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While working from 1997 to 2000 as a higher-education reporter for Tribune Media Services in Chicago, I was charged with building and supervising a national network of college-student journalists who would generate content for what was then the nation’s largest and oldest college news service.

I tapped only the best and brightest to join my team. They were undergraduate and graduate students whose writing, photography, graphics and cartoons were distributed to myriad news organizations wanting news about — or of interest to — the college crowd.

TMS didn’t give me much of a budget to work with, so I had to come up with creative ways to keep the student correspondents engaged, inspired — and generally feeling as if they were getting something of value for their work.

That’s when I decided to bare my soul. Share my some of my not-so-pretty moments in journalism. Tell all. Spill secrets. Admit insecurities.

I had fabulous help: My first editor out of college. Ed Williams, a longtime editor at the (Greensboro, N.C.) News & Record, remembers (or is that “shudders at the thought of?”) my first reporting gig well. He is a masterful writer and editor, who, thankfully, came clean about his own professional mistakes. Together, we crafted what quickly became known around TMS as “the weekly tutorials.”

The recipients of our e-mail confessionals were hooked — and helped. I’m tremendously proud that dozens of the more than 200 young correspondents I supervised have assured me over the years that these life lessons — updated for SPJ.org only slightly to reflect the times — spared them much grief.

I hope they will help you, too.

Christine Tatum
National President, Society of Professional Journalists, 2007