Tips for a Kick-ass Newsroom:

No. 1: Title name said.

This is the eleventh commandment. Thou shalt always style it “title name said,” unless the title is too ridiculous. Then, God commandth thou shalt style it “name, title, said.” Obey or someone will smite you.

No. 2: Too many exclamation points is a sign of a diseased mind.

You only get five in your whole journalism career. Use sparingly.

No. 3: Never start with a quote.

You can only start with a quote twice in your career. Once when you’re starting out. Once when the Pope says “Fuck!”  (You can also use an exclamation point here).

No. 4: Be a homeless person.

The homeless are not afraid to approach a random person for money. You should not be afraid to approach a random person for an interview. By random we mean someone who is not a friend and is not in the journalism division.

No. 5: If you can’t get someone to talk on the record, find someone else who will.

Unless we are talking Watergate, no one likes anonymous sources. You not only look lazy, but the story is less credible.

No. 6: Make sure you are about the news, not the news tools.

Bells and whistles mean nothing unless you have the reporting to back it up.

No. 7: Always consider your average physics major.

The average physics major reads our paper to get SMU news. He prefers investigative, hard news to random event coverage such as the SAE cookout.

No. 8: “Everything goes except investigative journalism.”

If you have a limited staff, cut the fluff before you cut hard news. Your readers will thank you.

No. 9: Our philosophy is: The Daily Campus is more important than school. 

If Turner dies, don’t go to class. If Dallas Hall is burning, be there. With a notebook and flip camera. You can get notes for class. You can’t get notes on breaking news.

No. 10: Kick-ass, take names, double-check the spelling.

Self-explanatory. If you don’t get it, get the fuck outta my newsroom.

Plus, this is really funny:

I am a high school band legend.

That’s what I’ve gleamed from a conversation with Matthew, my cousin while we sit in my grandmother’s kitchen and watch the Thanksgiving lunch preparations.

“My band director told us about a girl whose pants fell down while she was marching,” he told me.

I’m not exactly sure how we came to discuss this, but I do remember sitting up straight in my chair and asking excitedly, “Did he say where she was from?” “No,” Matthew replied. He was somewhat perplexed. “That’s me,” I said. “That totally happened to me.”

Added for some visual interest. This is not my school; our uniforms were much more hideous. Via @rkleine on Flickr.

I was a freshman at Carthage High School, and I played the clarinet in our school’s band. We weren’t the kind of marching band that you might see on TV: the somewhat hip band, playing current songs and dancing around while we happened to be in formation. For us, it was all military, all the time. Precision ruled the day.

The pants incident happened at our first home football game. This being Carthage, where most everything closed at 9 p.m. and football was a revered sport, the stadium was packed with a couple thousand people. The band had been playing throughout the first half, but now we were on the field, preparing to do the familiar routine we’d been doing at practice and away games.

I noticed that the Velcro on my hideous band uniform wasn’t clinging to itself as it should. I tried smashing it back together, but that Velcro had pretty much given up. I was perhaps the 20^th person to have been assigned those pants because they hadn’t had new uniforms since the 70s. I decided it’d be ok. These pants had been doing just fine so far. So I got in formation with my clarinet and waited for the drum major’s shrill whistle, which would signal that we should begin.

I don’t recall the song we were playing or most of the steps of our routine. We started out at the back of the middle field and marched toward the home side of the stadium. We then took a turn and marched to the right, toward the field goal post. Once there, each row would do a 180-degree countermarch.

My pants started to slip just before I did the countermarch. By the time I did and had gone a few more steps, I was waddling around like a penguin.

Eventually I toppled over, because no matter how hard you try, you can’t march with your pants around your ankles.

My fellow marchers were either too shocked to say something or too unaware. Those few who could say something urged me to run off the field, but I knew that wasn’t an option. One, my embarrassment would increase triple fold, and two, all I could picture was my band director’s disapproving face as he cried out “Why did you leave the field?!”

So I did the only thing I could think of: I yanked off my pants (I did have on pants underneath my uniform, by the way), threw them over my shoulder, grabbed my clarinet, and raced toward the rest of the band at the other end of the field, hoping like hell that I’d have a clue as to where we were in our routine.

When I reached them, I found my empty hole and did two quick maneuvers back into my place. I can’t recall what the turns I did were called, but I remember it was the only time in my pitiful marching career that I did them perfectly. Luckily, we were at the end of our routine.

I got to relive the entire thing the following Monday, when we watched the video of our performance as usual. I’m sad to note that I didn’t get a copy of it. I kind of wanted to send it to America’s Funniest Home Video.

Instead, I’m the reason why my high school band made sure to require suspenders for everyone during the follow year, and I’m the reason why they made sure when they ordered new band uniforms that they came with the suspenders attached the year after that.

Allan Sloan offers career advice to journalists at the 2011 SABEW conference during his afternoon session. Photo from the Reynolds Center's Flickr (@bizjournalism).

Greetings once again, fellow #sabew11 conference attendees. Today the conference kicked off in high gear, meaning that we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Along with some great, knowledge-packed general sessions, #sabew11 featured two major keynote addresses from SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro and Assistant to the President Elizabeth Warren. Non-business journalists shouldn’t fret; there’s stuff in here that they can use as well.

Did I miss something? Leave a comment and let me know.

Day Two Sessions

Early Bird Session: How Social Media Can Make You a Better Journalist

They didn’t call it the “Early Bird Session” for nothing.

One of my journalism professors here at SMU, Jake Batsell, got up to give a 7 a.m. session with ThomsonReuters personal finance editor Lauren Young and MSNBC.com executive business editor Marty Wolk about social media.

Find SMU journalism students Samantha Cangelosi and Natalie Posgate’s live-blog here.

You can download Batsell’s presentation here.

Find a curation of tweets from the session here.

—

Opening Keynote: Mary Schapiro, SEC Chairman

Specific outlets: Bloomberg, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. Some random articles I found here and here.

Here’s a curation of tweets.

—

Keynote — Richard Fisher, president of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Here’s a copy of Fisher’s address.

Here’s a curation of tweets.

Here’s a video from The Daily Mustang. More video.

Here’s the Daily Mustang story.

More coverage here and here.

—

Up in the Air: The Future of U.S. Airlines; CEOs Gary Kelly and Gerard Arpey

Here’s a live-blog from The Daily Mustang.

Here’s a curation of tweets.

Here’s the Reynolds Center’s coverage.

Here’s The Daily Mustang coverage.

Here’s reaction to the session.

More coverage here and here.

—

Luncheon Keynote — Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesepeake Energy

Here’s a curation of tweets.

Here’s The Daily Mustang coverage.

More coverage here.

—

Reynolds Center: “How to Launch You.com – Build Your Personal Website.”

A compilation of tweets.

Here’s the Reynolds Center’s coverage.

@jeremycaplan‘s guide to building your website: bit.ly/launchyoursite

Meghan Riney (left) of Advocate Magazine and Keri Mitchell of Advocate Publishing listen to Professor Steve Doig of Arizona State. They attended the Reynolds Center's workshop on Mining the Census for Local Business Stories before the SABEW Conference at SMU in Dallas. Photo via The Reynolds Center's Flickr (@bizjournalism).

The 2011 Society of American Business Editors & Writers’ (SABEW) annual conference is being hosted at SMU this year.

As a student in Jake Batsell’s Technology Reporting class, we’re required to cover aspects of the conference. While our coverage is being hosted on The Daily Mustang, I thought I’d curate coverage from around the web as this stuff doesn’t just apply to business journalists. Much of the conference can be useful to journalists throughout the field.

The official SABEW conference hashtag is  #sabew11, although early tweets also used #sabew and #bizj. Tweeters have sort of officially adopted #sabew11 after the early confusion, which is useful to keep in mind.

Day One Sessions

Mining the Census for Local Business Stories

Data, data, data and not a clue how to deal with it. I think that’s a problem that many of us have.

Here’s the Reynolds Center’s post on the “Mining the Census” session (and yes, that’s a photo of me taking notes)

I’ve got my own story on the first part of this session, although I had to leave early to attend class. That story was done through Storify, so you’ll find all live-tweeting from that session included.

And if you missed the session and wished you’d hadn’t, check out THIS TOTALLY AWESOME LINK. The Reynolds Center has audio and PowerPoint presentations for the whole thing.

Quick Links:

An Overview of Every Statistic The U.S. Government Gathers

American Factfinder (find any and all Census data at this site, which will soon replace the original site)

IPUMS.org (another great data site, according to Steve Doig)

—

Google for Journalists: Can You Search Better?

Are you googling to your full potential? Probably not, unless you work at Google. But have no fear! Google’s Sean Carlson led a panel which aimed to teach tricks for better searching.

Katie Simon, a SMU journalism student and Daily Campus copy editor, live-blogged the “Google for Journalists” session.

Fellow journalism student LaKeisha James wrote about the Google session here.

Here’s a round-up of live-tweeting from the session, curated through Storify (which itself is an awesome tool).

Quick Links:

Google Government Search (when you want to search a government site, but don’t know which one)

Google Scholar (search academic texts)

Google Translate (translate texts or entire websites)

Google Trends (what’s being searched for right now?)

Google Insights for Search (how many people have searched for this over time?)

Google Maps (need a map to go with your story?)

Unrelated, But Still Useful Link on How to Become a Search Ninja

—

Keynote: Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management, Google

It’s the Future of Journalism speech time, folks. Mohan says the future of newspaper publishing will be display advertising.

Take another look at Katie Simon’s live-blog, as she combined both Google sessions into one chat.

SMU j-schooler Tia Gannon has a story on Mohan’s keynote address.

Here’s a report from SmartBlog on Leadership.

Here’s a curation of tweets from the keynote.

—

Opening Reception at the Meadows Museum, SMU Campus

Here’s a curation of tweets, which is currently all that’s been found on the reception.

NCAA qualifiers continued…

The reactions around the web have been colorful about the two football players denied admission to SMU.

• “This is an injustice.” [University Diaries]
• Hall exploring options for his future — BHS grad could play football and baseball after being denied admission to SMU [Brenham Banner-Press]
• The PonyFans Recruitment Board also has some interesting threads.

Congratulations are in order for Meadows Dean José Bowen

Dallas Historical Society announces recipients of 2010 Awards for Excellence in Community Service [Dallas Morning News]:

Jose Antonio Bowen (arts leadership): The dean of the Meadows School of the Arts since 2006, Bowen has brought bold, dynamic leadership to the school and to the arts in Dallas.

Photo Source

SMU can be pretty newsworthy. Here’s where you can catch up on the important SMU news of the day.

The Gulf Project

SMU is teaming up with “a coalition of scientists, policy experts, oil and gas engineers and state officials” in an attempt to make offshore drilling safer—thus preventing future oil spills.

Gov. Rick Perry created the task force, which the Houston Chronicle has him describing as “a Texas version of that legendary race to the moon.”

(Ed. note: No, I don’t really get the metaphor either. What are you trying to say, Rick Perry? How does a race to get a man on the moon compare to creating safer offshore drilling environments? The race to get the most oil?)

• SMU researchers to help in Gulf Project [Dallas Business Journal]
• SMU Part of Governor’s Offshore Drilling Think Tank [KERA]
• Tech to study Gulf oil spill [Lubbock Avalanche-Journal]

Video Game Sales

A study conducted by the Guildhall at SMU and EEDAR found that reviews of a game, such as one published by a newspaper, influence the sales of that game. The study found “a strong causal link between professional critic reviews and their ability to affect consumers’ actions and perceptions.”

• The Guildhall at SMU and EEDAR Study Influence of Professional Review Critics [IGN]
• Research Shows Game Reviews Influence Sales [Gaming Union]
• Study suggests review scores affect player opinion of games [Network World]
• Study: Review Scores Do Matter [IGN]

Sports

SMU denies a second NCAA qualifier [Dallas Morning News]

The first painting to get loaned to SMU from the Prado.

I used to round up links for my EIC blog (before I apparently forgot how to post to it). I figure this could be a good thing to do on this blog, since I’m still getting Google Alerts about SMU. I can’t wait for graduation and the day I can turn them off. So without further ado, here’s what you should know in recent SMU news:

Donald Andrew Bess is on trial for the murder of an SMU student in 1984:

• Dallas County death penalty trial delayed after defendant accused of killing SMU student has massive heart attack [Dallas Morning News]
• Defendant’s heart attack delays SMU murder trial [Associated Press]
• Rapist was also SMU student’s killer in ’84 slaying, two testify [Dallas Morning News]
• Dallas County prosecution rests in trial over killing of SMU student in ’84 [Dallas Morning News]

SMU Research is trying to help women practice assertiveness skills with virtual reality so that they can prevent rape (Editor’s note: But what we really need to be doing is teaching people to not rape other people. I mean, that’s the problem with our rape culture. But I digress.): Practicing assertiveness skills on virtual-reality “dates” may help women prevent sexual victimization [SMU Research]

The Meadows Museum announced a three-year partnership with the Prado Museum, which further cements the Meadows Museum’s association with Spanish Art:

• Meadows ties the knot with the Prado [Daily Campus]
• Prado and Meadows Museum announce three-year partnership [SMU Public Affairs]
• Prado and Meadows Museum Announce Three-Year Partnership [Dallas Art News]
• Prado has U.S. alliance [New York Times]

Summer Senate doled out approximately $5,400 to various organizations at their first Summer Senate meeting.

Sports News:

Conference realignment could mean a big shakeup for SMU Athletics. Right now, all we’ve got is speculation.

• How does conference movement affect SMU?_updated with Orsini statement [Dallas Morning News]
• C-USA hires consultant to assist as conference realignment unfolds [Dallas Morning News]

The NCAA sanctioned USC for a host of violations, bringing up memories of the Death Penalty and the death of SMU Football. Naturally. Sometimes I think SMU is the Jennifer Anniston to the NCAA’s sanctions’ Brad Pitt. No matter what the story, we’re going to be brought up:

• NCAA Slaps U. of Southern California With Stiff Penalties in Closely Watched Case [Chronicle of Higher Education]
• USC Football: Sanctions Worst Since SMU Death Penalty? [Bleacher Report]
• USC Trojans: They’re Different From 1980s SMU How, Exactly? [Houston Press]

Former SMU Director of Athletics Jim Copeland dies at the age of 65 from cancer: [SMU Public Affairs]

That's an epic fail.

Just because you never run corrections doesn’t mean you’re never wrong.

I was talking to Craig Flournoy, one of my journalism professors, one day last April when he said something to that effect. The Daily Campus had just run a correction recently, and he was telling me that we, the paper, were doing the right thing by publishing corrections.

And you know what? He’s absolutely right.

By their very nature, humans make a lot of mistakes. We’ve got the sheepish apology and “I’m only human” line down. You’d think journalistic institutions would realize this and admit their erroneous ways. Some do. Others don’t.

In an old post (but worth the read), Scott Rosenberg of MediaBugs.org highlights one of the reasons why corrections are important, focusing on two New York Times corrections of Voxox (originally reported as “Vovox”) and the College of William & Mary (originally printed as “William and Mary College”):

the importance of correcting them lies not in some earth-shattering import to the facts themselves but rather in the bond of trust that is established when a publication is seen to care enough to correct them — and, inversely, the loss of trust that occurs when the publication doesn’t bother.

Remember that, for Joe at Voxox or Sue at William & Mary, the misspelled name isn’t just a tiny fact in a sea of information; it represents that person’s point of maximum contact with the publication. Each time these people think of that newspaper or magazine they’re going to remember, These are the folks who couldn’t even get my name right. Multiply that by all the careless errors that get made in the course of normal journalism and you can get some insight into why public trust in the media has been on a downhill curve for so many years.

Issuing a correction is painful and gives me a queasy stomach. I absolutely hate doing it. Because as a journalist, I’m supposed to get the facts straight. The paper is supposed to get the facts straight. We’re the first draft of history!

Running a correction is something of a Catch-22: Either we admit that we were wrong or we don’t. Admitting mistakes shows our readers that we make mistakes and aren’t fully accurate. Not admitting mistakes shows that a) we’re too stupid to know we made a mistake, b) we don’t care about making mistakes, or c) we don’t want to make ourselves look bad. The only way out of these situations is to admit wrongdoing. To do so otherwise is a disservice to journalism.

The 2009 State of the Media report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that fewer and fewer Americans trust the media because we’re less accurate. We can’t just pretend the mistake never happened. Why not? Because our readers know if we get something wrong. There’s always going to be at least one guy who reads a story and notices that something’s wrong. And that one guy will inevitably tell someone else about the error. It spreads like a virus. They know we got something wrong, so why should they trust us?

Then there’s the other side of errors: spreading misinformation. Just ask Mark Twain, who is probably one of the most quoted people who ever lived. Or Marie Antoinette, who never did actually say, “Let them eat cake.” If we don’t correct our wrongs, some people might not realize we were wrong. This, I believe, is the single most important reason why we should correct mistakes. Not everyone is a fact-checker. It’s why birthers believe that Obama is not an American citizen (that, and a healthy dose of conspiracy theory). News outlets are supposed to be credible (because we’re all about facts), which means a lot of people take our information and assume its true. Even sometimes when it’s not.

If we don’t correct the information when we know it’s wrong, we’re lying to our readers. We’re intentionally saying the facts don’t matter. And in journalism, that’s akin to blasphemy.

This is somewhat depressing because unless I either a) become a famous author (my journalism career having gone to pot and all) who doesn’t have a set work schedule or b) marry an uber-rich European monarch (or equally-rich software/computer tycoon) and officially start using the word “summer” as a verb, this is the last time before retirement that I’ll ever be able to laze about.

The worst part is that I’m not lazing about at all for most of it. I’ll be taking a few summer classes and probably getting a job to earn a little extra money. That epic roadtrip across America will have to wait until I’m 89 and can finally afford that Winnebago (I’ll nickname it “Ralph”).

But I’m also a little excited, because this means soon I won’t be in school anymore. Sure, there’s going to be a lot more responsibility… and loans that need paying. But I like the idea of a world where I don’t have to constantly take tests and keep up with grades. That gets tiring.

My brief stint as Editor in Chief of The Daily Campus has been wonderful. I set out with a few goals,  and thankfully we accomplished nearly all of them.

This was one of the best semesters we’ve had in quite a while. Our readership is up. Reader discussion on our website, the opinion page and in other places has increased. We redesigned the website (with more changes occurring on the summer). We did more hard-hitting stories about subjects that impact students.

Perhaps the only thing we didn’t do was change our newsroom production flow to a web-first mentality.

While we did break several stories online (more examples here, here, here, here and here), the print product was still first in the hierarchy.

That’s not a change you can make overnight, of course. And I still haven’t figured out how to make a web-first approach work without copy-editing stories to the point of mass redundancy. Hopefully our new EIC, Jessica Huseman, can figure out how to accomplish this goal.

I have great faith in her; she’s already on the ball and gearing up for our summer issues. She’s got next semester’s staff tied up; she’s hired a couple of freshmen apprentices; she’s looked at making changes to the website and the print product’s layout. Also new? A Monday, Wednesday, Friday print schedule. No longer will we have to suffer through a five-day wait betwixt Friday and Tuesday! It’s going to be marvelous.

What’s Next for Me?

I’m going to be a senior staff writer for the DC covering Student Senate (for the most part). I will also be interning at The Dallas Morning News during the fall semester.

Over the summer I will be working an in-depth story for next fall’s DC. It should be extremely interesting. I won’t give away the details, but I will express my appreciation for the IRS. Thank you, government-tax-agency-that-requires-disclosure-from-nonprofits.

You’ll have also noticed that I gave the ole’ blog a fresh new theme. Hope you like it.