ACP News & Notes

Sex — or at least talking about it — is “in” on America’s college and university campuses (not that it was ever out, of course). The editorial decision to publish a column that may upset many of your readers will remain a tough one for some. But hopefully, this will help put most minds at ease with respect to the law. By Mike Hiestand of the Student Press Law Center.

Read the article here.

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The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) recently launched its Campus Roundtable, an online collection of essays by journalism students, educators and administrators exploring how LGBT issues are intergraded into journalism coursework and student newsrooms across the country.

In its research, NLGJA reached out to small liberal arts colleges, sprawling state schools, private institutions, two-year programs, universities with religious affiliations and all-girls schools. The result is a bank of columns detailing personal stories and teaching methods from students and educators hailing from over 20 states and representing nearly 30 colleges and universities.

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Albert J. “Flip” DeLuca, former ACP board member and program director for many of ACP’s conventions and workshops, died May 28 at his home in Harrisonburg, Va. He was 57. He taught news writing and editing at James Madison University from 1979 to 2005 and was the primary news adviser to The Breeze from 1980 to 2005, during which time the publication was a frequent Pacemaker winner. He will be missed.

Link to obituary in Harrisonburg Daily News Review

Tribute to Flip by Brad Jenkins, general manager of the Breeze at James Madison University

Link to Facebook group: In Memory of Albert “Flip” DeLuca

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The National Scholastic Press Association and Associated Collegiate Press are pleased to announce the hiring of Kathryn Huting as its contest and critique coordinator. Huting brings detailed knowledge of student media to this position as well as experience working in college media. Her organization, dedication and work ethic will be a strong addition to the NSPA/ACP team.

For NSPA and ACP, she will oversee all contests, including Best of Show and Pacemakers, and will coordinate the evaluation service. She will also have a large role to play in coordinating events and programs for the Minnesota High School Press Association.

Huting will begin training in NSPA’s Minneapolis office immediately. She is a 2008 graduate of Iowa State University with a double major in journalism and mass communications. She worked for two years on the Iowa State Daily newspaper, where she was the public relations manager as well as worked on special sections and the editorial board.

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The National Scholastic Press Association and Associated Collegiate Press are pleased to announce the hiring of Emily Griesser as Member Services Director. Griesser brings a range of experiences in event planning and and membership coordination at a nonprofit organization. Her energy, enthusiasm and attitude will be a great addition to the NSPA/ACP team.

For NSPA and ACP, Griesser will coordinate convention trade shows and hotel logistics as well as implement a plan to recruit and retain members for the organization.

Griesser will begin work in our Minneapolis office June 9. She is currently working at the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum in Milwaukee, Wis., and holds a B.S. in communications studies from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.

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Entry forms are now available for the 2008 ACP Newspaper Pacemaker, Magazine Pacemaker and Individual Awards competitions. ACP members should receive their forms in the mail within a week. Or you can download the forms right here:

• Newspaper Pacemaker Entry Form
• Magazine Pacemaker Entry Form
• Individual Awards Entry Form

There have been several changes to the contests this year, which are detailed below as well as on the entry forms:

• Newspaper Pacemaker: The number of issues of your paper to submit for the contest has increased to five from four, and two of them are issues of your choice, up from one last year (other papers submitted must be published within a specific timeframe; see entry form for details). This should help papers be able to submit their strongest work while still demonstrating consistent quality throughout the year.
• Magazine Pacemaker: Continuing the change made last year, we are taking entries in the spring for this award, for magazines published during the 2007-2008 school year. In previous years the entries were solicited in winter for the previous school year. We have also added two-year and four-year college categories to this year’s awards, to give magazines from smaller schools the opportunity to compete against their peers.
• Individual Awards (Story / Photo / Design / Reporter of the Year / Cartooning / Advertising): First of all, these contests now share a single entry form, with the form on the front and contest rules on the back (page 2 of the PDF), rather than six separate forms. Not only does this save paper, it will also make for fewer forms for contest entrants to keep straight. Remember to submit a separate form for each entry, and send all the entries together in one envelope if possible.

  Secondly, for the Photo Excellence contest, we are accepting only digital images, submitted online using this form. With digital photography in widespread use and most other photography contests moving to all-digital as well, we hope everyone will find this process more efficient than making prints and mailing them. Click the link above for further details.

  We have also added two new categories to the Photo Excellence contest: Photos taken on the scene of an unplanned, breaking news event may be entered in the new Spot News category. (All other types of news photos should be entered in the General News category.) There is also an Environmental Portrait category, which is for posed images of one or more individuals, taken in their natural surroundings to provide insight into their work, interests or personality. Finally, in a reversal of previous years’ rules, individual images in a picture story may also be entered separately in other categories.

The deadline to enter all of the contests is June 9 (entries must be recieved by that date). There is no entry fee for any of the contests, but publications must have a current ACP membership to enter. Enter soon!

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While media law attorneys perform a valuable, and unfortunately, all-too-necessary, function, there is a right way and wrong way to use them. By Mike Hiestand, legal consultant to the Student Press Law Center.

Read the full article here.

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View the finalists list with screen captures and links

College newspapers everywhere are harnessing the power of the internet and new multimedia technologies to produce an eye-catching, accessible way to synthesize the news. ACP received 155 entries for the 2008 Online Pacemaker contest, ranging from Daily newspapers to Feature magazines. The 2008 Online Pacemaker judge was Will Sullivan, an award-winning Interactive Director of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A graduate of Medill School of Journalism and the Poynter Institute, Will has worked with more than a dozen news organizations from Sydney, Australia to Toledo, Ohio in roles from photographer to Editor in Chief. His blog, Journerdism, is also a staple of the media blogging community. His complete comments on the finalists and winners are below. - Marisa Dobson

Wow.

Just wow.

I’m so encouraged to see all the excellent work being done at college papers across the country. I’m even more encouraged that it’s not just at the traditional ‘big name’ journalism schools.

Congratulations to all of the finalists and Pacemakers. This was probably the most difficult contest for me to judge in two years. The quality, design, depth, breadth and timeliness of content being produced at these college publications rivals and sometimes beats that of most ‘professional’ media outlets.

I was highly encouraged to see many papers producing podcasts, multimedia, blogs, forums and breaking news on their websites. Please continue this growth!

Along with that, I’d encourage exploring the following:

• Better blogging. Blogs are used at many outlets, but not to the level I would have expected, and many times not with a tone that embraces the opportunity blogs offer to present engaging personalities, discussion with the community and linking to other content. Inverted pyramid has no place in a blog. Blogs must be updated regularly.
• Social media is an undeniable strength in college media because you and your audience has all grown up with and use MySpace, Facebook, Digg, etc… Explore that in your media pursuits! Just like there was a recent rush for everyone to do video, I believe the next major ‘buzz’ job will be social media experts at news organizations and not enough college papers seem to be experimenting in this beyond offering the College Publisher template for social bookmarking articles.
• Data and mapping is another avenue I didn’t see explored nearly as much as it should be. Any journalist that specializes in this in college learns many valuable skills and if you do some awesome work, you’re guaranteeing yourself a job. I was encouraged to see some publications, such as the Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech and the California State University, Sacramento are on the bandwagon. Keep up the great work!
• Mobile tools seem to be very few and far between in college publications, and just like social media, this generation – your audience – lives through mobile content. Embrace and innovate!
• Convergence seems to be catching on. I was encouraged by several papers that are building and using convergence relationships with other student media outlets, such as the University of Illinois’ Daily Illini and George Mason’s Connect Mason. I highly, highly encourage this, if done right it’ll be mutually beneficial to all publications.
• Break more news online. Yes, it’s a different workflow, but mandatory in the new media age.
• Improve the web designs. College publisher is a cool, turn-key content management system, but don’t be afraid to try new things or modify their templates. There are hundreds of options out there and I would like to see more publications using more innovative CMS options or at least customizing the designs more so it feels less like a printed newspaper slapped on a screen. Among the Pacemaker finalists, San Francisco State’s Golden Gate [X]Press‘ design is a breath of fresh air and Ithaca College’s The Ithacan is simply gorgeous.

Again, these are just suggestions to keep the excellence flowing; the garden is never finished. Congratulations again to all the winners. I love that so many of these entries prove that circulation doesn’t matter — just as the Lawrence Journal World proves in the professional media — awesome web journalism can be done at any size publication. Daily, weekly or quarterly, whatever.

My final thought goes out to all the leaders and advisers of college publications, as well as the student members:

EXPERIMENT!

College is one of the few times in your career that you can try something totally wacky, fail and it won’t really set you back or ruin your career. Try alternative story forms. Learn new technologies. Break the mold of traditional journalism. Your generation and its ability to innovate will save the craft. I’m encouraged to see the progress you’ve made thus far and can’t wait to see what you do in the future.

Cheers,

Will Sullivan

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Thanks to the nearly 300 students and advisers who attended last weekend’s Best of the Midwest convention and all of the speakers who helped make it a success. Here is a link to the Best of Show and Individual Award winners announced at the convention.

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Our thoughts are with the students and faculty of Northern Illinois University and the staff of the Northern Star student newspaper in the wake of Thursday’s shootings. At this writing, there are seven fatalities, including Dan Parmenter, an advertising representative at the paper.

The Northern Star staff put out an eight-page paper today (while being interviewed, no doubt, by scores of other media outlets throughout Thursday evening) and is hard at work keeping their Web site up to date as the story develops. Here is a link to their staff editorial about the shootings.

We’ve compiled a few front pages covering the event from today’s college newspapers in our ACP View gallery. If anyone else would like to include their coverage in the gallery, you can submit your PDFs here.

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