Classrooms and Newsrooms: The J-Education Forum

Defining "journalist" as we introduce journalism

GeorgeDaniels — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:38:00 GMT

This week's discussion about the The Free Flow of Information Act brings up the ongoing debate over just what is a journalist?

As our SPJ President Clint Brewer explained in his letter to Senator John Cornyn, it is best to "remain fluid" when defining a journalist. It's a matter of function rather than title (i.e. newspaper, television, radio, online reporters).

For journalism educators, this is a wake-up call for us as we define our classes, curricula and language in introducing the profession to our stuents.

Are our students still thinking when they sign up for Introduction to Journalism that they will get an introduction to newspapers, magazines and other PRINTED media?

To what extent are we conveying to our students this "fluidity" of which Brewer is speaking in his interactions with lawmakers?

With the passage of the Free Flow of Information Act (and we know it will pass eventually), we have some codifying of this concept called journalism.

I wonder how many journalism teachers are even making their students aware of the current definitional debates as they relate to the shield law?

As we prepare our syllabi for the upcoming fall semester (I'm working on mine as we speak), I think we ought to engage students in the same debates that the lawmakers are engaged. Leave room for an exercise that exposes the "messiness" of defining of our profession even as it's changing before our eyes.

Introducing journalism to a whole new generation in 2008 is not like introducing journalism in 1998. I know it's a cliche-- but it truly is a whole new world.

And, we journalism educators are charged with taking our students by the hand and ushering them in it.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, June 22, 2008

ELWiggins — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:02:00 GMT

The graduate journalism schools at Columbia University and the City University of New York will improve their new-media programs with a total of $8-million in grants from the Tow Foundation, the charity announced today.

Columbia will receive $5-million, and CUNY $3-million. Under the terms of the grants, Columbia must garner an additional $10-million in donations within 18 months, and CUNY must raise enough to double its grant. Leonard Tow, a co-founder of the foundation, said the grants were a response to his “serious concerns about what is happening in the world of journalism.”

“I thought it was time for us to think about addressing these new-media opportunities so what we as citizens receive from them is more an accurate reflection of what is going on in the world than some opinion,” said Mr. Tow.

Columbia will use its grant to establish the Tow Center, which will build on the journalism school’s existing new-media curriculum and prepare students for careers in digital and online journalism. The school will hire two full-time faculty members to lead the center. The school’s dean, Nicholas Lemann, said the grant had already made an impact: Bill Grueskin of The Wall Street Journal, who two weeks ago was hired as the school’s academic dean, wanted to be involved in the new-media center, Mr. Lemann said.

“Big changes are afoot in journalism, which makes the role of journalism schools vital in a way that it hasn’t been before,” Mr. Lemann said. He added that the center would better position the school to influence the future of journalism.

CUNY’s grant will create the Tow Center for Journalistic Innovation, which will serve a purpose similar to Columbia’s Tow Center. CUNY’s journalism school was established in the fall of 2006 with a heavy emphasis on new media, and at the Tow Center students will develop and put into play journalistic enterprises and business models.

“The old model is under great pressures, some would say crumbling in mainstream media, and there is not enough innovation,” said its dean, Stephen B. Shepard. “This is meant to be a spur in innovation.” —Allie Grasgreen

Kent launches media job advice site

ELWiggins — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:37:00 GMT

Karl Idsvoog of Kent State University's School of Journalism & Mass Communication
announces a site created for students preparing to enter the job market. Called MediaJobPod, the site provides online / broadcast news and production majors with practical job search advice.
Here is the URL for the site ~ http://www.mediajobpod.org and the page with the MediaJobPod logos for sites to download/link: http://tinyurl.com/6l7vxf

Q & A with Student Blogger from The Chronicle's Wire Campus Newsletter (April 6, 2008)

ELWiggins — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:36:00 GMT

Kelly Sutton, a junior in computer science and film production at Loyola Marymount University, co-founded a technology blog by and for college students. About 1,000 people a day visit the blog, called Hack College, which he runs with a few friends at the college. Q. What is your favorite piece of advice on the blog? A. We're in the process of writing a feature called "students should blog." We personally believe that blogs are kind of replacing résumés as far as indicators of talent and past experiences. We've had a lot of job offers come directly from the blog itself. We definitely think more students should consider blogging. Q. But haven't students gotten in trouble for blogging things that come back to haunt them? A. Obviously do it responsibly, and realize that if you make a sex blog or something, that's going to be tied to your name as long as you live, with the way stuff tends to be archived on the Internet. But if you want to be a sex psychologist, that could be the best thing for you. Q. What is the most popular piece of advice you've posted? A. The most popular post by far is "10 Ways to Recover a Lost Word Document." Most papers are done using Microsoft Word. Q. What is the most important way technology has changed student life in recent years? A. It's no longer weird to spend a lot of time on the Internet. Students will jokingly admit to spending hours on Facebook. The habits that they're forming right now will eventually lead to different collaborations that weren't possible in the past. Q. What's the biggest downside of all this student technology? A. It's adding a lot of overhead to a student's life — the time it takes to check all the social networks and online platforms. Q. Is technology making teaching better? A. Oftentimes professors trying to use technology or plug into the generation using technology fail miserably. It's like, "Let's make a podcast." Well, what problem is that podcast solving? Q. What are your crystal-ball predictions for campus technology? A. I think a lot of the social networks will putter out and die. Facebook will be here to stay, and there are a lot of them that I would like to see stick around, but realistically they're not going to. Q. How did you personally get interested in technology? A. I learned how to operate a computer before I learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. Both of my parents studied electrical engineering, so it's just kind of been a part of my life ever since I was born. -- Jeffrey R. Young

From the Chronicle's Wire Campus Newsletter, April 15, 2008

ELWiggins — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:56:00 GMT

Duke University is arguing that a Web site run by student lacrosse players suing the institution should be shut down. The Web site, DukeLawsuit.com, updates visitors on the status of the case, which 38 students filed over the university's response to rape accusations against the students in 2006. The blog posts briefs filed by both sides in the case, including those regarding the motion to shut down the site. Lawyers for Duke, the City of Durham, and the Duke University Health System objected to the site and a news conference organized by the plaintiffs because they allegedly violate the North Carolina Professional Rules of Conduct and will "have a material prejudicial effect on [the] proceeding.” The National Law Journal has more on the controversy. --Catherine Rampell

Student e-mail discussion thread on The Chronicle's Wired Campus, March 31, 2008

ELWiggins — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:05:00 GMT

Last week we highlighted three rude or clueless e-mail messages from students to their professors, and it sparked a lively discussion, in part about whether the messages are funny or just sad.

Since there are hundreds of posts in the ongoing Chronicle forum topic on “‘favorite’ student e-mails,” here are few more, along with suggestions about what they say about technology on campus.

Is Facebook Just Too Casual?

These days many students prefer sending messages through Facebook, rather than through traditional e-mail (as we pointed out a while back). But is a Facebook message too casual for communicating with a faculty member? This professor thinks so:

“A student who didn’t show up for class on Monday morning just Facebooked me to ask where the class was. I am not responding to a Facebook message! Cripes!”

‘thanx!’

Here’s one from a student who seems to expect professors to serve as personal assistants:

“I didn’t come to class today because i had a soar throat and couldn’t hear. I think it might be strep,” the student wrote.

“Hello, Student X. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. Did you intend to send this message to someone else? You’re not registered for any of my classes this semester. Oh, and I’m pretty sure that strep doesn’t cause loss of hearing,” the professor replied.

“Ouch! i clicked the wrong address. can you forward that message to dr. DifferentProfessor for me? i can’t open the directory cuase my computer memory sucks and i have another program running. except change the hearing to talking. thanx!”

And Students Seem to Feel Like Customers Who Are Always Right

At least that seems to be the case, judging by the tone of many of the student e-mail messages posted on The Chronicle‘s forums, like this one:

“Dear Dr. Chicklet,

“I want to take your class, but it conflicts with another (REQUIRED!!!) class for my major. I asked the other teacher if she could move her class so I could take yours, but she won’t do it. So could you move yours?

“Snowflake”

The professor’s response:

“Dear Snowflake,

“Thank you for your interest in my class. However, in order to change a class on the schedule, I must identify another viable time slot, complete two reams of paperwork, get approval by the Dean, and then present my case to the the course committee. In total, this procedure takes 6 months. Therefore, I’m afraid I won’t be able to accomodate you.

“Sincerely,

“Dr. Chicklet”

Do e-mail and Facebook encourage students to treat professors too informally, or is this part of a larger change in attitudes about higher education? Or something else? —Jeffrey R. Young

Wanted: Pitches for Quill's Journalism Education Issue

ELWiggins — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:25:00 GMT

For the August 2008 J-Ed issue we'll explore how newsrooms and classrooms are intersecting in new and exciting ways. We have some ideas percolating but welcome more.

Ben Yagoda commentary on unpaid internships from The Chronicle Review

ELWiggins — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:12:00 GMT

Professor Yagoda's thoughts, here reprinted from The Chronicle Review, are indeed timely. ELW

By BEN YAGODA

Thanks to a skewed reading of a well-meaning but misguided federal statute, a dozen students of mine will have to needlessly cough up $2,300 each this summer for the privilege of working without pay.

Everyone knows that internships are important for college students' eventual success in the job market. It is also the case that in certain areas — politics, entertainment, broadcast, nonprofit institutions, and my field, journalism — unpaid internships are the rule. (The Chronicle, at which some of my students have had the good fortune to work as interns, is one of the laudable exceptions.)

That's all well and good, except that it reinforces the divide between "haves" and "have-nots" among undergraduates. The rich kids take the internships and improve their prospects. Their less-well-off peers, who simply can't afford to, end up busing tables for the summer and graduate with significantly skimpier résumés.

In an effort to bridge the divide, a flurry of elite colleges, including Harvard, Yale, Penn, Dartmouth, and Swarthmore, have in recent months announced sharp increases in need-based financial aid, replacing loans with grants and making aid available to students whose families are solidly in the middle class. In addition, a number of colleges have started making some stipend or fellowship money available to students who take unpaid internships.

But those who are helped by any of these measures amount to a small minority of the college population. At my university, the University of Delaware, which if anything is better endowed than most, there is no new influx of money for financial aid and none at all for unpaid internships. The journalism program, on its own, has started accumulating some dollars to help out interns, and last year, for the first time, offered a fairly pitiful $1,500 to one of them. That left about 20 journalism students who worked at internships with zero compensation.

It gets worse. In the past half-dozen years or so, more and more employers have insisted that students receive academic credit for unpaid internships. At this point, it's almost universally required. So the intern not only has to give up a paycheck, but also pay tuition for a three-credit summer-session class. On my campus, that amounts to $2,325, as of this summer, for most students. (In-state residents, who make up about 40 percent of the student body, will pay $918 starting this summer.) Needless to say, such a price tag is a deal-breaker for some students and their families. As a result, the divide is widened.

A few years ago, when the credit requirement started to get popular, I — as a faculty member who had to approve, supervise, and grade the internship-for-credit course — asked a few employers the reason for the requirement. I never got a detailed answer, only vague mentions of lawyers and liability, and, once in a while, a suggestion that students would be "exploited" if they worked without any kind of return on their labor. I would always stifle my snort. After all, I depended on these people to take on my kids.

Instead, my colleagues and I tried to game the system. For example, if students lived in an area where a public or community college offered an internship or "life experience" course and cheaper tuition, we told them to enroll there and transfer the credits back to Delaware. We also gave them the option of signing up for their credits in the fall semester, even though the internship was in the summer. That way it would be covered under their regular tuition bill, with no need to spring for an extra big-ticket item.

That particular game is now officially up. Recently word came down from administrators at my university that henceforth, students seeking credit for internships must enroll in the same semester when they do the work.

That depressing news led me to undertake some actual journalism and look for the real cause of the credit-requirement trend. I got an answer courtesy of an outfit called University of Dreams, which will place you in a summer internship in a glamorous industry of your choice in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, or one of a half-dozen other cities; put you up in a local college dorm; give you breakfast and dinner; and, if you attend four 90-minute seminars with your fellow interns and write a three-page, double-spaced paper on your experience, arrange for you to get one unit of credit from California's Menlo College. The price for these services ranges from $5,000 to $9,000, and thus the divide becomes a gorge.

On its Web site, University of Dreams explains why the Menlo College credit is important: "The Minimum Wage Law requires all college students to receive academic credit if they are going to work in a nonpaid internship."

As I found when I did some additional checking, the real origin of employers' credit requirement is an opinion letter that the Department of Labor sends to employers who inquire about the issue. Interestingly, the letter mentions no requirement of any official academic connection with the internship. (The State of California, by contrast, does require that internships "be an essential part of an established course of an accredited school.") The labor department's letter casts internships as "training" and says that to be excused from the normal labor laws, including paying workers for their work, a program must satisfy six conditions, notably: "The training is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction"; "The training is for the benefit of the trainees or students"; and "The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees or students."

Pretty much every unpaid internship I'm aware of has violated one, two, or all three of those conditions, especially the first (what's the point of an internship if it's similar to what you'd do in class?) and third (an intern writing two front-page stories a week would seem pretty advantageous from a newspaper's point of view). But my research turned up only one company that's ever been busted. In 1995 the government fined A. Brown-Olmstead Associates, an Atlanta-based public-relations firm, $31,520 because it had billed clients for work done by unpaid interns.

That, of course, had nothing to do with academic credit or lack of it. Rather, it was a clear instance of gaining "immediate advantage," along the lines of having a beach-club intern hawk Fudgsicles in the sand and hand over the proceeds at the end of the day. But I can imagine how lawyers for intern-hiring businesses responded to the Brown-Olmstead judgment. Internships are almost never "similar" to what students would learn in school — nor should they be — but lawyers figured out that tying them to an actual college course would help make that argument if the feds ever complained. Managers usually do what lawyers recommend, if only to get them out of the office, and thus their suggestions became policy.

That still leaves me with the question of how to proceed. One option would be to follow the lead of another college, a staff member of which I spoke to on condition of anonymity. This person said that when a company demands a statement that a student will receive credit for an internship, the college simply sends such a letter, but doesn't give the credit. No one has complained yet.

But mendacity in the name of education doesn't seem ideal. How about a modest amendment to U.S. law, so that it's clear that college students can choose to accept unpaid internships of any stripe? Some of them will be fooled into signing on for valueless scut work, no doubt. But most of the students I know are savvy enough to tell the winners from the clinkers. And all of them would welcome a slightly smaller tuition bill.

Ben Yagoda is a professor of English at the University of Delaware and author, most recently, of When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse (Broadway Books, 2007).

Mark Bauerlein's blog on The Chronicle Review

ELWiggins — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:17:00 GMT

I found Professor Bauerlein's thoughts reprinted below from The Chronicle Review fascinating and wondered how they mesh with the reality of journalism education. elw

The Woessner report that I posted on yesterday prompted an interesting commentary in the Wall Street Journal by Naomi Schaefer Riley. Ms. Riley notes, among other things, the heavy lean toward Obama in academe as measured by campaign contributions (reported here by The Chronicle), and she notes the finding that conservative students meet with professors less often. What she highlights most, though, is the assumption that “someone who places more importance on raising a family would shy away from academia.”

Professor April Kelly-Woessner (the liberal wife to conservative husband Matthew Woessner) tells Riley in an interview of the “great misconception in popular culture about what it is that academics do, that we teach a couple of days a week and have lots of free time.” We have seen, indeed, many books and articles on the subject, such as Profscam by Charles Sykes, and when people hear about a 2-2 teaching load that means 6 classroom hours a week for 28 weeks out of the year, they wonder what all the complaining is about.

But Professor Kelly-Woessner maintains, “Our average workweek is 60+ hours. And unlike a regular job, where you come home at 5, we’re grading well into the evening.”

Can this be true, 60+ hours?

Maybe for some segments, such as teachers with a 4-4 load that includes heavy writing assignments on the syllabus. And maybe for assistant professors struggling to get the book finished before tenure time, or researchers in the sciences working on a timetable because of funding.

But if we look at tenured professors in the humanities and in many other disciplines, it seems to me that much of the work they do is entirely self-generated. The conference papers that have to be written, the scholarly articles they want to complete, the book projects that hang over them . . . these are not required. They are elective. Yes, they can enhance a career, extend a CV, or even contribute to the historical record—sometimes. But the fact is that the degree to which the vast majority of conference papers and articles in the humanities effectively change the working conditions of professors doesn’t come close to justifying the number of hours they spend on the projects. These projects fill their afternoons and evenings, and in my experience inside academia and out I have never heard any groups speak as loudly about how “busy” they are as professors do. Plainly, the situation makes many of them unhappy. So why do they do it? Is it really worth sweating all those months getting that manuscript in order—which upon publication will sell only a few hundred copies—just to boost your annual raise a few hundred dollars?

From the Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2009

ELWiggins — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:28:00 GMT

Student Newspaper and Student Government at Montclair State Will Separate

Attempts to mediate the dispute between the student newspaper and the student government at Montclair State University have failed, and the institution’s president said on Wednesday that the university would work with both groups “to achieve a formal separation of the two organizations effective no later than July 1.”

The student government, which provides a large portion of the budget for The Montclarion, temporarily froze the newspaper’s funds last month after the paper hired a lawyer to challenge the government’s tendency to meet behind closed doors. The government later restored the funds pending mediation of the dispute. Those talks broke down this week.

The president, Susan A. Cole, stressed in a written statement that the decision to separate the two groups was “not an admonishment of either organization or any individual students.” She added that the university would “assure that The Montclarion has adequate funds to publish for the remainder of this academic year,” regardless of any action taken by the student government. —Charles Huckabee

From The Wired Campus, Feb. 27, 2008

ELWiggins — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:19:00 GMT

Abilene Christian U. to Give iPhones or iPods to All Freshmen

Abilene Christian University says it will be the first university in the country to give iPhones or iPods to all incoming freshmen. Today the university unveiled an elaborate news-media blitz on its Web site, including an online video showing a fictionalized account of how the university plans to use the devices for various services on campus.

The 900 students who will start at the university this fall will be given the choice of an iPhone or an iPod Touch (which can connect to the Internet via wireless networks but does not function as a cellphone).

In 2004 Duke University decided to give iPods to all of its first-year students. The move generated a high volume of publicity, but two years later the university scaled back the effort, so that only students in certain courses were given iPods (and then only as a loan rather than a gift). —Jeffrey R. Young

From The Chronicle, 7/28/2006

ELWiggins — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:17:00 GMT

Professor Althouse's thoughtful piece on the potential hazards of blogging from a few years back caught my eye. For the unfamiliar, the professor she refers to in the final graf, Juan Cole, was reputedly denied a tenured position at Yale because of his blogging.

By ANN ALTHOUSE

What are we to make of the blogging professor? I'm not talking about professors who look upon blogging as a new way to project their scholarship into the world and who assiduously protect their reputations by writing every post in an academic style. I'm talking about those of us who are inspired by this writing format, who find ourselves drawn into new ways of thinking and communicating with the world.

If you veer away from purely scholarly writing and engage in polemic or satire or elliptical snark about controversial subject matter, you may very well win a widespread audience and feel highly gratified by this response, but then you will also be motivating some people to oppose you, perhaps quite viciously, and you will be generating the material they can use to try to bring you down. The very fact that you're a professor is leverage: This person purports to be a scholar, but look how he writes!

Successful blog writing is sharp and clear. Controversial opinions will look quite stark. You lay it on the line, and you mean to startle readers and make your opponents mad. Academic writing is temperate and swathed in verbiage. It creates a comfortable environment for academics and wards off casual readers. In the blogosphere, you're newly exposed, and it's a rough arena, where you have far less control over what happens to you. That's part of what makes blogging empowering and, often, great fun. But it's a big risk, and of course, it risks your career.

I do not know exactly what happened to Juan Cole. He dared to put his ideas out in the open where lots of people could see exactly what he has to say, and some of them felt a strong antagonism to it. But we bloggers are responsible for what we write, and whatever we write reflects on our intellectual soundness. Those who are making a judgment about whether to offer a blogger a new career opportunity ought to have the sense to recognize satire and hyperbole and to understand that blog writing is done quickly, instinctively, and without an editor. But surely they are entitled to look at it as evidence of the quality of the blogger's mind.

Ann Althouse is a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her blog can be found at http://althouse.blogspot.com

From The Wired Carmpus, Feb. 25, 2008: Facebook is Still Passe

ELWiggins — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:27:00 GMT

Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch reported Friday that the four-year honeymoon period with Facebook just might be over. He bases that assertion on statistics from comScore, a marketing research firm, along with a couple of quasi-descriptive line graphs. The comScore statistics say that the number of unique visitors has hit a plateau over the last few months in the U.S., and has even dipped a bit in January by 800,000 users. He goes on to say that Facebook continues to thrive in the rest of the world, where the number of unique visitors increased three percent. Judging from some of the responses to the post, Martin Weller wasn't too far off from the truth in some respects.--Hurley Goodall

From The Wired Campus, Feb. 19, 2008

ELWiggins — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:07:00 GMT

Teaching Journalism Through a Role-Playing Game

Online games have been developed to train firefighters, soldiers, and others preparing for fast-paced jobs. So why not a game to train journalists?

Nora Paul, director of the Institute of New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota, described to an audience of game scholars and developers on Monday how she and a colleague, Kathleen Hansen, helped to create such a game with a $10,000 grant from the university and advice from some experienced gamers.

Ms. Paul and Ms. Hansen, a journalism professor at the university, modified the computer game, NeverWinter Nights, to develop a three-dimensional role-playing game to teach students about the intricacies of being a journalist: coming up with a story angle, identifying sources, preparing questions, synthesizing information, and writing an article.

The presentation was part of a game developers conference in San Francisco.

The game has students assuming the role of a reporter who is responding to a chemical spill that forces the evacuation of a neighborhood. In an effort to show students that journalists need to treat people with respect, for example, the game depicts a cocky journalist getting the cold shoulder from sources.

Ms. Paul and Ms. Hansen are fine-turning the game after testing it out on some honors students. The students who played the game responded positively to it, Ms. Paul said. But she noted one kink that needs to be resolved: a reporter suddenly dies after arguing with his editor.—-Andrea L. Foster

Editor's letter contains important lessons for professor

ELWiggins — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:50:00 GMT

By Ernest Wiggins

J-Ed Committee Chair

An editor's recent recommendation of a student I've been mentoring offered me some valuable lessons I'd like to share with you.

I'd been mentoring Chris, as I'll call him, since he arrived on campus in the fall of 2006. We'd corresponded that summer, and I sent him a half-dozen older editions of journalism books from my shelf to begin a professional library. We formally met at convocation that August, and he was buzzing with enthusiasm.

Chris had been a varsity track athlete in high school and had written for his hometown paper. Needless to say, he hit the campus running (pun intended). By the end of the school year, he'd aced 30-hours of course work, written for the student paper and student magazine, freelanced for the local daily and alternative weekly and helped coach a local prep cross-country team. In every way he was a model student.

The following summer he worked on the city desk at a mid-size daily near his hometown and, according to his editors, handled his assignments with brio, and was invited to return the next summer, which he did.

While updating me of his 2008 internship application to major dailies, Chris said several recruiters told him the letter from his internship editor was "stellar." I asked him to share the letter with me, which he did.

The letter is so smart and finely crafted that it has given me much to think about as I help my young charges prepare for internships and their first jobs.

The internship supervisor opened the letter by evaluating Chris's performance relative to the other interns whose work the editor had supervised.

Lesson for students: Your work may not only be compared to your contemporaries but to those who came before.

The editor assessed Chris's demeanor ~ mature and patient ~ and his performance as reporter and writer ~ precise and efficient, careful and focused, lively, authoritative and engaging.

Lesson for students: Don't whine, get it right, stay on task and look for ways to tell that routine story in a fresh way.

The editor wrote that Chris quickly worked his way out of G.A. brites and news briefs to centerpieces and take outs.

Lesson for students: "Paying dues" is not just about being worthy; it's also about being ready.

To support this point, the editor referred to three stories in which Chris demonstrated resourcefulness or enterprise and commented on unique challenges each assignment presented.

Lesson for student: Sticking with a story despite obstacles is a highly prized quality that needs to be cultivated.

The editor closed the letter saying that were Chris to decide not to return to school but join the paper's staff, that Chris would quickly become a newsroom leader.

Lesson for me: Bright, talented students are a joy and a challenge to teach but I must work doubly hard to keep them engaged and reaching for higher levels of excellence.