Having spent four years working at The Volante as an undergraduate, I have a certain affection for student newspapers in a very vague, general sense. I also tend to be highly critical of them. I know how important that experience can be for an aspiring young journalist, but I also know how crucial it is for them to learn certain lessons early on in the game.
Lesson 1: Do your homework before showing up to the interview. Even if you just received the assignment 45 minutes ago and are on a tight deadline, have a list of questions to bring with you. Do a little preliminary research. Your interviewee will respect you more and likely give you more information if you appear to know what you're talking about.
Lesson 2: Ask permission prior to recording someone. Your source may have reasons for not wanting to be recorded. Plus, recording may be prohibited in certain locations.
Lesson 3: Get the facts right. Yes, it matters if little details are correct in your story. Your credibility as a journalist and that of your newspaper depend upon it. Fact check, fact check, fact check!
Lesson 4: Get your sources' names right. This is certainly related to lesson 3 and is just as important. No one likes to see their name mangled, no matter how difficult it is to spell, so show your sources the courtesy of spelling theirs correctly.
Thus ends our journalism lesson for the day.
Sorry, an article just came out in The Breeze, our student paper, about the banned book reading that I planned and hosted in the library last week. Said aspiring journalist either forgot or never learned the above lessons. The interview was so poorly executed it was comic. The article said the reading was on Thursday when it was on Wednesday (he even attended it, so he should have known that).
But my favorite part is that from the article, I learned that my name is actually "Michelle Van Vurren." I'm so glad to know that. I'll have to correct my business cards and e-mail signature. How intuitive of him to discern the proper spelling and first name when the card I gave him and the e-mails I sent him contained such erroneous information. Silly me.
Said article may be read here: http://breezejmu.org/2009/10/05/printed-controversies/
7 comments:
My apologies for misnaming you, my dear Michelle....
i read the article.......
and left a comment....
is that bad of me?
Mom, don't worry. I'll forgive you. Love, your daughter Michelle ;)
Rochelle - seriously? That's awesome! What did you say?
What a great idea! Banned books - that's awesome!
It was great! And it was sneaky because I used it as an opportunity to read from 1 John 1-3:2, which is totally about salvation and who Christ is. You can't very well ban something from a banned book reading ;) It would be against the very nature of the event.
oh my gosh, I am so sorry I laughed and laughed because this struck me as soo funny. love you jennifer
That's OK if you laughed. It's definitely funny :) Nice Jennifer reference by the way. Excellent work slipping that one in ;)
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