| The Keynote | Workshops and Speakers | Mark of Excellence Awards |
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| Photo by James Brosher |
| Tom French, B.A. ‘81, challenged SPJ Region 5 conference attendees to continue to tell the stories, regardless of challenges facing the profession. |
And Saturday afternoon’s spring sunshine did stream down on French, B.A. ’81, through the windows of Alumni Hall as he delivered the keynote address at the 2008 Society of Professional Journalists Region 5 spring conference this weekend.
SPJ Region 5 serves journalists from Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. More than 75 journalism students, faculty and professionals from across the states converged at Ernie Pyle Hall for the day’s worth of informational sessions.
French testifies to the power of storytelling
A 27-year veteran of the St. Petersburg Times, French noted that today is an unsettling time for print journalism. He cited buyouts, reporters fighting for time and space, and the unwillingness of young readers to even pick up a newspaper as clear indicators.
And then there’s the wastebasket indicator. French said a harbinger of troubling times ahead for print journalism is evident is when newsrooms start to cut back on their custodial services. His own newspaper administrators posted a notice that trash cans now will be emptied only once a week.
“We don’t know what we’ll evolve to next,” French admitted. “Even if print journalism does die, the human hunger for stories is eternal. We’ll still be chronicling news long after newspapers are gone, after paper disappears, after the Internet fades into whatever comes next. We’ll always long for the sacred and profane.”
French launched into a reading of segments from three of his own stories as a way to drive home his point about the power of unfolding a story. He told of Carlo, a seventh grader struggling with unrequited love, and of the feisty Sumatran female tiger at the zoo who resisted the mating dance. He read an excerpt from his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographical feature, “Angels and Demons,” that follows the investigation of the murders of three Ohio women who traveled to vacation in Tampa Bay.
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| Photo by James Brosher |
| "We swim in an ocean of stories," French said. "We breathe them. The real challenge is choosing, deciding among all the possibilities what to cover inside the limited time each of us is allotted.” |
“If we no longer care how it turns out, we’re ready to die. That curiosity is the engine of every story we tell, the momentum driving every word we put on the page.”
The stories he read, and often writes, are not about celebrities or important issues. He said he’s learned that stories are all around, that he needn’t wait for some powerful voice to tell him what stories to cover.
“We swim in an ocean of stories,” he said. “We breathe them. The real challenge is choosing, deciding among all the possibilities what to cover inside the limited time each of us is allotted.”
“We need to remember that power of storytelling, especially now when print journalism is under siege,” French concluded. “We have to recognize this every time we leave the newsroom. We need to wake up and pay attention to everything.”
His last message was for the journalists – both pros and students – in the audience.
“Someone has to paint on the walls of the cave. Someone has to tell our stories. Why not you? Why not all of us?”
As French considered his keynote address Saturday to be a testimonial, he left the audience with firm statements of his beliefs. Among the things French said he believes in are the semicolon; a kick ass verb; the name of the dog; the brand of beer; timelines; outlines; that nut graphs are overrated; reading for pleasure; that journalism spends too much time covering celebrities and not enough time covering the marginalized, the invisible, the forgotten. He believes in the power of what happens next.
Ryan McLendon, 23, a senior at the University of Cincinnati, explained what he gleaned from French’s talk. “I think that it’s important that the oral tradition of storytelling keeps happening even though journalism is evolving, that its roots should be able to be discerned,” he said.
Journalists offer real world advice and experience during conference sessions
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| Photo by James Brosher |
| French took time to talk to students after his keynote address and he and his wife talked in a small group session about reporting. |
In discussion sessions, they and their professional counterparts heard from reporters such as husband and wife duo French and Kelley Benham, also a feature writer for the St. Petersburg Times, who presented “Hunting and Gathering: Reporting for Story.”
They shared their writing tips and told the audience to take their readers into the “secret garden” of their subjects’ lives. To illustrate this point, Behnam shared her experience of going behind the scenes at a salon, where she sat in the room while women received bikini waxes.
“If you ask, all you need is one person to say ‘yes,’” French said of journalists going behind the scenes where the public rarely ventures. Reporters also have to get down in the dirt and get dirty to uncover the story, he continued.
“If you’re going to write about the prenatal intensive care unit, you have to hold the baby to get why the family is fighting so hard to save this child’s life,” he explained.
J.R. Ross, B.A.J. ’96, had a slightly different take on sourcing in his presentation, “Reporting Politics in an Election Year.”
Concerning beat reporting in general, Ross offered the following advice to journalists: Compile the following three groups of sources to rely upon – “the whores, the hard-to-gets and the marrieds.”
The whores, Ross explained, are people who are paid to talk to journalists. A journalist needs to call these five sources each and every day. The hard-to-gets are “plugged in” sources behind the scenes. A journalist needs to gather five such sources and call one each day.
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| Photo by James Brosher |
| J.R. Ross uses irreverent code names for three types of sources reporters must interview: whores, hard-to-gets and marrieds. |
Rounding out the day’s events and speakers, Kevin Finch, news director of WISH-TV Indianapolis, and Benjamin Hamm, editorial director for Landmark Community Newspapers, Inc., presented “Getting Your Foot in the Door.”
Advising a room of primarily journalism students, Hamm, School of Journalism Dean Brad Hamm’s brother, fielded a question about where to find journalism jobs in the first place. Hamm suggested that students stay away from general career Web sites, such as Monster.com, and instead focus on journalism-specific employment sites, such as JournalismJobs.com. Job seekers should visit newspaper company Web sites, such as McClatchy, Gannett, and his own Landmark, he said.
Finch said today’s job hunters are going to have to dig deep and evaluate exactly what they are willing to sacrifice for that first journalism job.
“What will you put up with as far as being the low person on the totem pole?” he asked. “You will be working Christmas, you will be working Thanksgiving, you’ll get the vacation time when it’s picked over.”
Finch suggested to those looking for broadcasting employment to consider looking into jobs in producing. He said that for every on-air position he’s had available, he gets more than 200 tapes from across the country. But for every open producer position, he receives about 10.
“Years ago, you picked this out as a career,” Finch offered as encouragement. “You can’t forget what the pay off is going to be. It’s cool.”
The conference also featured the sessions with Matt Roush, B.A. ’81, senior television critic for TV Guide, on “Reporting the Arts and Entertainment;” Bob Zaltsberg, editor of Bloomington’s The Herald-Times, and Carrie Ritchie, editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student, on “The Training Newsroom;” and Amy Reynolds, associate dean of graduate studies, and assistant professor Mike Conway on “Video Storytelling for Print Journalists.”
Professionals such as those at the Herald-Times picked up training credit with their attendance. The nine Herald-Times staff members who attended Saturday’s conference made a dent into the 16 hours they are expected to spend in training each year, Zaltsberg said in an e-mail Monday.
Many students didn’t go away empty-handed, either. SPJ Region 5 presented its Mark of Excellence Awards after the keynote speech, awarding more than 100 certificates, including several to IU student media staffers. First place winners go on to compete at the national level and will be awarded at SPJ’s national convention in September.
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