I organized a three-day summit last weekend for about 80 student journalists from Campus Progress’ journalism network, who traveled from across the country for intensive training in reporting, writing and new media.
Campus Progress holds regular journalism conferences that are open to the public, but this was the first-ever event focused entirely on skills-building. Attendance was open only to writers and editors of our sponsored publications.
Students listen attentively to a lecture from instructor John Kupetz.
Five instructors from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism led the training, which included sessions on photography and video skills, feature and news writing, and journalism that changed the world.
The instructors’ message was clear: Student journalists need to conduct original reporting, localize their coverage and utilize the web and new media if they want to make a difference on campus and beyond.
Students’ feedback from the weekend was extremely positive. “Motivating, inspiring — I’m ready to make changes to my publication and get cracking! :)” wrote one attendee.
“This was one of the best conferences I’ve been to,” wrote another. “Engaging all the different aspects of journalism really shows how much Campus Progress cares, and that is really inspiring.”
For the new media component of the weekend, students divided into video and photography breakout groups. Each breakout had two and a half hours to capture, edit and publish footage to a web site, either an existing one or a blog they created at the summit.
Instructor Sarahmaria Gomez demonstrates how to use a videocamera for multimedia production.
Here are some of the videos students produced:
A life of protest by Teresa Chung, Michelle Kahn and Nirant Gupta
Hunger strike in front of the White House
Adventures in the park
Story of a street by Brett Shollenberger and Joe Schafer
Flying rats by Kirsten Powers and Nimisha Thakore
D.C. transportation
by Brett Campbell and Heidi Kerr
Crime in DC by David Mazza
Franklin Park by Maria Renteria and Sayeda Fazel
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.: An American tale by Frances Harris and Jenny Housel
The New York Presbyterian Church by Dominique Fong and Rachel Solnick
The people you meet on DC streets by Michael Jarboe and Caroline Peri
And here are some photos taken during the weekend:
By Moiz Khan
By Stephanie Jackson
By Izzy Durham
By Jim Steinberger
By Jack Etheredge
By Violeta Lerma
By Andrew Battista
By Lauren Hashiguchi
By Isaac Mayo
By Joanna Clay
By Elizabeth Deng
By Emily Gerard
By James Wang
Two students, Helga Salinas and Tue Tran, blogged about the conference as well.
Thanks to everyone who attended. My colleagues and I can’t wait to make 2010′s training summit even better!
(Cross-posted at CampusProgress.org)
