Another round of amazing Austin adventures!

All right, to start things off, I want all of y’all to visit April’s blog right here. She read me the first paragraph of her post tonight, and I think it’s funny — therefore, y’all should all read it. (Plus we went to different sessions, so our posts will be pretty different.)

And now for a wrap-up on the National College Media Convention sessions I attended today. Again, I apologize for the length.

1. Keep Going When the Going Is Really Tough:
I also only know one of the speakers’ names, so I’m not going to post them. This was basically a session on how to market yourself and what you can do with your journalism degree. I was disappointed with the lack of variety with this session. It turned out that all three people leading it had journalism (or communication-related) degrees or experience, and all three were currently teaching at the same university. They all had outside careers and different interests, but all three were teachers. I really would have liked to see three people in different careers on this panel, not three teachers.

2. Convention General Session: Steve Outing
Outing’s message was titled, “Why Now is the Best Time Ever to Go Into Journalism.” When he announced this, I was immediately intrigued — why? Because (almost) everyone else has been telling us, “Get out of journalism! You won’t have a job when you graduate!” (The other people that haven’t told me that just keep saying, “Well, if you love it and you’re passionate about it, then surely you’ll find a job! And you’ll make money!” In my humble opinion, loving what you do, having passion and even being good at something doesn’t guarantee you a job or money. But hey, what do I know? I’m only a 22-year-old college student.)
He talked about how interesting today’s media is compared to the media of the 70s and 80s. It was basically a brief history lesson. He talked briefly about niche journalists and freelance options. (Question about niche journalists that I posed to my peers via Twitter: In today’s day and age with fierce competition, do you think niche journalism limits you?) April and I had to leave early to make it to our critique appointment, so I didn’t get a good feel for the overage message.

3. Individual Newspaper Critique
April and I sat down with Cheri Shipman from Texas A&M for a 35-minute critique. Shipman was very helpful and very complementary, while also being quick to ask us questions about why do certain things with the paper. She made good suggestions and posed some good questions. I won’t bore y’all with the details here, but heads up Reflector staff — we’re bringing back new ideas!

4. The Art and Science of Editorial Writing: Arnold Garcia, opinion page editor at the Austin American-Statesman
Garcia reminder me of one huge thing: Our opinion pieces at The Reflector are too long. Again, heads up, Reflector staff; I’m planning to crack down on the epic narratives that we sometimes receive from out writers! (He said articles usually shouldn’t be more than 400-500 words.)
He also posed a good point, saying, “Now you’ve [an opinion writer] told me whose fault it [whatever issue you write about] is — tell me how to fix it.”
5. Battling the Tranquility University Syndrome – Covering “Bad News” on Campus: Shawn Murphy, SUNY Plattsburg
Murphy expressed something that I’ve wanted to tell people at my great university (seriously, I do think it’s great — that’s no sarcasm) many, many, many times: The Reflector is not my paper and it is not a PR vehicle for the university. As an adviser, he also talked about how many people think the adviser runs the newspaper and the university puts pressure on him or her to edit/censor content. (Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is true for The Reflector, nor I am accusing my university of using The Reflector as a PR vehicle. To this day, I still have dear friends who call me and ask, “Hey, my club is doing ______. Can you get us in the paper?” or “Hey, I’ll give you a quote for the paper — just tell me what you want me to say!”)
Murphy had some AMAZING stories. The kinds of things his staff has covered are stories most college newspapers only dream about covering. He was also dismissed (unofficially — it’s a long story) from one of his jobs because he “let” something run in the student newspaper. Really interesting stuff.

6. Writing the Bad Habits Out of Your Eager but Inexperienced Staff: Tom Pierce
This was my last session for the day, and it followed a much-needed but too short nap. Pierce addressed two aspects: mistakes while interviewing and mistakes in writing. It was encouraging to hear other students asking questions and voicing problems that I’ve seen in while working for the paper. The session was standing room only — I sat on the floor next to an opinion editor from Loyola University in Chicago and another girl from Duke.

7. Okay, I lied in that last bullet. I really did another session … at 11 p.m.! April and I had our paper critiqued again by the lovely adviser from the University of Alabama. It was really good to have another SEC adviser looking at our paper because she had a good idea for what we cover/should cover, etc. She talked to us for over an hour and looked at three issues of the paper. Thank you!

April and I enjoyed dinner at Rio Grande, which is where a season of “Real World” was filmed. (Obviously it’s been turned into a restaurant since they used it for the show.) Tomorrow, we get out early (around 2:30 or so), so we’re excited about seeing some of Austin’s sites. I want some photographs … cool angles, you know? ;) (shout out to Kyle and Lawrence)

OK, it’s way past bedtime. Expect a video tomorrow on April’s blog — we’re filming one tonight, but we don’t have Internet in our room and we’re definitely not coming back downstairs to the lobby to upload it when we could be sleeping.

Keep following our Twitter updates (@AubraWhitten and @AprilWindham). Search for the hashtag #ncmc09 to see what everyone's saying during the conference. Good night!