New media and monks

A few big ideas from today’s NINA Fall Conference. Speakers Steve Buttry and Curt Chandler were outstanding, by the way.

Curt’s five tips for becoming a better online journalist:

1. Make a Facebook page and use it every day for a month.

2. Showcase a piece of reader-submitted content.

3. Record some family history and share it.

4. Interact with your Web site by contacting the newsroom with a news tip, and by buying an ad.

5. Read and share a great story every week

And a quote: “ Make the story people care the most about the story we do the best each day.”

Obstacles and monks

At his lunchtime keynote, Steve talked about overcoming obstacles, both in covering a big story and in successfully innovating as a newspaper. A few of his thoughts that I scribbled down:

“Part of our DNA in this business is, we’re going to get the story, no matter the obstacles. That’s the approach we need to take toward innovation.”

He talked about visiting the Guttenberg museum in Mainz, Germany – how emotional it was for him to see original Gutenberg bibles and the history of print. The museum also has pre-Gutenberg Bibles, each handcrafted by monks. Moveable type presented a huge change.

“But their product was a message that they believed in their souls to be the word of God.”

And Gutenberg had given them a new method to deliver that message to the world.

Today, we have a technology that will change the world just as moveable type did in the 15th century. Our product is not ink on paper. It’s vital information. As long as we understand that, then we’ll figure this out.

Contest winners announced

Winners of NINA's 2008 Newspaper Contest were announced today at NIU-DeKalb, and the list is here. Congrats!

More training opportunities this week

From NINA President Sharon Boehlefeld, of The Observer newspaper:

NINA members invited to share training opportunities

If ...

• You didn’t hear Curt Chandler when he spoke to NINA members last spring (or want a refresher before his Friday NINA talk), or
• You’d like to learn more about Web publishing from one of our own NINA board members – Denise Renckens of The Daily Journal in Kankakee, or
• You’d like your ad people to spend a day with Tom Zalabak of and his “Ad-Ucation” school,

then consider joining us for their presentations at the Midwest Regional meeting of the Catholic Press Association Oct. 22 and 23 in Rockford.

We have more program options on both days, and are happy to let NINA members pick and choose at special rates. You can choose to attend one or more sessions.

The sessions will be at the Diocese of Rockford Administration Center, 555 Colman Center Dr., just off the East State Street exit of I90 in Rockford.

Check our Web site at http://observer.rockforddiocese.org for more details. Click on the yellow box with the red type that’s near the top of our home page.

You can pay when you arrive, but please let us know if you’ll be coming as soon as you can.

NINA contest results

NINA contest results are in. While we are not posting the list online until next Friday after the ceremony, we CAN help your papers decide whom to send to the Fall Conference by telling you which of your staffers won something. If you'd like to know this, please call me this week at 815-753-4239. (This takes a few minutes to comb through a long list, but I think phone calls will be easier than typing e-mails.)
And please, only one caller per newspaper.

It's about community

A column by John Puterbaugh, a version of which which originally ran in our Northern Star Alumni newsletter, is on the Poynter site today. John wrote about his experiences during the NIU tragedy last February, and what they taught him about community journalism. Key point:

The work you do will only be as good as how much you care about the people you're doing it for. And you'd better be doing it for the people in the community you care about enough to live and/or work in.

Must-See TV

I watched Tuesday night's debate on CNN, which runs that silly, EKG-looking graphic across the bottom of the screen that tracks whether their focus group likes or dislikes what they're hearing at the moment. And I thought: What would REALLY make for a great TV debate coverage would be to hook both candidates to a polygraph and show THAT readout moving across the screen.

Speaking of which, if you don't already know about it, www.factcheck.org is a really good place to test the claims you hear in debates and campaign speeches. It's pretty even-handed.

Opportunity for journalism educators

This is from Stan Zoller, journalism adviser at Rolling Meadows High School. Please forward to high school journalism educators in your area:

Greetings Journalism Colleagues and Friends,

Your are invited attend the Outreach Academy at the Fall JEA/NSPA National Convention in St. Louis. The deadline for this opportunity is quickly approaching; please respond to me by October 15. The Outreach Academy is a one-day intensive workshop for journalism advisers, AT NO CHARGE!

The convention takes place November 13-16 at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown St. Louis. Participants are all invited to come and learn from the professionals and others just like you. We are expecting around 5,000 participants from across the United States.

Thirty participants can attend the Outreach Academy on Thursday, November 13, along with the rest of the helpful sessions and workshops at the convention. Details are provided below.
Basically, to qualify, teachers should teach in a low-income urban or rural school which is traditionally underrepresented in JEA membership. Ideas, materials, and a wealth of information are available to you as a participant.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact marywilliams@u-city.k12.mo.us or marywilliams40@earthlink.net. Application forms are available online at www.jea.org. Just click on the registration booklet and go to page 11. Print out the application and send it to the address listed.

It's (never) gonna happen

Baseball axiom from Wrigley Field last night, penned by Mike Nadel of Gatehouse News Service: It is impossible to field a ground ball with both hands clasped firmly around one's neck.

On mornings like this, I look at the sign on my office door, which has hung there since the day after Brant Brown dropped a fly ball in September 1998: "Being a Cubs fan is like being hit over the head with a mallet every day. After a while you become numb -- but it still hurts in the gut." - Eddie Gold, Chicago Sun-Times

Then I fire up that OTHER Steve Goodman song, the one not sung by drunken frat boys in Wrigleyville: "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request."

And I realize I fell for it again. AGAIN. To mix sports metaphors: Like every other time, Lucy pulled the football away.