The new academic year is nearly five weeks old and the Journalism Club has yet to gear up. The Leadership Class is very enthusiastic about training club leaders in their responsibilities, so it is exciting to think that all the club presidents and other officers will get a solid message about how to manage a club. I just cannot seem to get my past officers to make a move. Email, in person conversations, nothing.
I have not even unpacked the Journalism files from the move from my old classroom. I thought it might give them a bit more buy-in if they organized our morgue, resources, and files. It may still happen, but those boxes are a daily reminder that nothing is happening in our Journalism world. I recall with great fondness and regret how the club used to hope to get our first issue out the first week of school, to welcome the student body back from summer with a new print edition. I didn't know then how great those kids were, since they never actually achieved that goal and I could only see what we did not do. Now I see that the fire in the belly is a resource of great value. We have none now, and that makes all the difference.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Journalism Club as Consumers of Journalism
A few weeks passed with our Spanish for Spanish Speakers students attending meetings and talking about writing. Their teacher seemed to bring them to the meetings, rounding them up from their usual lunchtime activities and delivering them to my room en masse. No writing.
We instituted a second meeting day each week, designated a "work day" so students could use the time to write. Since nobody did any reporting, nobody had anything to write. Work days turned into the same kind of talking about writing that they had been doing before.
Then the Spanish speakers stopped coming. We are back to four wonderful sophomores who don't write. But wait, one of them did write a story about our students participating in Poetry Out Loud (our two winners went to the County competition) and got it onto our site. She reports that it wasn't very difficult, though she felt bad about not having a photo to go with it. Then another student wrote a story about the play the Drama class was putting on. She wrote the story in the future tense, encouraging readers to attend the performances, and turned in the story the day after the final performance. I commented on her story in Googledocs that she should revise it to the past tense. That was the end of that story.
So. I suggested that we stop beating ourselves up about not writing and focus our club on consuming and discussing journalism. They liked the idea, so now we bring articles to the group, read them together, dissect them in terms of reporting required and structure.
I did talk to the Principal about what is happening. He is a wonderfully supportive man and he told me that he feels that I deserve the stipend, that the school is lucky to have me, and the kids will learn from what they are doing.
Maybe next year we will get a more dynamic student leader. Maybe we will get some more dedicated writers. Maybe we will resurrect the student news site. I hope so, of course. I just renewed our domain name license for another three years!
We instituted a second meeting day each week, designated a "work day" so students could use the time to write. Since nobody did any reporting, nobody had anything to write. Work days turned into the same kind of talking about writing that they had been doing before.
Then the Spanish speakers stopped coming. We are back to four wonderful sophomores who don't write. But wait, one of them did write a story about our students participating in Poetry Out Loud (our two winners went to the County competition) and got it onto our site. She reports that it wasn't very difficult, though she felt bad about not having a photo to go with it. Then another student wrote a story about the play the Drama class was putting on. She wrote the story in the future tense, encouraging readers to attend the performances, and turned in the story the day after the final performance. I commented on her story in Googledocs that she should revise it to the past tense. That was the end of that story.
So. I suggested that we stop beating ourselves up about not writing and focus our club on consuming and discussing journalism. They liked the idea, so now we bring articles to the group, read them together, dissect them in terms of reporting required and structure.
I did talk to the Principal about what is happening. He is a wonderfully supportive man and he told me that he feels that I deserve the stipend, that the school is lucky to have me, and the kids will learn from what they are doing.
Maybe next year we will get a more dynamic student leader. Maybe we will get some more dedicated writers. Maybe we will resurrect the student news site. I hope so, of course. I just renewed our domain name license for another three years!
Sunday, March 9, 2014
A Year of Silence
It has been many months since my last post here, and reading my last account of the year's plans is nostalgic. John led the club through one print edition and resigned. Then all the other members of the club stopped coming, and the other officers resigned. I thought it was probably the end of Journalism at ACHS, since all we had was a student-led club and no students.
Before I recount the rest of the history, I should note the stated reasons for the former members' desertion: John said that he couldn't succeed because of the apathy of the members and that the pressure to raise money as well as get the stories written was too much. He just didn't think he could do it, and he had a lot of other activities that took up his time. One other officer hung around for a few weeks, saying that she felt honor bound to pay the printing bill for that first print edition, but then before long she too had quit.
I examined my conscience, of course. Did I fail them in some way? Could a better adviser have energized the club? I keep coming back to the fact that clubs are student-driven, so if there is little or no interest in the club it won't succeed. I do fault myself for allowing them to print a paper without the funds to pay the bill, a move I had previously said I would never do again. They seemed so sure! And, the ASB adviser had been encouraging when I spoke to her about funding the paper.
With no members, the club probably should have simply stopped operating. What to do about the debt? Instead, I made a list of all the ways I could recruit new membership and proceeded to do them all. I found four very strong students who wanted to make it work. All four were in my Humanities 10 classes. Then, a fellow teacher asked if we would be willing to do a bilingual paper, with his Spanish for Spanish Speakers class. I said yes, of course. He brought some 10 students into the club and we were back in business.
This idea does energize the group. And they are all great kids. That was December, however, and not one of them has written anything yet! They are all completely raw recruits, so we spend our meeting time getting them some information about how to interview, how to structure a story, story ideas, and technical matters. All this, and no stories.
Every week I wonder if I should tell the principal I am no longer earning my stipend. Every week we continue to talk about how we could be a bilingual news source, connecting our Spanish-speaking community with the mainstream.
We know we have to pay off that old debt. We are planning to sell T-shirts. We have a small amount of money from dues and old T-shirts. The kids talk about selling ads, but if we don't have stories, how can we promise to show ads to anybody!?
This is hard. I've already told my principal that I would be willing to turn over the adviser position if he finds a new teacher qualified for it, since he is hiring for next year. With my retirement looming (in two years), I could be around to answer questions if somebody took over now. I suspect that a more enthusiastic teacher might help the students to build their enthusiasm, so I am working to keep my own energy positive.
The year is getting pretty far advanced now to expect something to happen, but we will persist. I think the kids are learning some lessons of journalism, so that is a good thing, even if we are unable to publish a credible product. Right?
Before I recount the rest of the history, I should note the stated reasons for the former members' desertion: John said that he couldn't succeed because of the apathy of the members and that the pressure to raise money as well as get the stories written was too much. He just didn't think he could do it, and he had a lot of other activities that took up his time. One other officer hung around for a few weeks, saying that she felt honor bound to pay the printing bill for that first print edition, but then before long she too had quit.
I examined my conscience, of course. Did I fail them in some way? Could a better adviser have energized the club? I keep coming back to the fact that clubs are student-driven, so if there is little or no interest in the club it won't succeed. I do fault myself for allowing them to print a paper without the funds to pay the bill, a move I had previously said I would never do again. They seemed so sure! And, the ASB adviser had been encouraging when I spoke to her about funding the paper.
With no members, the club probably should have simply stopped operating. What to do about the debt? Instead, I made a list of all the ways I could recruit new membership and proceeded to do them all. I found four very strong students who wanted to make it work. All four were in my Humanities 10 classes. Then, a fellow teacher asked if we would be willing to do a bilingual paper, with his Spanish for Spanish Speakers class. I said yes, of course. He brought some 10 students into the club and we were back in business.
This idea does energize the group. And they are all great kids. That was December, however, and not one of them has written anything yet! They are all completely raw recruits, so we spend our meeting time getting them some information about how to interview, how to structure a story, story ideas, and technical matters. All this, and no stories.
Every week I wonder if I should tell the principal I am no longer earning my stipend. Every week we continue to talk about how we could be a bilingual news source, connecting our Spanish-speaking community with the mainstream.
We know we have to pay off that old debt. We are planning to sell T-shirts. We have a small amount of money from dues and old T-shirts. The kids talk about selling ads, but if we don't have stories, how can we promise to show ads to anybody!?
This is hard. I've already told my principal that I would be willing to turn over the adviser position if he finds a new teacher qualified for it, since he is hiring for next year. With my retirement looming (in two years), I could be around to answer questions if somebody took over now. I suspect that a more enthusiastic teacher might help the students to build their enthusiasm, so I am working to keep my own energy positive.
The year is getting pretty far advanced now to expect something to happen, but we will persist. I think the kids are learning some lessons of journalism, so that is a good thing, even if we are unable to publish a credible product. Right?
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
High Hopes for Print Edition Revival
A new school year is about to begin, with the ACHS Journalism Club at another point of decision. The Managing Editor, John Shollenberger, has announced that he wants to lead the Club in a return to priint! We published online only last school year, since we had struggled to raise the funds to print the paper the previous year. Our program is young; our staff is small; our time is limited; there are no funding sources to rely upon. John has his work cut out for him.
Looking back, I can be happy and proud because of what we've accomplished or I can be sad as I look at the small number of articles written to cover an absolutely spectacular year in ACHS history: all varsity teams in post-season, the first graduation, award-winning performing arts. I choose to be proud. The staff designed and managed their online news source. The school's supporting Foundation supported our desire to send six members of the staff to the JEA Annual Convention in San Francisco The Associated Student Body showed their support by forgiving our previous loans. The club ended the year without debt.
Everybody warned me that it is difficult to start a newspaper program, and it was clear that a Club format would limit our accomplishments. As we enter this 4th year of operation, with the intend to publish more print editions than ever before while keeping our toe in the online water, I am curious to see how the energy and enthusiasm, and very significant talent, of our small staff will pull it off!
Looking back, I can be happy and proud because of what we've accomplished or I can be sad as I look at the small number of articles written to cover an absolutely spectacular year in ACHS history: all varsity teams in post-season, the first graduation, award-winning performing arts. I choose to be proud. The staff designed and managed their online news source. The school's supporting Foundation supported our desire to send six members of the staff to the JEA Annual Convention in San Francisco The Associated Student Body showed their support by forgiving our previous loans. The club ended the year without debt.
Everybody warned me that it is difficult to start a newspaper program, and it was clear that a Club format would limit our accomplishments. As we enter this 4th year of operation, with the intend to publish more print editions than ever before while keeping our toe in the online water, I am curious to see how the energy and enthusiasm, and very significant talent, of our small staff will pull it off!
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Sooooo Close
This semester the ACHS Journalism Club has been focused on "going online," and the process has been educational. Jen Bellingham has learned the frustration behind the old lament, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." She has tried every trick we can think of to get the members to write their stories, but they just don't seem to be thirsty horses. Meanwhile, she has not posted any stories either! When I mention to her that she should lead by example, she tells me the challenges that have kept her stories from being posted. They are real. So are the challenges that each of the members of the club are facing.
As hard as all this has been, the learning curve for the designers in the club has also been steep. We are all learning together, since neither I nor my friend and club coach Jay Gamel know the ins and outs of Wordpress or the tricks behind our chosen theme, Sliding Doors. Yet, I do believe we're nearly ready to show our results to the world.
I'm feeling a bit schizophrenic at this point: one part of me thinks it is bizarre and unacceptable that we have not "published" anything this semester, and I'm embarrassed when I think about that; the other part of me thinks we are poised at the edge of a landmark achievement, which will turn out to be a spectacular addition to our school's publication/communication landscape. OK, the truth is somewhere between those extremes.
The schools sports teams, in only their second varsity season, have done extremely well, playing in postseason competition in four sports: golf, girls tennis, water polo, and football. We don't have a story about that!? I cannot believe that we cannot get this done. Now I'm thinking we need to cultivate a system of stringers to achieve something that deserves to be online. I don't know if anybody on campus will feel proud to put THAT on his or her resume, but I think it's worth a try.
As hard as all this has been, the learning curve for the designers in the club has also been steep. We are all learning together, since neither I nor my friend and club coach Jay Gamel know the ins and outs of Wordpress or the tricks behind our chosen theme, Sliding Doors. Yet, I do believe we're nearly ready to show our results to the world.
I'm feeling a bit schizophrenic at this point: one part of me thinks it is bizarre and unacceptable that we have not "published" anything this semester, and I'm embarrassed when I think about that; the other part of me thinks we are poised at the edge of a landmark achievement, which will turn out to be a spectacular addition to our school's publication/communication landscape. OK, the truth is somewhere between those extremes.
The schools sports teams, in only their second varsity season, have done extremely well, playing in postseason competition in four sports: golf, girls tennis, water polo, and football. We don't have a story about that!? I cannot believe that we cannot get this done. Now I'm thinking we need to cultivate a system of stringers to achieve something that deserves to be online. I don't know if anybody on campus will feel proud to put THAT on his or her resume, but I think it's worth a try.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Web advertising
As a total neophyte in the world of web advertising, I started by asking my contacts how they price their ads for online student news reporting. I found that a lot of advisers are also neophytes, and mostly heard that it is hard to sell space in the online version of the paper.
Finally I decided to research the question on line, and I found a lot of helpful basics. Most of the answers lead to more questions of course, but now I feel less foolish as I attempt to understand what we need to do. Having the vocabulary is always a good start. So, now I know what the measurements are (pixels, duh). I also have a better understanding of how price and pixels relate. However, the emphasis seems to be on CPM (cost per mille), which means that putting a price on advertising before you have a history of page views is a guessing game. Still, when we DO have a history, we can either brag about it or keep silent until we've driven it up enough to brag about.
Page views and clicks. Those are more important than pixels. Now I know. Of course, it's still good to be able to talk about banner ads, sidebar ads, popups, pop-unders, floating ads, etc. The best information I found is here:
Brain, Marshall. "How Web Advertising Works" 08 April 2002. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-advertising.htm> 28 June 2012.
While the date shows that the information is dated, I needed the primer.
Finally I decided to research the question on line, and I found a lot of helpful basics. Most of the answers lead to more questions of course, but now I feel less foolish as I attempt to understand what we need to do. Having the vocabulary is always a good start. So, now I know what the measurements are (pixels, duh). I also have a better understanding of how price and pixels relate. However, the emphasis seems to be on CPM (cost per mille), which means that putting a price on advertising before you have a history of page views is a guessing game. Still, when we DO have a history, we can either brag about it or keep silent until we've driven it up enough to brag about.
Page views and clicks. Those are more important than pixels. Now I know. Of course, it's still good to be able to talk about banner ads, sidebar ads, popups, pop-unders, floating ads, etc. The best information I found is here:
Brain, Marshall. "How Web Advertising Works" 08 April 2002. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-advertising.htm> 28 June 2012.
While the date shows that the information is dated, I needed the primer.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Going Online!?
Before the school year came to a close, the club had a meeting (not well-attended) and decided that going online is the right route to pulling ourselves out of our financial problems as well as re-energizing our membership. The first result comes from the fact that we can do the website for something like $100 per year, compared to printing costs of $325 per issue. The second hope is that our members will be more excited because their stories will be published regularly, and we can report actual news!
This also adjusts the focus of our summer meeting: we'll be getting clear on the relationship between the newspaper (WolfPrints), the web site (achswolfprints.com), the school web site, the Wolf Prints Facebook page, Twitter, and Echo (our school learning platform). Then we'll have to quickly make some design decisions, do some fun journalism training aimed at newer members, and get down to the technical aspects of using our technology. That's a lot to accomplish in three days!
The JEA Outreach Academy I attended at SF State was a great help. I met another great group of Journalism teachers from the SF Bay Area, spent 3 days talking about issues of journalism education, bought a few really great new books on journalism, and picked up a slew of resources on all kinds of topics. My "bookmarks" listing is now overflowing.
Yesterday I met with the journalism teacher from Hercules High School, Natalie Wojinski. Two hours of sharing experiences and ideas left both of us with a lot more clarity and new ideas to try out. I know I'll be using Natalie's wisdom going forward, and I hope my experiences will give Natalie some additional inspiration.
Now, to the dashboard. I do need to make some background decisions for the online presence so we can hit cyberspace running in August. I'll have more to report in a few days after lunch with our Coach, Jay Gamel, and the co-publisher of Kenwood Press, Ann Quenan Peters on Friday.
This also adjusts the focus of our summer meeting: we'll be getting clear on the relationship between the newspaper (WolfPrints), the web site (achswolfprints.com), the school web site, the Wolf Prints Facebook page, Twitter, and Echo (our school learning platform). Then we'll have to quickly make some design decisions, do some fun journalism training aimed at newer members, and get down to the technical aspects of using our technology. That's a lot to accomplish in three days!
The JEA Outreach Academy I attended at SF State was a great help. I met another great group of Journalism teachers from the SF Bay Area, spent 3 days talking about issues of journalism education, bought a few really great new books on journalism, and picked up a slew of resources on all kinds of topics. My "bookmarks" listing is now overflowing.
Yesterday I met with the journalism teacher from Hercules High School, Natalie Wojinski. Two hours of sharing experiences and ideas left both of us with a lot more clarity and new ideas to try out. I know I'll be using Natalie's wisdom going forward, and I hope my experiences will give Natalie some additional inspiration.
Now, to the dashboard. I do need to make some background decisions for the online presence so we can hit cyberspace running in August. I'll have more to report in a few days after lunch with our Coach, Jay Gamel, and the co-publisher of Kenwood Press, Ann Quenan Peters on Friday.
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