MTSU RUF in pictures

To make up for the lack of updates, here's our semester so far...in pictures! More to come soon. :)

Leadership retreat: Nineteen of us (our campus minister, the three interns, and fifteen junior and senior students) enjoyed two days and two nights in Smithville, Tennessee, at a lake house. We got to plan our semester, spent a lot of time in prayer and the Word, and played. :) It was great to get to know the leadership team – they were so friendly and welcoming.

One of the intern duties includes cooking at events (which I’m actually really excited to do!). Courtney was very sweet to help me with these cookies (she was probably making sure that I wasn’t going to eat all of them).

Paul got RUF cups for our ice cream party – the senior guys had fun playing with them.

A couple of our students brought their Eno hammocks. See the blue one? – that’s the one I want to get for my new porch. ;)

We split into teams and played the video camera game. My group had to film a sitcom on the porch – we called it “Sitcommunism” (a made-up sitcom about a family in the 1950s). When our camera died, I filmed the rest on the trusty iPhone 4! It was a lot of fun, but I don’t think any of us will be winning an Academy Award any time soon...

Ice cream party: Rob and I passed out flyers and suckers on campus advertising free ice cream. RUF students told their friends. Rob even told the Walmart ladies when we went to buy ice cream. Hey, people came! :) It was a great time to meet new students, enjoy fellowship, and share information about RUF.

Two of our juniors, Taylor and Courtney, served 35 gallons of ice cream to over 100 students!

We got good use out of our RUF cups – three dishwasher loads later, they’re good as new!

MTSU football: Rob and I ventured into Peck Forest and passed out RUF cups and magnets to tailgaters before the first game. We attended the game with our students – and hey, MTSU almost won!

After wearing maroon and white to football games for four years, it feels strange to be wearing blue…but it won’t take long for me to get used it to it!

Trinity Presbyterian Church: This is where we have our staff meetings, attend church on Sundays and Wednesdays, and even get some occasional study time.

These are my great co-interns, Heather and Rob. They’re so great that when I insisted we take a picture at church so I could include it in my newsletter, they didn’t protest one bit!

Low country boil: We shopped, others cooked, people came. Shrimp + sausage + potatoes + corn + lemonade + cornbread + homemade desserts + cornhole + ladderball + 95 degree heat + fellowship = success!

If you feed them, they will come!

The guys playing cornhole at the shrimp boil.

What else have we done this semester? Large group meetings, small group Bible studies, prayer groups, freshman dinner, freshman and new student Bible study, lots of staff meetings, and RUF lunch! (Sorry, I guess I’ve been a little lazy with my camera.)

What’s left this semester? Film and theology nights, our fall break missions trip to St. Louis, more large groups and small groups and prayer groups, more freshman/new student Bible studies, more RUF lunches, the annual barn dance, service projects, the annual RWF event (I’ll explain that in a later post – it needs a post all to itself), more staff meetings, a Thanksgiving service, the Christmas party, and probably lots of other things! Stay tuned.

Adam

Preface: Almost four months ago, I lost my dear friend and coworker Adam Kazery. This post is way overdue — I’ve been working on it for two months and still can’t make it “perfect.” There’s just far too much to say about Adam! I’d love for you to read The Reflector's news story about him here and the editorial that our editor Kyle wrote here. I’d also love for you to read what April (the 2010-2011 Reflector editor) wrote here. This post is long, but it still doesn’t even begin to do him justice — trust me.

There are certain people I think about every day. Adam Kazery is one of those people. It’s amazing what little things make me think of him — the Spell Number app on my iPhone, a Radiohead song, breaking news stories, photography, big black trucks, any technology updates/gadgets, yellow Post-It notes, pianos, Sundays at 5 p.m., MSU maroon “Bully Bikes,” Naked Juice, and countless other things.

Adam’s dad asked us (those that worked with Adam at The Reflector) for stories about him. I feel like I have enough stories about Adam to write a book. With the help of The Reflector staff, I’d have enough for a series. All the “little things” I mentioned above have a story hidden in them:
-The Spell Number iPhone app: Adam installed this application on my phone for me. He used to send the funniest text messages with these hilarious emoticons and icons. When I couldn’t get the application to work correctly, he took my phone and figured it out (all within a span of about 30 seconds…of course. He was a genius with anything.)
-Radiohead songs: Adam loved Radiohead, and the Radiohead bear (see the image above). He had it on his desk at work, on a vanity plate on his truck, as his Facebook profile image, as his iPhone background, everywhere. He even stamped a bunch of one dollar bills with the bear symbol and gave me seven of them saying, “I want these to end up in all 50 states. See how many places you can spend them.” (For the record, I got them into four states: Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas — now, I’d do anything to have one back.) After his death, our Chief Designer Carl created a Radiohead bear badge that ran next to the dateline on all our front pages for the rest of the semester — a small tribute to Adam. I’ll forever associate the Radiohead bear with Adam.
-Breaking news stories: Whenever something big happened, Adam knew about it. If it was in Starkville, Adam was on it immediately. One of my last story memories with him was following up on a rumor about a rape in town. Adam drove me to the jail, sat with me as we waited to view the jail log, and almost had to help me sweet-talk the officer into letting me view the log (since it was past viewing hours).
-Photography: If anything big happened, Adam was there with a notepad and a camera. We never had to call him and ask him, he just jumped right into the action. He also took amazing candid shots and won journalism awards for his photography. (You can see some of his work here.)
-Big black trucks: Adam drove a big black Nissan truck. He never wanted anyone to walk home after work, so if anyone stayed later than he did at the office, he took them home. I can’t even begin to count how many nights Adam kept me from walking to my apartment!
-Technology updates: I’ll never forget telling Adam, “Hey, Verizon called me. They offered us a free advance trial of two Android phones. Would you be up for playing with them for a week and writing a story?” He was so excited —he looked like a little kid on Christmas morning! He had a great time playing with the phones and learning everything about them (of course, he had already researched them and knew all about them before he picked them up for the trial). His story was great and still remains as one of the top-read Reflector stories of all time. (You can read it by clicking here.) That’s just one of a million stories I could tell about him and technology…seriously. He was an Apple guru and loved anything related to Macs. I’d love to ask him what he thinks about the new iPhone.
-Yellow Post-It notes: Adam was great about writing little encouraging or funny notes to people in the Reflector office. He’d write a brief message on our yellow Post-It notes and stick one on your computer screen when you weren’t looking. They were simple and yet encouraging. I’ve saved mine and will treasure them. His last one to me: “Aubra, Keep being awesome. Adam.”
-Pianos: Adam played piano, even though he didn’t tell a lot of people about it. During he last semester, he was taking a piano class. He played by ear and told me he wanted to take the class to learn how to read music. I told him he was truly lucky and gifted to be able to play by ear. He shrugged and said, “Yeah, but I want to be better, and reading music will make me better.” Typical Adam — always looking for a way to improve!
-Sundays at 5 p.m.: The Reflector editorial board had meetings every Sunday at 5 p.m. Often times, many of us were late. Adam was always prompt and we could always count on him being there. We weren’t always happy about coming back to work after the weekend, but Adam was there with a smile ready to get back to work. He was quiet during meetings, but never ceased to keep us entertained. He loved sending funny texts to us to make one of us laugh and also loved taking candid photos of us and posting them to his Twitter account.
-MSU maroon “Bully Bikes:” Adam loved his vintage bike, but he always found something goofy to do with MSU’s Bully Bikes — like the night that he found one on campus and rode around on it in the Reflector office to make everyone laugh.
-Naked Juice: Occasionally, Adam would show up to work after class with a treat from the State Fountain Bakery and a bottle of Naked Juice. I loved Naked Juice and hated it when the bakery stopped selling them on campus. Adam made my day once by telling me, “Hey, you do you I’m buying these from that new store inside the Union, right? Let me go get you one.”

Though I still miss him, this week was the first week that I didn’t shed tears, bite my lip or freeze when I heard his name. Two weeks ago at Target, I smiled through my tears as I heard a young mom gently say, “Adam, please stop playing in the clothes rack and come here,” to her skinny, grinning, adorable 6-year-old son. One week ago, I swallowed and let a tear fall on the phone when the Census Bureau dispatcher said, “Thank you for returning our call, Ms. Whitten. My name is Adam and I’ll be asking you some questions today.” This week during my new intern training for RUF, a fellow intern turned to me and said, “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Adam.” Without any hesitation or tears, I immediately smiled and extended my hand. “Adam, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Aubra.”

I don’t know exactly why it finally “clicked” this week, but I’m thankful. I’m not a tearful person, and I know Adam wouldn’t want tears or sorrow from anyone. He’d be glad that I smiled with genuine joy at meeting another Adam this week. (Don’t worry, Adam. No one’s ever going to replace you — I promise!)

He’s far from being forgotten by any of us. I do still occasionally start to text him when I hear a rumor about a new Apple product. He was the second number I dialed in late April when a fire broke out at my complex. (Had he been around, he and his camera would have been there in five minutes!) In March and April, I sometimes had problems at 4:50 a.m. while doing the website; my first thought was immediately to call or e-mail Adam. I don’t dwell on those dark, sleepless, draining February days anymore — I smile when I remember him and still laugh when I read our text messages and Facebook posts to each other.

Throughout this whole ordeal, I came to appreciate Adam more. I knew he was amazingly gifted and talented, but I didn’t know just how gifted and talented he was. At his visitation, I listened as friends shared about his many gifts, ranging from skateboarding to piano to graphic design. When Kyle and I were forced to quickly pick up the Reflector website duties, we learned what a genius and mastermind Adam was with our site — we ran our site through a publishing platform, but Adam had skillfully modified parts of it and created custom HTML code to help the site work and look better. He was humble and quiet — he never told any of us that he created custom codes or reedited our works to make them optimal for online purposes. He did all of that without asking because as he once told Kyle, “I just want it to look good.” Kyle and I initially struggled with the website, especially during the first night without Adam, but we got it working. (I know he’d be so proud of us for figuring out how to activate the site and how to modify the HTML code to keep everything running properly!)

Adam was an incredibly hard worker. I knew this, but I didn’t fully recognize it until I became Managing Editor. As Online Editor, Adam was the last one out on production nights — he stayed later than me most productions nights! He graciously put up with the staff’s procrastination, last minute changes and crazy HTML issues. He never complained about being the last one out of the office, nor did he complain about waking up at 4:50 a.m. twice a week to activate the website. (That’s another example of his humility: until I mentioned the early morning aspect at our end of the year banquet, his own mother didn’t know that he had been getting up at 4:50 — he never complained about it, even to her!) When someone else didn’t do his or her work, we sent Adam to do it — and he always did a great job. Adam saved us on countless occasions. He had a great eye for page design, knew AP Style, re-edited photos, fixed bugs on the pages, created house ads at the last minute and caught countless errors. When Kyle asked me in January who I thought should get the Editor of the Year award at our annual banquet, I immediately said, “Adam. He’s saved us so many times, and he never takes credit for it. It should absolutely go to Adam.”

Adam was funny and knew how to make your day. One of his responsibilities was to lay out and run the bulletin board/ads page. As Managing Editor, I had to proofread and edit all the pages for every paper. One night, I was really behind on editing pages and Adam knew I was in bad mood. He came up and slipped his page to the back of my stack of pages saying, “Just read it when you have a chance. I’ll wait.” I finally got to his page and broke into laughter. He had changed the whole page into Russian! I looked over to see him grinning at his desk. “You needed to laugh,” he explained with a grin. “And don’t worry — I didn’t save it in Russian. I’ve got an English version for you right here.” I could tell stories for hours about how he made us laugh!

Adam constantly thought of others. He knew when one of us was having a bad day, and he did whatever he could to cheer us up. He’d bring you a treat from the bakery, leave a Post-It note on your computer monitor, or simply come by your desk and say, “Do you need anything? Let me go get you something to eat.” (In fact, the day that he went missing, I had brought $6 to work because I owed him for buying of us Abner’s on a particularly crazy production night.)

After the almost 24-hour period from Adam going “missing” to finding out what happened, I remember sitting at my desk waiting for Kyle’s phone call. I’ll never forget the tone of his voice. I’ll never forget my fellow editors staring at me as I clung to my phone. I’ll never forget standing the middle of the newsroom, clutching my desk counter and delivering the worst news I’ve ever given. I'll never forget calling former editors and writers as I re-delivered that terrible message over and over again. I’ll never forget holding another editor tightly, watching tears run down her cheeks as I wondered, “We’ll never be able to replace Adam. How in the world will we ever make it without him?”

In the midst of intense sorrow and pain, God reminded me of His sovereignty and providence, whether in the form of text messages, scripture, hugs, phone calls or food dropped off at the office. Within an hour of telling my newsroom staff, I had friends text me saying, “I love you. I’m praying for you and the staff” and “I love you. I know it’s production night. Hang in there. Can I bring y’all dinner?” Though there were many scripture passages that spoke to me, especially during the first few weeks, I found one passage that I hadn’t really noticed before (and yes, I know the verses are out of order — I kind of took rearranging liberties):
“When I thought, ‘My foot slips,’ your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul … If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would have lived in the land of silence … But the Lord has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.” (Psalm 94:18-19, 17, 22)

I won’t say that I know why God allowed everything to happen this semester. I’m not God — I’m human and will never understand His plans fully this side of heaven. I do rejoice in the fact that the Lord is gracious and compassionate and has brought healing and restoration — and He promises that He will continue to do so, never forsaking those that He loves.

I’m thankful that I have so many great memories of Adam. I’m thankful for how despite a hard situation, I bonded with my dear coworkers and Reflector family. I’m thankful for a great advisor who forgot about herself, going above and beyond the call of duty to check on us and watch over us. I’m incredibly thankful for Adam’s amazing family, who has been such an encouragement and inspiration to all of us. I hope that someday they will know how the Lord has used them to bring each of us much hope and healing. Above all, I’m thankful that I have a God who knows exactly what He’s doing and uses all things, even hard situations, to glorify Him. I can’t wait until the day when I can finally see and understand His plans and reasons for this last semester. Until that day, I’m going to wait patiently.

(Oh, I think I’m going to find a Radiohead bear sticker to put on my car. I know Adam would definitely approve.)

Last full day in Austin

No alliteration tonight, folks. Sorry! Tonight’s blog post will be shorter. (I know y’all are all very thankful for that.)

April and I slept in a little bit today and it was pretty splendid. When we went to grab breakfast, April saw a girl wearing DG letters (April’s sorority), so she went to introduce herself. We ended up sitting with her for about 30 minutes and had some great discussions about what our papers were doing. She attends a smaller private school in Iowa, so it was interesting to compare that to our large public land-grant institution.

For once, April and I also attended all of the same sessions today. We hadn’t done this throughout the week (except for the big design seminar with several hundred people in it) because we wanted to cover a large variety of topics. We started out with a legal session, which was led by the University of Alabama’s adviser and Student Press Law Center’s (SPLC) executive director Frank LoMonte. The Reflector has recently been in contact with SPLC and they’ve been very helpful, so it was great to meet the executive director today.

We also attended a session about writing for the Internet. We’ve heard from many people over the week that you shouldn’t just paste your stories from your paper directly onto the Internet. The leader did mention this in his session, but it wasn’t as helpful as we had hoped.

Our last session of the day was “100+ Story Ideas,” led by Lori Brooks from the University of Oklahoma. It was really helpful, entertaining and fast-paced. She was quick to give direction but also asked for student input. This was definitely one of my favorite sessions and I can’t wait to try some of story ideas.

We did some sightseeing today with a couple of new friends! (Wow, that sounds cheesy.) We visited the state capitol, the University of Texas campus (where I spotted the Jumbotron that’s bigger than MSU’s) and the Congress Avenue Bridge. We headed to the bridge around 6:15 and stayed there for over an hour to watch the world’s largest population of urban bats (1.5 million) leave for the night. It was pretty amazing. Sadly it was dark, so the photos didn’t turn out great, but that’s OK.


We met this guy on the bridge while waiting for the bats. He was walking on stilts!

Since it’s Halloween, we ventured into Austin’s Sixth Street (entertainment district) and watched the madness — Halloween costumes everywhere! It was kind of amazing, scary, weird and entertaining all at once. We can still hear people yelling outside, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing lots of them coming in around four or five a.m.!

Time to call it a night. It’s been a great conference, but I think we’re ready to head back “home” tomorrow. (Pray we get home on time - I haven't been able to check in online tonight, which makes me sad...) Oh, be sure to view April's blog here.

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!

Amazing adventures in Austin

Wow, I lose major journalism points for the cheesy title, but whatever.

The Reflector assistant news editor and I are at the National College Media Convention in Austin, Texas. Basically, it's a big conference for collegiate journalists and advisers. We've had a great time, met people from all over the United States (so far, no one else from Mississippi), attended some great sessions, seen cool buildings and also enjoyed some nice cuisine. Let's just say Austin is definitely not Starkville — tonight we walked four blocks and bam, Spaghetti Warehouse! We're also staying on the 11th floor of a 20+ story Hilton Hotel. I think the tallest building in Starkville is maybe 10 floors — anyone know how tall Suttle Hall is?

April and I missed a production night today (oh don't worry, I was the dork in the Atlanta airport reading stories, marking them up in Word then e-mailing them back to section editors). It was weird not being in the newsroom, but the staff managed without us, the paper was sent and from what I've heard, the Henry Meyer Student Media Center is still standing.

A couple of random observations:
1. I've never seen so many Macs or iPhones in one place at one time (yeah, even at the Apple Store). It makes me really happy.
2. I love that everyone here greets you, smiles, asks your position at your paper and where you're from — we've all got journalism in common.
3. The Hilton is silly because it charges $6 an hour for Internet in your room. (There's free Internet in the main lobby, but not on the conference floors or in the conference building next door.)
4. The Hilton might just be worth every penny because it provides complementary printing. (And I really needed it today, considering I forgot to print my resumes back in Starkville.)
5. As nice as the Hilton is, I've already seen two cockroaches three times in less than 24 hours. One of them is in our room. I tried to kill him, but alas, he escaped. (Let the record stand that I did injure him and I haven't seen him since 6:45 this morning.) We've named him our honorary third roommate, but I wish he would leave.
6. My hair likes Austin. It rained today and was super windy, yet my hair didn't get frizzy. Amazing.
7. Everyone here has a massive coffee addiction (the line at the hotel coffee shop this morning proved it) and I love it.
8. I LOVE the newspaper nerdiness and journalism jokes that keep popping up.
9. I know I'm probably annoying non-journalism people with my Twitter right now. I apologize. It will only last two more days, I promise.
10. This has nothing to do with the convention, but y'all, my arm is STILL sore from my flu shot last Friday!

Anyway, here are the sessions I attended today with some brief highlights:
1. Get Out of (Libel) Jail Free Card: Doug Pierce, attorney at King and Ballow in Nashville, TN
Pierce talked about different privileges reporters have and how that affects their legal covering. He used an interesting quote from the Louisana Court of Appeals: "Talebearers are just as bad as talemakers." (1952) Basically, it means you can't quote someone libeling/defaming someone else and always expect to get away with it — you're the talebearer and you're still partially responsible. Someone in the session brought up the Web site Smoking Gun (which I wasn't familiar with until today; it's a site that has police reports, mugshots, etc.) and we talked about the legal ramifications of getting information from that site instead of the actual officials. I spoke to him after the session about possibly attending paralegal school and he was helpful, telling me that it's a good thing I have (or will have) a four-year degree prior to a paralegal career.
2. Ethics and Practice of Trauma Journalism (Dart Center): Kelly Furnus, VA Tech newspaper adviser, Donna DeCesare and Rachele Kanigel
This session was INCREDIBLY helpful. If you're a journalist and aren't familiar with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, check it out. It was a short panel discussion and then students attending the session got to ask questions to the panel about how to cover things. It was really encouraging to hear from peers about their struggles to report really hard things, everything from women being abused to a professor randomly pulling out a gun and shooting three students on campus. I say it was encouraging because it was good to hear that our newspaper isn't alone in having to cover hard things. (Like I've said before, death stories are some of my least favorite, but they're also a good way to help give families and friends closure about that person.) It was very helpful and interesting to hear Kelly Furnus speak about how he and his staff handled the VA Tech shooting back in 2007, and he was helpful in answering my question (how to handle requests from other news outlets to cover tragic stories for them; The Reflector was recently asked by a major news outlet to find out more info on a missing MSU student so that the outlet could run our story. We didn't have any more information, yet they kept asking us about it.)
3. Opening a Shut Case: Chuck Baldwin, University of South Dakota, and Mark Witherspoon, Iowa State
Here, we talked a lot about our state rules for open records, issues we've had with campus police, how to gather information, what to tell your crime beat reporter, etc. It was really interesting to hear what other students have gone through; again, it's nice to know a lot of us have the same issues while reporting! Again, I got to ask them questions and got solid answers, so that was great. Two quotes from Mark Witherspoon:
Addressing the issue of some reporters not being assertive/not pushing hard enough for information: "If they [public officials] don't give it [public records] to you, you need to get pissed."
When asked how to respond to your school administration when they say you're not allowed to have information that you're legally allowed to have: "Bring in the law and ask your officials, 'Are you going to break the law?'"
4. Chicken Salad II: Michael K (sorry, I don't have his last name in front of me)
First of all, this was a rocking design seminar. This guy was hilarious. I took some photos of his redesigns, so I'll post those shortly. Here are some quotes:
"Don't use clip art — when you search for it, that's wasting 10 minutes of your life away that you can never get back."
"Put the turds [lists, etc.] in a graphic — people love to look at graphics."
"If you've hit puberty, you're too old for clip art."
"Editors who can't write a decent headline should be waterboarded at Guantanamo."
"All people are created equal. All people in photographs are not."
"Graphic designers: you've got to train your word people [editors] like you train a puppy. When your puppy take a dump on your carpet, you take his little head within 30 seconds and push into that pile of poop. If you don't do it within 30 seconds, the puppy's going to wonder, 'Why is he pushing my head into someone else's feces?' He won't remember. When they [editors] tell you, 'It's [your graphic] stupid,' take their heads and shove it into the pile of feces that is that crappy assignment."
"I call this a John Doe going to take a dump lead: some guy I don't know doing something everyone does every day."
"The headline should be 'boom!' the deck should be simple."
"Your college journalism career is like your juvenile record: eventually, it gets wiped clean."

Also, check out April's blog right here — she's been updating, too!

Alright, it's way past time for bed. (They just dimmed the lights in the lobby.) Photos will be coming tomorrow via Facebook. Stay tuned to Twitter for lots of updates!