Tips for an awesome student newspaper experience

Tips for an awesome student newspaper experience 

Before I even got into the meat of my journalism-school experience (read: the Spartan Daily, San Jose State University’s student paper), I spouted off a laundry list of advice for journalism students.

But now that j-school is officially behind me, I have a new perspective on that monstrous beast of an experience I just went through. And I’m also being asked for interviews about that perspective.

With her permission, I’m sharing my advice for student journalists at campus publications with you. (I’m only speaking of roles where I’ve had extensive experience — my apologies to the photography and videography students out there. For that, check out the excellent blogs from Mindy McAdams or Mark Luckie.)

Reporters:

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• Get it right. At SJSU, our mass communications building is named Dwight Bentel Hall, and the namesake just turned 100 years old. He had only three bits of advice for our newsroom: Get it right, get it right and get it right.
• Always save your notes. (EDIT: Thanks to the commenters of this post who pointed out that this is bum advice. See below for the reasons.)
• Don’t rely on technology, but do use it if you can. Carry a pad and paper everywhere and always take written notes. That’s in case your tape recorder, iPhone, laptop, Pulse smartpen or any otherwise helpful gadget fails on you. You’ll find that transcribing takes up way too much time on deadline anyway.
• Our adviser encouraged all reporters to call up sources and read back their own quotes to them. It’s a good practice.
• Keep organized. Have an address book with the names of your sources, their title, their contact info and the name of the story they were interviewed.
• Move fast. Tweet news as it happens. Post a paragraph online with a note that says, “For more, see tomorrow’s edition.” The quicker you learn how to be quick, the faster you will be in adjusting to the real world of journalism.
• Take deadlines seriously. When I was working as a copy editor at a daily paper, we had to write an e-mail to five — count ‘em, FIVE — superiors if we were any more than three minutes past deadline. Feel that kind of pressure now. It’s good training.
• Push for deeper stories. Don’t just run with your first obvious idea. Pitch something your editor doesn’t even know about. Start talking to people. Start digging through documents no one else is digging through. Start reporting.
• Get it right. Get it right. Get it right.