NINA's Summer 2010 newsletter is online.
Monday, May 24, 2010
High school journalists honored
Our 2010 scholarship winners have been announced. Congrats to three graduating high school seniors -- two from Bartlett High School and one from Rolling Meadows High School.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Chicago panel to discuss watchdog journalism
Join top Chicago news pros for tough talk about watchdog journalism and the fight for survival in America's most celebrated muckraking town. To hear the strategies, the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association has called together some of the most prominent editors and writers in Chicago for a forum at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 17, at the Union League Club, 65 West Jackson Blvd.
The panelists include:
Space is limited. Please RSVP by June 14 to Dirk Johnson.
The panelists include:
- James O'Shea, co-founder of the Chicago News Cooperative and former top executive at the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
- George Papajohn, Deputy Managing Editor of the Chicago Tribune
- Tom McNamee, Editorial Page Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times
- Kurt Gessler, Interactive Media editor, The Daily Herald
- Laura Washington, Chicago columnist and professor at DePaul University
- Peter Kendall, Associate Managing Editor of the Chicago Tribune
- Polly Smith, Money and Business Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times
The discussion will be moderated by Dirk Johnson, a former bureau chief for The New York Times and Newsweek, who lectures on journalism at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
The forum is supported by APCO Worldwide, a public affairs and strategic communications firm with offices in Chicago; Northern Illinois University; and the Union League Club of Chicago. Light fare will be provided. Cash bar. Admission is free.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Support journalism's future: Pay your interns
My first big break in journalism came in 1981, a week after I graduated high school. Al Post, the editor of the Belvidere Daily Republican, called and asked if I’d like to serve as interim sports editor that summer. I’d covered high-school football for the paper during my senior year and apparently hadn’t libeled anyone.
At the time, I was busing tables part-time at a mall steakhouse for the minimum $3.15 an hour. The newspaper wanted to pay me the princely salary – I’d have a salary! – of $120 a week. Was I interested?
I never set foot in that steakhouse again.
I also quickly discovered that my new salary equated to less than $2 an hour. No matter. That summer, before I’d even started college, journalism became my career.
Would I have worked for free? Probably. At least until my 1973 AMC Hornet conked out. But the meager income helped me pay my frequent car expenses, take my girlfriend to the movies once in a while and generally not have to sponge off my parents before everything had to go toward college expenses.
I kept working for that paper through college, doing vacation relief for editors and reporters during summers, and sports on fall and winter weekends. They paid me, which kept me from having to quit and work more hours at my second job, a retail hellhole called Ardan’s.
Today, I get to work with college journalists who have that same wide-eyed enthusiasm. For years, I’ve been telling them they can make their own breaks and find opportunity. Some do. Others get smacked in the face with financial reality. Plenty of internship opportunities exist … so long as students are willing to work for free.
NIU is a good school – sometimes a great school – but it’s no secret that many students come here because it’s their most affordable college option. They spend their summers working in order to cover a chunk of their college costs. If they’re lucky, their parents can pick up a chunk. The rest goes onto loans that might take more than a decade to repay.
The Northern Star often is recognized as one of the nation’s best college newspapers. Yet, a low percentage of our students work summer internships in other newsrooms. The reason: They can’t afford to. If they don’t make money during the summer, they either won’t return to school in the fall or they’ll have to add to that scary debt load.
I have students who have had to turn down summer internships this year because they not only wouldn’t be paid, they also would have been required to pay for the college credits, whether they needed them or not. Newspapers’ legal reasoning is that the student is purchasing something of value – newsroom experience – which makes up for the lack of pay.
In a very real sense, then, many newspapers are selling journalism experience … not necessarily to students who deserve it, but to those who can afford it. Last time I checked, that’s the kind of thing good newspapers expose … not propagate.
There are better ways. For instance, the Rock Island Argus and Moline Dispatch have paid their interns for years and have no plans to stop.
“We believe that it’s tough to expect good work, response to direction, dependably showing up to work each day, if the person is a volunteer,” said Managing Editor Roger Ruthhart. “We also believe that if you are asking people to work for you, you should pay them. Pretty simple concept.”
At Rock Island / Moline, that’s close to minimum wage. Ruthhart finds it a good summer solution when regular staffers take vacation.
“Our other options would be drops in coverage or paying other staff to work overtime,” he said. “Interns are better than nothing and cheaper than time-and-a-half.”
Publishers and editors: Even in tough times, please set aside something – anything – to pay your interns. Find creative ways to make it happen, in the same way you find creative ways to meet other necessary expenses. Failure to do so is denying opportunity for some talented college journalists. It’s failing to invest in journalism’s future.
As an industry, we can’t afford that.
At the time, I was busing tables part-time at a mall steakhouse for the minimum $3.15 an hour. The newspaper wanted to pay me the princely salary – I’d have a salary! – of $120 a week. Was I interested?
I never set foot in that steakhouse again.
I also quickly discovered that my new salary equated to less than $2 an hour. No matter. That summer, before I’d even started college, journalism became my career.
Would I have worked for free? Probably. At least until my 1973 AMC Hornet conked out. But the meager income helped me pay my frequent car expenses, take my girlfriend to the movies once in a while and generally not have to sponge off my parents before everything had to go toward college expenses.
I kept working for that paper through college, doing vacation relief for editors and reporters during summers, and sports on fall and winter weekends. They paid me, which kept me from having to quit and work more hours at my second job, a retail hellhole called Ardan’s.
Today, I get to work with college journalists who have that same wide-eyed enthusiasm. For years, I’ve been telling them they can make their own breaks and find opportunity. Some do. Others get smacked in the face with financial reality. Plenty of internship opportunities exist … so long as students are willing to work for free.
NIU is a good school – sometimes a great school – but it’s no secret that many students come here because it’s their most affordable college option. They spend their summers working in order to cover a chunk of their college costs. If they’re lucky, their parents can pick up a chunk. The rest goes onto loans that might take more than a decade to repay.
The Northern Star often is recognized as one of the nation’s best college newspapers. Yet, a low percentage of our students work summer internships in other newsrooms. The reason: They can’t afford to. If they don’t make money during the summer, they either won’t return to school in the fall or they’ll have to add to that scary debt load.
I have students who have had to turn down summer internships this year because they not only wouldn’t be paid, they also would have been required to pay for the college credits, whether they needed them or not. Newspapers’ legal reasoning is that the student is purchasing something of value – newsroom experience – which makes up for the lack of pay.
In a very real sense, then, many newspapers are selling journalism experience … not necessarily to students who deserve it, but to those who can afford it. Last time I checked, that’s the kind of thing good newspapers expose … not propagate.
There are better ways. For instance, the Rock Island Argus and Moline Dispatch have paid their interns for years and have no plans to stop.
“We believe that it’s tough to expect good work, response to direction, dependably showing up to work each day, if the person is a volunteer,” said Managing Editor Roger Ruthhart. “We also believe that if you are asking people to work for you, you should pay them. Pretty simple concept.”
At Rock Island / Moline, that’s close to minimum wage. Ruthhart finds it a good summer solution when regular staffers take vacation.
“Our other options would be drops in coverage or paying other staff to work overtime,” he said. “Interns are better than nothing and cheaper than time-and-a-half.”
Publishers and editors: Even in tough times, please set aside something – anything – to pay your interns. Find creative ways to make it happen, in the same way you find creative ways to meet other necessary expenses. Failure to do so is denying opportunity for some talented college journalists. It’s failing to invest in journalism’s future.
As an industry, we can’t afford that.
Monday, May 17, 2010
What Illinois' new FOIA means to journalists
DeKalb – Illinois’ newly revised Freedom of Information Act represents better access for journalists to serve their communities, two experts told the NINA Spring Conference audience April 23.
Cara Smith, public access counselor for the Illinois Attorney General, spoke of her office’s increased authority, and workload, since the new law took effect Jan. 1.
“Our phones never stop ringing,” she said. “It’s usually public bodies calling to ask for advice.”
Smith also conducts training sessions for public employees on how to handle FOIA requests. She’s been met with a hostile reception at nearly every session, she said – largely because the new law holds consequences for noncompliance.
In the past, she said, public officials could deny a request and dare the requester to sue them … which they knew was highly unlikely. Under the new law, a public body wishing to deny a FOIA request must get pre-authorization from the public access counselor.
“We have hundreds of requests,” Smith said. Decisions on pre-approvals are being posted to the attorney general’s website and, Smith hopes, soon will be used as precedents.
Her office also now has the authority to issue binding opinions on requests for denial – particularly, for the commonly tried “unwarranted invasion of privacy” exemption. To appeal such an opinion, the public body is required to file for administrative review in either Cook or Sangamon County.
“The threat of binding authority has been the most effective thing,” said the day’s second speaker, Terry Pastika, executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center.
More provisions of the new FOIA law:
For reporters dealing with tax increment financing (TIF) districts, Pastika suggested getting on the district’s Interested Parties Registry. It’s free and you’ll then be notified of anything going on regarding that TIF district.
Finally, watch for citizen referendums to be kicked off local election ballots by something called the Rule of Three, she said. Only three initiatives are allowed on any one ballot, and an initiative from a public body supersedes a citizen-initiative referendum. So, if bogus public initiatives show up on a ballot, journalists could FOIA for all initiatives proposed in the past months or years, to see what’s been kicked off.
Cara Smith, public access counselor for the Illinois Attorney General, spoke of her office’s increased authority, and workload, since the new law took effect Jan. 1.
“Our phones never stop ringing,” she said. “It’s usually public bodies calling to ask for advice.”
Smith also conducts training sessions for public employees on how to handle FOIA requests. She’s been met with a hostile reception at nearly every session, she said – largely because the new law holds consequences for noncompliance.
In the past, she said, public officials could deny a request and dare the requester to sue them … which they knew was highly unlikely. Under the new law, a public body wishing to deny a FOIA request must get pre-authorization from the public access counselor.
“We have hundreds of requests,” Smith said. Decisions on pre-approvals are being posted to the attorney general’s website and, Smith hopes, soon will be used as precedents.
Her office also now has the authority to issue binding opinions on requests for denial – particularly, for the commonly tried “unwarranted invasion of privacy” exemption. To appeal such an opinion, the public body is required to file for administrative review in either Cook or Sangamon County.
“The threat of binding authority has been the most effective thing,” said the day’s second speaker, Terry Pastika, executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center.
- Mandatory attorney’s fees will be charged to public bodies if a requester is denied, then goes to court and wins.
- Fines of $2,500 per occurrence will be leveled if the public body is determined to have acted willfully and wantonly.
- The response-time requirement for FOIA requests has dropped from seven working days to five.
- Copying fees are set: the first 50 pages are free; 15 cents a page for additional pages. Smith said some public bodies used to charge $1 a page, openly calling the practice “a disincentive.”
- The personnel-file exemption – which used to be a big dodge – no longer exists. Public bodies would throw anything and everything into a personnel file, whether it belonged there or not, and then claim exemption. Now, there’s a balancing test: Would disclosure violate personal privacy?
- The new FOIA applies to old documents, too, regardless of when they were created.
- If documents are maintained electronically, then they can be requested electronically, for the cost of a blank CD.
Pastika mentioned several types of public information reporters could request, including:
- Documentation that supports press release information. Too often, she said, reporters rely on press releases alone and don’t look at the underlying stats.
- Lawsuits filed against public bodies.
- Full budgets – not just the synopses. Ask to see all funds and all line items.
- Attorney bills for public bodies.
- Cell phone bills, credit card bills and travel vouchers for public employees.
- Procurement records, bids received.
- Public officials’ contributions to other public officials’ campaigns.
- A list of FOIA requests to a public body – to see what others might be looking for.
Snappy headlines and prized keywords
Great NY Times column Sunday about writing web headlines that appeal to search engines.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
2010 NINA contest announced
Hello, NINA members.
Newly posted on our website today is all the information you need for this year's NINA contest.
We'll be sending a print mailing later this week, but everything's on the website now for you to get started. Please read everything carefully. We've made some significant changes this year. Most noticeably, the contest is now grouped into two divisions: dailies (4x a week or more) and non-dailies (less than 4x a week). We've added several categories and removed a couple of others, in hopes of reflecting the types of work most of our members are doing and the types of work NINA wants to encourage.
Also new this year is an entry form available online. You'll fill out the fields, save and print the form for each entry. For the entries themselves, we're encouraging PDFs rather than tearsheets -- though we'll accept either. No online entry submission just yet; you'll still send everything by mail, including a CD with PDF files.
Note the June 30 postmark deadline for entries. THIS WILL NOT BE EXTENDED this year, so please plan accordingly.
And our usual web address, http://www.ninaonline.org/, is now working again. So you can use either that or www.northernstar.info/nina.
Please let us know if you have any questions, and good luck!
Newly posted on our website today is all the information you need for this year's NINA contest.
We'll be sending a print mailing later this week, but everything's on the website now for you to get started. Please read everything carefully. We've made some significant changes this year. Most noticeably, the contest is now grouped into two divisions: dailies (4x a week or more) and non-dailies (less than 4x a week). We've added several categories and removed a couple of others, in hopes of reflecting the types of work most of our members are doing and the types of work NINA wants to encourage.
Also new this year is an entry form available online. You'll fill out the fields, save and print the form for each entry. For the entries themselves, we're encouraging PDFs rather than tearsheets -- though we'll accept either. No online entry submission just yet; you'll still send everything by mail, including a CD with PDF files.
Note the June 30 postmark deadline for entries. THIS WILL NOT BE EXTENDED this year, so please plan accordingly.
And our usual web address, http://www.ninaonline.org/, is now working again. So you can use either that or www.northernstar.info/nina.
Please let us know if you have any questions, and good luck!
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