to get into some interactive parts of our newspaper, like a flow chart, because its a really good way to get people involved in reading the newspaper or at least picking it up. They also used examples of QR codes which may be hard to implement or use but the design team is definitely going to be looking at the pros and cons of them because it would be another great way to get people involved.

Experiencing Seattle for the first time was great because I’d never been to the Space Needle or been to Pike Place and those were two really incredible experiences. The view from the needle was fantastic (and cold) but I have the photos to prove it too! Pike place was really rad with their “Giant Shoe Displays” and their “Flying Fish.” The Giant Shoe Display just turned out to be three windows where you had to pay fifty cents just to see the world record shoe-size which was like, 42 or something crazy. The other two windows were just big plastic shoes that couldn’t fit on the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk they were so big. It was fun to look at but I couldn’t understand why people would want to look at big shoes! 

The Flying Fish thing was really cool, it was like a little fish shop at Pike Place where they would throw fish at each other. They had fish on ice all around the counter and one guy would stand outside and they would yell something, I don’t know what it was, and then he would just chuck it at the guy behind the counter. They also had a monkfish on ice just like any other fish but they had it rigged up to a rope to scare people so they could make it move. Let’s just say that Ms. Plows got her fair share of scares from a fish for her lifetime.

I loved every moment of it. The experience was even better because I was able to have it with my best-est of friends from school and my newest friends from Arizona…and Auburn and Texas and blahblahblah the list goes on! 

I loved this event and can’t wait to do it again sometime.

-Chase

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He came for the donuts. He stayed for the journalism.

Judge Kristi Rathbun, CJE, wrote of Joseph, “His work demonstrated the spirit of the award with the initiative he took to be a part of his school community’s media program. He demonstrates strong reporting and a willingness to embrace multiple elements of student media — online, social, print.”

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Where exactly ARE we going to hang that final four banner?

“Round three was a different story, however, as No. 10 seed Malvern (Pennsylvania) Preparatory School gave them a serious challenge.”

On the final day, we competed in the quiz bowl. We went into it without studying and not really knowing what to expect. It ended up being a really fun and competitive time. 

We won the first round pretty easily and then won the second round in a close contest. The competition was a lot more intense than I expected but it was also a lot of fun. Tommy carried the team the whole way, answering questions I had no idea the answers to. 

Our third round, the semifinal, was extremely intense. We were up against a school from Torrey Pines. We started our down quick but made our way back. We ended up losing by one point to the eventual champion. 

This event stood out to me on the trip because it was a lot more fun and a lot more successful than I originally expected it to be. I also think that it made the other schools who have some of the top papers in the country respect and know our paper and school more.

-Eric

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California's Megan Bobrowsky was named National SJOY, while our co-EIC Tommy Pero was ranked one of the top seven finalists in the country!

Our co-EIC Tommy Pero was named one of six runners-up. 

“I was particularly pleased to read about how he mentors younger staff members, assisting them with everything from story ideas and writing, to learning the ins and outs of advertising,” said Awards Committee member Leslie Thompson, and adviser at Conifer (Colorado) High School. “He really understands what it means to lead, not just be in charge.”

Congratulations, Tommy!

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The Art and Craft of Reviewing

Moira Macdonald email: [email protected]

Pointers on being a Good Reviewer

Read. Good writers=great readers

Put the material down that you are reviewing after you have finished and come bak to it after 24 hours. The first thing that pops in your head is your initial reaction

Avoid Plot summary

Avoid making your entire article opinion. (although this is certainly part of it)

Think about how the piece affected you. Write about the experience.

When you are watching/listening/reading, think about how you can use vivid language

In order to write with authority, you have to have knowledge in your area of reviewing

Watch all sorts of movies+books. This allows you to gain expertise and find out what makes things good.

Someone will always get mad at you because of your opinion or they think you are spoiling the movie. Stand behind your opinion.

Will what you are writing impact someone’s enjoyment of watching a movie?

Detail is very important. Take notes while watching movies or reading books.

Set a time and word limit even if you aren’t given one. People stop reading after a certain amount of words.  

Approach something thinking that is going to be great. Wanting to find the good leads to finding the flaws.

What is the film trying to be? Does it accomplish this?

What about this movie could’ve been better?

Watch the classics

Figure out what makes them classic.

To figure out who went wrong in the movie production, this is the rule of thumb. If the overall movie is bad, then it is usually the fault of the director. It’s the writer’s fault if the dialogue is unnatural and not pleasing to the ear. For actors, compare and contrast their performance to their previous performances.

-Michael

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Social Media Workshop

One of the sessions that I went to at NHSJC was a social media workshop. I attended the session with Tommy and Dan and I learned a lot about how we can get the rest of the school and our classmates more involved in reading our paper and viewing our social media pages.

The adviser who ran the workshop explained how involved his staff is in social media and how their enthusiasm in it spreads throughout the entire school.

One of the breakouts he had is do was to go into groups with our team and create a Spotify playlist that embodies our school spirit. Not only was this a lot of fun to think about the songs that our fellow classmates would like, but it was also a great idea that I think students at Malvern would enjoy listening to.

We also had to brainstorm as a team to come up with different ideas to get more student interaction in our social media accounts. The ideas we came up with were taking photos at sports games and posting them to our social media accounts, doing pizza reviews of the pizza special everyday, and doing top 10 lists on any type of topic. This session taught me a lot about how we can improve our social media pages and it was also great to collaborate on ideas with my other teammates on the staff.

Notes + Ideas 

Teacher Takeovers of social media pages 

Snapchat stories 

Social Media campaigns 

Direct messaging to ask kids for interviews 

The Big 4: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest + Spotify (for pump up songs, etc.) 

Top 10 lists (Songs, shoes, cleats) 

More visual social media 

Ask teachers what their favorite song from their senior year was. 

Make themed playlists for work nights 

Use QR codes around school for social media pages

Game plans 

Single Media vs Campaign 

Spur of the moment vs Formal Execution 

The End Goal Mine, Engage

Promote, Share Three A’s Audience, Access, and Assessment 

Plan Spotify playlists every week 

Weekly sports update 

Twitter polls (Twitter Poll Tuesday)

Themes for the student section 

 -Eric

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A few photos from the team's presentation. They earned their speaker flags!