Ideas for Future Workshops

From the past two NINA workshops, here are ideas participants gave us for future workshop topics:

1. Minority coverage
   
2. Bring in readers and have them give feedback on writing samples. Or have regional papers conduct focus groups and assemble results to bring to workshop, along with a leader / spokesman from each paper’s pool of readers.
   
3. Copy editing and headline writing
   
4. Interviewing – helping people relax and give good quotes. Asking good questions.
   Getting the quote; how to talk to all kinds of sources; networking with community members so they approach us when they have ideas.
   
5. Taking group photos that look relaxed and not so posed
   
6. Choose stories (not just ledes) to pick apart and determine what would have made them more interesting.
   
7. New media (this one's coming June 14!)
   
8. Focus on news presentation rather than syntax. We as journalists are not going to attract new readers with clever leads. It will take some assimilation into new media and convergence for newspapers to return to a focus on success rather than survival.
   
9. How to appeal to readers without dumbing things down
   
10. A reporter who can talk about how to research and write a long-term story – even a book.
    
11. Alternative story forms (coming this fall!)
    
12. Help with pitching ideas. Confidence that my ideas are ones that should be followed through.
    
13. Getting info from town governments’ Web sites.
    
14. Writing obituaries as more than just a regular story.
    
15. Grammar
    
16. Computer resources
    
17. Ethics
    
18. Someone like Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune, who goes out and patrols the city for stories and always comes back with colorful ones.