Reporters = Storytellers

I had an epiphany today while I was getting ready for the party.

For over a year, I've been sitting around trying to figure out what makes or breaks someone as a reporter. The people who come to The Oak Leaf, mostly consider themselves to be writers, and some of them can adjust and become good reporters but most of them don't and I haven't been able to figure out why.

Until today. Here's my theory:

There are two main kinds of writers: Storytellers and Artists.

Artists write to express themselves- their emotions- their thoughts. They use their words to paint pictures, some ugly-some beautiful. They see writing as a beautiful artistic medium. They're all about carefully worded phrases, exquisite images, symbols, the innermost thoughts and emotions- detail stuff that most people don't even think about.

Storytellers, on the other hand, are more about broad strokes. They focus more on cool plots and interesting characters than on little details. Storytellers can and often are artistic, but a big part of why they write is because they love stories. They like to create their tales and share them with others, because it's fun!

Storytellers are the ones that have an easier time becoming reporters, because they focus on stories. You can find real world stories with real people as characters and tell them. Which makes sense to a storyteller's brain.

But it's harder for artists, because they're used to setting up irony, symbolism, and depth that isn't always evident in the real world. Or possible to include in a newspaper article without editorializing. People don't speak in elegant phrasings, and news style writing isn't kind to figurative language. The Artists are used to writing by themselves and for themselves. It's hard for them to turn their solitary art into a practical form of communication.

Whereas, Storytellers are used to performing for an audience and writing simple but fun stories without as much depth.

Of course, I'm making really broad generalizations, and no Writer is 100% Artist or 100% Storyteller.

But if you're going to be a reporter, you're going to have to start looking at the world through Storyteller eyes. There are limitless stories out there in the real world just waiting to be told.

And reporters are the ones that tell them.

Top Ten Signs That The Oak Leaf is in Trouble

One time David Letterman made a list of signs a newspaper is in trouble. Here's the link.

Another guy made a similar list.

www.billucey.com

Here is my list:

10. The September issue usually comes out at the end of October.

9. Not a single person in the class actually wants to be a reporter when they grow up.

8. Each page looks like it was designed by different person (And usually was.)

7. There are no photos or cartoons on the Op/Ed page.

6. There are no freelancers contributing.

5. Passive voice is used and not corrected by anyone.

4. The Op/Ed section is the best written section of the paper.

3. No one on staff wants to write about a club they're not already in.

2. The editor has to work through lunch day in and day out, fighting in a futile struggle meet deadline, and no one else on staff comes in and helps her.

1. No one writes a letter to the editor all year.

That's my newspaper nightmare. What's yours?

Is this the end of The Oak Leaf?

When I started this blog, I was determined to make it a negativity-free zone, but it's becoming impossible to keep that up. Because I honestly think that The Oak Leaf is on its last legs.

Everybody says they're in favor of having a school newspaper, but they're not willing to take any actions to make sure that The Oak Leaf continues to exist.

I was absolutely miserable last year because people didn't seem to care. Maybe they did. But they certainly didn't pay attention to deadlines. And deadlines are called deadlines for a reason. If you miss them, there's a good chance the paper won't come out. And it's guaranteed to kill your grade.

And now I can't help but sit here and think that this year is going to be last year all over again.

A few days I sent out an email announcing that I wanted to hold a meeting to talk about next year's Oak Leaf. So far only one person emailed me back to tell me that she probably couldn't come. 

And that's just not right.

Either people are out of town, not checking their emails, or blowing me and The Oak Leaf off.

If they're out of town, that's okay. But it seems kind of weird that everyone would be out of town at the same time.

If they're not checking their emails, that has to change. Journalism is based on communications. And email is how I do most of my communicating. Also it's how you send your notes to yourself so you can write articles at home.

But what I'm really afraid of is that they're blowing me off. Which means this year's Oak Leaf is going to be another failure.

The second you sign up for journalism, you're signing up for one of the toughest classes on the course syllabus, way harder than AP History or AP Environmental Science. Depending on the stage of the paper, it can be harder than AP English.

You can't just skate through it. Well, you can, but if you do, the paper will suck. To have a good school newspaper, everybody on staff has to try hard to put together a good paper. 

A good newspaper has soul. It's possible to have a personality without sensationalizing. And a good paper has a personality, a personality that's kind of like an amalgamation of all the people who contributed to it. But if you do a halfway job, then the paper will have no personality at all.

I guess I'm not making any sense.

And I know I'm blowing things out of proportion. I always do.

But if people aren't paying attention to their Oak Leaf emails, that's not a good sign. Answering an email and saying whether you can come to the meeting or not isn't a hard thing. Just about everything else that goes into making a newspaper is.

I just don't think this bodes well...

Oak Leaf Sponsor Search Update

I emailed Ms. (or Mrs., I'm not sure which it is) Yoakley-Terrel and asked her if they have any idea who is going to be the journalism teacher next year.

They've been doing interviews but haven't settled on anything yet.

"When we know, we will let you know."

But nobody knows anything yet.

Oak Leaf Meet 'n Greet

July 24- My House

The Thursday after my birthday, I'm hosting the first official Oak Leaf get-together. Sort of a cross between a party and a story meeting

Last year, we toyed around with the idea of having a wrap party every time we finished an issue, but we never got around to organizing one. But this year, I really want to change that.

So next Thursday, I'm going to have a meeting at my house. So we can meet each other, joke around, have dinner, and hopefully get a little bit of brainstorming done.

Be There!!!!

Some of the Stuff I Want To Do:

I really think that before we go in to the school year and have to start really working on The Oak Leaf we should decide what we want The Oak Leaf to be.

Serious or Funny? Brightly-colored or Black&White? Focused on Students or on the whole community?

So I want to have a discussion about that.

I also think it would be fun to have a newspaper/magazine slam, where we debate the merits of various newspapers and magazines.

I think we should work on Oak Leaf Do's and Don'ts lists (i.e. Don'ts would include: "Don't make your editor work in the newsroom alone until like 7:30 at night.")

But none of that's set in stone.

Mostly I just want to have fun at the meeting.

65th Anniversary

The Oak Leaf is turning 65 next year!!!!!

Most people don't realize that it's that old.

But you should. 

J-Workbook: A Work in Progress

Lately, I've been reading these journalism textbooks (yes, I am that much of a dork), and it's really kind of interesting. All history textbooks are pretty much exactly the same- except as you get older the font gets smaller and the books get heavier. But journalism textbooks are not like that.

I'm serious.

On the one hand, you've got The Radical Write. Which as its name suggests is pretty much all about writing. And reporting. It has very few pictures, long chapters, and lots of amazing works by high school journalists that you can read and be inspired by. 

And on the other hand, you've got Inside Reporting, which is written in snippets. It's graphic design heavy. And instead of featuring student work interspersed within the chapters, it has this whole huge clump of articles by very famous journalists. 

And then you've got the internet, floating around. It's got all kinds of sites like Poynter Online with all kinds of advice, forums, and other stuff to help us learn about journalism. 

All very different. All trying to teach the same thing.

The problem is you have to read them.

And journalism is one of those things you can't learn out of a book. You have to do it.

And even though journalism textbooks are actually cool, they're still text books. You're still trying to pick up a craft by reading.

So I've decided to take a whack at writing a journalism textbook. I was going to do it for my journalism honors project last year, but Ms. Webster and I never got around to setting a deadline. I'm going to go ahead and put it together, and I'll hand it out to you guys and the freelancers, probably.

Anyway, my textbook is going to be more of a workbook. It's going to have all kinds of spaces for you to write. To try to dig through notes on imaginary stories that I made up, to answer tough philosophical questions, to take goofy personality quizzes that I revel in writing.

Well, revel's probably not the right word. 

It's one in the morning right now, so I'm not exactly at the top of my writing game.

I'm kind of rambling.

So yeah. Gotta go sleep.

I WENT TO THE NATIONAL PRESS BUILDING!! I WENT TO THE NATIONAL PRESS BUILDING!! WOO-HOO!!!

Yeah. I know those photos aren't too good. I had a really crappy seats and it's really dark on the top floor, but who cares?

Actually, honestly, it wasn't all that exciting. As part of NYLC, we went there twice- once to hear a really boring guy speak and once to have breakfast and talk to a press panel. 

(A panel = when you get a bunch of important people, give them microphones, and then let the audience ask questions for them to discuss.)

I'm not going to go over all that the boring guy said, just the one good part of his speech: 

"In Washington, the longer your title is, the less important you are."

In other words, the President is much more important than the Assistant to the UnderSecretary of Education. or a National Youth Leadership Conference Scholar.

At the press panel, we had 4 people-

a moderator named Nancy Ambrose ("When I was your age, I couldn't stand when people would go on and on, and I hate even more now." was the interesting thing she said.)-

Tom Bowman (a British guy who was nominated for a Pullitzer for some reason I don't remember.)-

Susan Mulligan (or Milligan. She's a political correspondent for the Boston Globe)-

and Ken Strickland (NBC Senate News Director.).

They got asked a really eclectic bunch of questions. Some people asked advice for how to become a journalist. Some people asked about the bloodshed in Zimbabwe, assuming that reporters must know everything about current events all over the world. Fortunately, these guys seemed to know a lot.

Anyway, here are THE VALUABLE LESSONS we gleaned-

Sunni= generally more educated       Shi'ites=generally more superstitious and religous

Iraq has all the resources it needs to become a powerful country- oil, land, US support- even water. But the problem is the people can't unite.

Journalism is a dangerous profession. Bowman met with a anti-US militia leader in a creepy empty warehouse in Baghdad. The scary thing was that the militia leader had initially been pro-US, but became frustrated that the US couldn't rebuild Iraq.

The situation in Zimbabwe is so bad that papers don't run the names of the reporters who report on the situation. Otherwise somebody might order a hit on the journalists.

Nobody in TV can do anything by themselves. All the people who work on a show or a story are spokes on a wheel, and the producer is the hub (the round thing all the spokes are attached to.)

Journalists work nights, holidays, weekends. 50-60 hours a week. (Oak Leaf Editors work 10-20 hours a week on the Oak Leaf alone.)

Ken Strickland says the Senate is the best beat in Washington. You can just walk through the halls of the office buildings and find the senators and their aids. Also you can easily find multiple sides to every story, something that's a lot harder to do in the White House.

Be aware of your backgrounds and views. They will shape whatever, you do or write for better or worse.

"The public sometimes sees politicians as cartoon characters, but as a reporter, you get to know the people."

Always have compassion.

The Internet is potientally a great thing for journalists. The problem is, there's no way to get any money, because you can access the websites for free.

WHEN TRYING TO GET A JOURNALISM JOB, EXPERIENCE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CLASSES YOU'VE TAKEN. Potential employers are interested in internships and what you've had published.

Holding out for a paid job/internship is not the way to break into the business.

So go over to the Oak Ridger office right now and ask if there's anything you can do. If not, try the Observer.

FYI

Just so you know, I have not fallen off the face of the Earth.

I've been stuck in hotel rooms without wireless internet.

For like two weeks.