REPORT ON THE 2004 SPJ REGION 11 CONFERENCE
By Larry LeDoux
Hawaii Pro Chapter Secretary
The importance of good writing dominated both the student and the professional workshops at the 2004 SPJ Region 11 Conference at the Radisson Harborview in San Diego March 19-21. From the first student and pro sessions on Saturday—on who gets hired and why—through the final sessions on law and ethics, budding journalists and established ones were told again and again that the jobs—in every medium—are going to the good writers, writers who are fair and accurate and who can bring the story to life.
More than 150 journalists, students and professionals, mostly from California and Arizona but also including representatives from as far away as Hawaii and Utah attended the conference, which began Friday afternoon. As SPJ pros provided one-on-one coaching to journalism students preparing for job interviews, Region 11 chapter presidents and delegates reported to each other and SPJ Executive Director Terry Harper on significant events and accomplishments of their chapters. (Former Region 11 Director Mark Scarp chaired this and the awards banquet, as newly-elected Region 11 Director Jamie Gonzales, who is seven-months pregnant, was unable to travel to the conference.)
Harper made two important announcements, the first concerning a National Leadership Training Program open to all SPJ members. According to Harper the national board is actively seeking emerging chapter leaders and those who are interested in leadership positions in SPJ local chapters or regional or national organizations. The program begins in April. Cost to SPJ members is only $50, with the balance being covered by a grant from the Scripps organization. Details are available at spj.org.
Harper also promoted the national convention which will be held in September in New York and which will feature, among other prominent guests, Walter Cronkite and Bill Moyers. Applications are being accepted now from students interested in producing the conference newspaper. (Grants don’t cover travel, but they do cover all other expenses.) For more information, again, visit spj.org.
Given the kind of high-profile stories the San Diego chapter members have been covering this year—wildfires, Iraq, jail breaks, gubernatorial recall and lengthy grocery strikes—to say nothing of political corruption and corporate malfeasance—it seemed natural that they would host the convention. More important, however, is the impact several of their programs are having on journalism at both local and national levels, especially a high school journalism program that puts working reporters and editors in local classrooms and that then edits and distributes tapes of these sessions nationally. San Diego also holds and annual multicultural journalism workshop that not only give students an inside look at print and broadcast practices, but also has won the chapter some national awards for promoting diversity in journalism.
The San Diego chapter also holds an annual "Payback Panel" that could be a flip side of Hawaii’s gridiron show. There the people who are in the news are invited to critique the performance of the journalists who cover them.
The Los Angeles and Northern California chapters announced that they have started holding monthly mixers: free, pupus, a no-host bar, a 20-minute program of interest to members and potential new members. They have found this an effective way of generating interest in chapter programs and new memberships. The San Diego chapter is using mixers the same way, but holding them quarterly—the most recent one being a holiday on ice party that included a tour of KNSD.
Northern California’s salon series has included several successful programs, especially one on "How to use confidential informants." The chapter is forming a news museum/historical society and recently honored Pentagon Paper’s source Daniel Ellsberg with a career service award—the first he’s ever received—sparking the idea that perhaps journalists should consider creating a "Best Source" award.
NorCal is also taking applications now for a July 9-10 West Coast Multicultural Writer-Editor Conference in Oakland that will bring in assigning editors from a variety of top flight national magazines (Readers’ Digest, Mother Jones, National Geographic and more) to meet one on one with professional writers. Workshop topics include: how to negotiate a great contract, write a winning query, turn a story into a book proposal, and support individual work with grants and fellowships. (Go to spj.org/norcal/.)
The Phoenix chapter’s annual Freedom of Information Banquet honored the 18-year-old news department of the city’s ABC affiliate, which was responsible for bringing news cameras into the courts. "Banquets get SPJ’s faces out there," said Scarp, who also provided details of a new recruitment program called "It’s For You." Flyers placed on bulletin boards in newsrooms around town and across the state picture a hand holding out a telephone with a number to call for information about SPJ. The number rings into a voice mail slot at the Phoenix Sun and provides basic information about SPJ plus a place to leave a message requesting more information. Chapter officers take turns returning calls. The program is only a few months old, and has been averaging six hits a week.
The Northern California chapter also had a recruiting twist to offer: On its brochure it has included a box marked: "I’m not eligible for membership just now, but I’d like to be on your e-mail list. Here’s my $10 donation." This has generated a lot of interest and a number of new members.
Regarding new members, the Tucson Student Chapter topped every one: 56 new members in two recruiting meetings. Workshops included inviting local editors to come in and hold mock interviews with students.
Scarp had two announcements: the 2005 Region 11 conference would be hosted by the Inland California Chapter and held in Palm Springs, and Region 11 Director Jamie Gonzales has indicated she would not be seeking reelection in 2005.
Saturday
Pre-lunch workshops were all about getting jobs. Students got advice on how prepare for and conduct themselves at interviews. Pros learned that there are 40,000 print journalists in the United States and that print is a shrinking medium. They also got some insights into what the people who do the hiring for public radio, the Los Angeles Times and Knight Ridder look for in potential employees.
For the second round workshop, students joined pros to learn the ins and outs of "Covering The Big Story": war in Iraq, wildfires, elections and recalls. In the third round, students and pros mixed it up in workshops on "Blogging for Beginners" and "Building Your Freelance Business."
Mark of Excellence Luncheon
Scarp also chaired the Mark of Excellence Luncheon on Saturday. The University of Phoenix was a big winner, with 79 awards, but guest speaker Judy Muller, ABC national news correspondent based in Los Angeles, talked about how good reporters use everything that happens in their lives and made everyone present feel like a winner.
(See sidebar for a report on Judy Muller’s speech.)
After lunch, students participated in workshop sessions on alternative voices and techniques for researching and interviewing The "Alternative Voices" panel included: Len Navarro, editor of ASIA Magazine; Tiffany DiGiacinto, assistant editor of Latino Future magazine; and David Roland, editor of San Diego CityBeat. Jennifer Croshaw of SignOnSanDiego moderated. For interviewing and research techniques, panelists were: Beth Wood, news researcher for the San Diego Union Tribune; and high school seniors Eric Skahill and Stephen Fink. Leo E. Lawrence, San Diego News Service, was moderator.
The pro panels, covered in more detail below, included Gary Shaw, publisher of San Diego Metropolitan Magazine; Chris Sanders, who joined the San Diego Sheriff’s Office as Public Affairs Officer in 2002, after more than 30 years as a radio and television reporter and anchor; Kate Callen, speech writer at USD; and Anita Palmer, media relations coordinator at Point Loma Nazarene University. A later pro workshop focused on investigative journalism in troubled times, and student and pros explored the "Internet and Beyond" with Chris Jennewein, director of internet operations for the San Diego Union-Tribune; Dan Weintraub, Sacramento Bee columnist; and Leng Loh, TV and Web producer with KPBS-TV.
Sunday morning workshops provided students with an opportunity to have their audition tapes reviewed by veteran news executives while pros attended a variety of workshops: Ethics post Blair, the pros and cons of embedding journalists with military units, covering the war on terror, convergence in the new newsroom (multi-platform and multi-ethnic), music criticism, and some of the latest legal developments affecting journalists. The latter workshop presented such a small taste of all the legal events affecting journalists that panelist Terry Franke, General Counsel of Californians Aware, invited everyone to log onto calaware.org for more information.
Workshops:
Saturday, March 20
Getting Your First Job:
Students met with Carole Goodhue, training and development coordinator for the San Diego Union-Tribune, and journalism faculty from Point Loma Nazarene and the University of San Diego.
Recruiting for the Best Fit:
Pros met with Richard Kipling, editor of the LA Times Orange County edition; Anthea Raymond Beckler, senior news editor KPCC – Pasadena; and Larry Olmstead, VP staff development and diversity for Knight Ridder. Much of the information provided insight into how managers go about making hiring decisions, so it was potentially valuable to everyone present. The good news, there are jobs available in print and lots of jobs available in public radio and on-line. And each panelist stressed the importance of good writing.
Kipling: The Times is not looking for journeymen. It looks for experienced beat reporters with great sources and an authoritative writing voice whose clips show focus and an understanding of focus as well as a willingness to push their stories. More generally they look for writers with crisp, new, different story ideas and different ways of accessing common themes, who can see the story and tell it with appropriate emotion and effective story arcs. Often, even if they are looking to fill a specific beat, they will consider hiring a good writer and letting the newsroom staff adjust.
Olmstead, the HR specialist from Knight Ridder, is also a former City Editor of the Detroit Free Press: Sometimes it only looks like an organization needs a beat reporter when what they actually need is a newsroom energizer. As writers he encourages us to understand the organization to which we are applying: What is its culture? What are its real needs? Next, understand our own strengths, and if they are appropriate to what’s needed, present ourselves as a way to improve or contribute to the whole organization.
Beckler: Anthea Raymond, who has JD and MBA degrees from UCLA and who has worked for both public and commercial radio, addressed the problem created by the heavy editing of audition radio and video tapes and print clips. In print, she said, those doing the hiring may want to use an onsite test of reporting and writing skills. If the candidate doesn’t match the clips, "you may want to hire the editor." At KPCC, anyone who passes the interview and reference checks gets a one-hour audition. The station prepares the materials, gives them time to prepare, and then evaluates how they organize materials, establish focus and thematic arcs, deliver the news, and in general handle the broadcast.
All three panelists agreed that print is a shrinking medium. Recruiters today are looking for people who will be comfortable in tomorrow’s newsrooms:
The last is important already. News organization or all types need minority audiences to stay profitable, so they need reporters who can work with and report on minorities.
As for working across different platforms: Olmstead indicated Knight Ridder and other news organizations were diversifying from print into radio, TV, and online. Look at how many newspapers are establishing radio and video partnerships and using clips and sound tracks to supplement print stories in their online editions.
Covering the Big Story
This joint student/pro session with panelists from local print, radio, TV and online operations reviewed how local media covered the San Diego wildfires and then provided some insight into the patterns and problems of covering:
Cliff Albert, program director, KOGO Newsradio 600: Radio news has to:
Kent Davy, editor, North County Times: Local media should look for local angle and be careful to calculate the costs and benefits of covering the event. Balance costs—overtime, energy, overhead, pictures—with the opportunity: the obligation to report, increased reader interest, added value of additional content generated.
Scott Horsley, reporter, National Public Radio: Once an event becomes a media circus, the challenge is to distinguish your coverage while respecting the loss of life and property. He paraphrased a maxim from the stage: "There are no small stories, only small reporters." It may take courage to be different, but reporters should "tell the story as you see it."
On-line provided the most exciting opportunity for journalists covering the fires. Ron James, content manager of SignOnSanDiego.com, the independent online news organization initially created by the San Diego Union-Tribune, distinguished the kind of coverage online can provide from the linear forms generally taken by TV and radio—which is why the update and recap format is so common—and the analytical approach typical of today’s print media.
In a breaking news story the key is to give information, especially emergency information, at a glance and as it is immediately available. Online is getting even better at doing that as Weblogs (blogs) show. Not only can emergency personnel provide information directly to the online viewer, but the Weblog is interactive and citizens can feed emergency information into it as it happens, feed photos into it, offer messages of condolence, provide information to people not at the scene looking for information about loved ones on the scene.
As the story develops, online can provide multiple access points into it—TV and/or radio clips, print analysis, same-day or previous day coverage. For the fires, SOSD downloaded 120,000 video clips in three days. More than 1.3 million people viewed the story online the first day, 5.4 million the second day.
Kelly Thornton, staff writer at the San Diego Union-Tribune emphasized the fact that access to reliable sources is critical when you’re covering a breaking disaster story. She also explained that you can’t wait till a story like the fires breaks to start developing sources. To be ready, you have to build a network of sources. Find out who will respond to what, and get to know them. Learn their cell phone and pager numbers. Call them when there’s nothing happening—not just when you need them. Create a phone log. Jot down personal details such as the names of their family members. Ask about them. Get to know them. Cover small stories for them. Let them know they can trust you to get the fact straight and report them accurately. If you cultivate sources, they won’t feel you are just using them when disaster strikes.
Thornton and Steve Fiorina, a general assignment reporter for KGTV, both urged treating sources of all kinds like human beings—especially in stressful situations. Fiorina explained how threatening a camera can be; he makes his cameraman get ready but wait by the truck until he has confirmed that a victim or members of a victim’s family are willing to talk to reporters. If they are, he calls the cameraman up; the source doesn’t have to wait while he sets up. If they aren’t ready to talk, he has not imposed, and he gives them a card for if and when they change their mind.
Building Your Freelance Business
The panel consisted of Joanne Jacobs (joannejacobs.com), former San Jose Mercury News editorial writer; Jody Hammond, freelance television producer; Kate Callen, USD speechwriter; and moderator Doug Lathrop, editor of New Mobility Magazine, a 95 percent freelance-written 40,000 circulation national monthly serving the disability community.
According to Lathrop, the top rate for freelance writing is $1 per word. In San Diego, 70 – 75 cents/word is more normal.
Callen had a list of suggestions for freelancers about querying a magazine:
Those last two are also true of submitting manuscripts: Once you’ve written for an editor, if your work has been on time and editorially clean, you will have an easier time pitching other successful story ideas.
For liability reasons, most publishers will provide a contract or letter of agreement. (It’s easier to prove you aren’t staff if there’s a contract.) Other suggestions included negotiating for:
Some other advice:
Segues: Managing Your Next Career
The first afternoon session for pros was on "Segues: Managing Your Next Career." Panelists included Gary Shaw, publisher of San Diego Metropolitan Magazine; Chris Sanders, who joined the San Diego Sheriff’s Office as Public Affairs Officer in 2002, after more than 30 years as a radio and television reporter and anchor; Kate Callen, speech writer at University of San Diego; and Anita Palmer, media relations coordinator at Point Loma Nazarene University. Andy Crossland of Clear Channel Radio, San Diego chapter vice president, moderated.
Shaw opened the panel’s presentation, reminding the audience that a reporter only has to worry about his or her own story, and an editor only has to worry about the day’s stories, or the week’s stories. But a publisher has to worry about the reporter and the editor, and the advertising department, and the printer, and circulation, and accounting, and property management, and on and on. He recounted his own experiences with San Diego Metropolitan Magazine, which opened in 2000 and was just becoming profitable in 2001, and which has been struggling to recover since the events of Sept. 11. That struggle, Shaw said, has involved mortgages and second mortgages and a lot of personal sacrifice, so much that his basic advice to journalist seeking or forced into a career change is "Don’t even think about publishing unless you have a spouse with a sense of humor."
Palmer had good advice, too: "If you need to quit your day (or night) journalism job, have a plan and be willing to be on the other side of the phone." Doing media relations, she said, gives her the flexibility (and the health insurance benefits) to do her freelance work. A media relations person, much like a journalist, is:
"The walls don’t need to be there," Palmer said. "We’re both human beings interested in truth."
Callen describes her speech-writing job as more corporate journalism than public relations. She reports news for an institution.
Sanders spoke at greatest length about the move from journalism to information officer for the sheriff’s department, and his story provides a wealth of information for journalists who have to make a career move. In the late 60s, after two years of college, he did an internship with a radio station and got hooked on news. After five years in radio he went back to college, did a TV internship, was hired, and spent the next 20 years as a TV news producer, editor, reporter, and anchor. So why did he leave TV?
"I didn’t leave TV," he said. "It left me." He had too many years in and too much vacation time accrued, so he was more expensive then a younger person would be. The station managers didn’t renew his contract. He spent two years doing multiple part-time jobs, including teaching, when the sheriff’s job opened up. "I always got along well with cops," he said, and he knew the sheriff’s office had a product every journalist and publication in town, and most of the consumers, wanted. Given all his years of good rapport with all of San Diego’s police agencies, and his own reputation as a journalist who always tried to be fair, the job seemed a natural. But he didn’t approach it lightly: 200 people had applied for it. What he did tells us something about maintaining professionalism even in—perhaps especially in—a career change.
Before his interview Saunders went online to see what the Sheriff’s office was currently involved in. He learned that the evening of the day of his interview, the Sheriff would have to make a speech at the opening of a substation. So he wrote a speech the sheriff could use. As a journalist who had often interviewed the sheriff and who had cultivated him as a source and respected him as a person, Saunders knew him well enough to write what he would be likely to say. The next day, at the interview, he asked the sheriff if he had his speech ready—which, of course, he didn’t; he had bound his draft professionally, and gave it to the sheriff, who took a moment to read it and then said that it sounded just like what he would say. The Sheriff used the speech that night, and Saunders got the job.
The points—if they need to be made: build relationships; do your homework; be professional; "Remember that everything you do as a journalist prepares you to be a good information officer."
Where are We Going: The Internet and Beyond
Panelist Chris Jennewein, director of internet operations for the San Diego Union-Tribune, began the session by explaining that the UT Web site, SignOnSanDiego.com, reaches 1.5 million people in a typical month and has spiked to 2.7 million during breaking national stories such as the San Diego wild fires. While the print and Web operations are still related (every story in the paper includes source codes so that if anything gets cut, the full version can be found online), the Web site is actually an independent operation. It focuses on breaking local news and operates 24/7 with its own reporting staff: eight on news, four on entertainment, and four on community projects. Five staff are trained for video, and equipment includes mini DVD cameras. The operation has a strong economic model focusing on direct advertising sales to new (i.e., non-print) customers, and it has been profitable since 2002. Profits in 2003 were up 34 percent.
So what is coming? On the plus side:
The problems:
Jennewein sees on-line journalism as important, in the future, as print, and as capable of eventually commanding about 10 percent of the entire news industry. It will function 24/7 and be interactive: readers will contribute to the news directly. Newsrooms will converge and become multimedia centers. Money is coming in, so management will invest and sites currently established as part of the promotion or marketing division can move to editorial.
Leng Loh, of San Diego public television, added that convergence is also operating in the whole area of news: the PBS Web site runs links to other news sites, like SOSD, and then links to the search engines. (SOSD also links to PBS.) With major stories, on-line gets it first, then print. Then as more is known and new information is added and inaccuracies subtracted, repackaging is 80 percent of the work.
Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Weintraub added that Web logs—blogs--will stay on all the time, providing direct interactive access to readers.
Judy Muller’s speech
ABC correspondent offers advice to young journalists
By Larry LeDoux, Secretary, SPJ Hawaii Board of Directors
Los Angeles-based ABC news correspondent Judy Muller gave the keynote address at the SPJ Mark of Excellence luncheon in San Diego on March 20. She began by reminding the students attending the SPJ Region 11 conference that they "are a step ahead," referring not only to the opportunities they had to enlarge their knowledge of journalism as a profession and to network with professional journalists and editors, but also to the fact that, by being there, they were getting involved: "A sense of ironic detachment is not going to endear you to people," she added.
One of the things Muller emphasized was good writing, and that included good reporting. "Dig deeper," she said, and recounted one of her early stories for a local community newspaper on a sad situation at a local dog shelter. She interviewed the shelter’s director and found him cooperative but the situation for the animals deplorable. After her story broke, the county fired the director of the facility. However, she found out later, she hadn’t dug deep enough: he was the father of five children; it was the first job he had been able to get in two years; and for months he had been asking the county authorities for funds so that he could deal with the problems at the facility. The expose was politically embarrassing to those in power, Muller said, and they made the director the scapegoat. She should have dug further and put the dog pound story in the total context of county politics.
She learned, she said, and it was good writing that landed her first network job at CBS. She had taught English in Metuchen, N.J. and worked for WHWH-WPST in Princeton as well as part time for several community newspapers. ("Think radio," she said. "That’s where the jobs are.") She got a job on KHOW in Denver. It was her first big market was (When you’re in a small market, she said, the goal is always to get to a larger market, and she remembered two reporters in Idaho Falls who were delighted when they got moved to Boise.) After several years in Denver, she applied for a job at a CBS affiliate in New York. Somehow the network got her application, and they invited her to interview and to take a writing test! Her writing got her the job.
She worked as a news correspondent for CBS for nine years. She got the worst assignments, she said—the worst shifts, the drudge stories. "You have to do it," she said. "You have to pay your dues." She did. By the time ABC-TV called (because they liked her writing), she had learned, she said, to write narratives and to "leave ‘em laughing."
She had also contributed to CBS News Sunday Morning and the CBS Weekend News; and she had anchored First Line Report and Correspondent’s Notebook for CBS News Radio. She had also covered the space shuttle, both 1988 national political conventions, and the 1988 George H. Bush presidential campaign.
"Cleavage and credibility," she said, "are not compatible. If you just want to be on TV, go do something else." If reporting is what you want to do, she advised, then see the stories all around you. Everything is material—"if not for a news story, then for an anecdote in a speech like this one."
She also recommended having empathy with the people you encounter, and told the story of being on an assignment to a prison in Vacaville, Calif. where in passing she learned of a man doing a life sentence for murder who had created a 12-step program for criminals based on the similar successful program used by Alcoholics Anonymous. This convicted murderer, who shared a cell with his son who was also serving a life term for murder, believed that crime is an addiction, and that criminals could be helped to overcome it by taking responsibility for their actions and making peace with their victims. She pitched the idea to her editors, went back, and then broke a major human interest story about finding redemption and peace through accepting responsibility.
The hardest assignment she ever had, Muller said, was covering Columbine. "We couldn’t just say it was a tragedy," Muller said. "That was obvious." She explained that the job of every journalist there was to tell it well, so that readers would know from the facts that it was a tragedy.
Muller recounted a number of experiences, all presumably to be found in her book, Now this . . . Radio, Television and the Real World. One of the most interesting was when she was actually part of the story she was covering. When the Northridge earthquake hit southern California, she was in it. She was digging herself out from under a bookcase that had fallen on her when the phone rang: it was the network calling her in to cover the story. When she got back home three days later, she still had to clean up the mess.
In addition to good writing, Muller also advised being a critical thinker: do question those in authority—especially if they are weekend or night staff and likely to be less experienced. To demonstrate, she told of being flown to Australia by her weekend news director to cover wildfires that, he said, according to the wire services, were "threatening Sydney." It cost the network $12,000 to fly her and a camera man to Sydney, where, yes, there were some brush fires, but nothing anywhere near Sydney itself.
OK, the network said. You’re there. Are the brush fires threatening anything? How about koala bears? Well, no, not at the moment. But they could? Yes. Then get pictures of them.
Ever tried to get pictures of koala bears in the wild, Muller asked. They finally found some at the Sydney zoo. Then, since koala bears are usually doped with the eucalyptus gum that is the staple of their diet, they had to find one awake enough to film. "We got lucky," she said.
So, her summary: be critical. Question authority. Make yourself a good writer. See the stories all around you.