The Owens Outlook to be taken off maintenance mode April 1

Screen grab of the countdown to the launch date of the Owens Outlook online newspaper:  http://www.owensoutlook.com/

   Mark your calendars!

   April 1 is the launch date for the debut of the new and improved Owens Outlook student online newspaper! 

   The website, currently in mainetenace mode, is going live that day, and the student staff is very excited, nervous and terrified, but definitely ready and able to once again report the news for the Owens Community College community.

   Unfortunately, not too many people on campus know Owens even has an online newspaper, or that The Outlook website was shut down for most of this semester. It's a sad fact that ever since the print edition ceased several years ago, the online edition eventually faded away to black.

   Shutting down the website early in the semester wasn't an easy decision for editor-in-chief Josh Widanka to make, but I still think it was the right one. He decided that his staff needed to be trained as scholastic journalists before representing the student newspaper. We also hired a new company, School Newspapers Online (SNO), to host our website.

   Why such extreme measures? Because Owens canned its journalism program about the same time the printed paper was put to rest. By cutting that class, most of the student Outlook staff didn't have any idea of what it takes to be responsible scholastic journalists. 

   To help solve that problem, I designed an 8-week News Academy training regime that ends March 27. During the 2-hour weekly training sessions, they learned the following skills, much of it from guest trainers from the Toledo Blade:

• What news is, and how to cover a beat
• Writing (how to interview subjects, take notes and craft stories)
• Photography (how to use Photo Mechanic, upload photos and write captions)
• Law and ethics
• Copyrighting 
• Social media

   In the beginning of the semester, during our very first meeting, I referred to The Outlook as a fail lab, meaning they will most assuredly make lots of mistakes during their on-the-job training. It's impossible to expect them to learn everything they need to know about journalism in 16 hours, but my philosophy as an adviser is not that they be punished for their mistakes, but that they be rewarded for learning from them. 

   I have confidence their mistakes will lesson as their own confidence grows! After all, a student newspaper is the perfect workplace to hone their writing, communication and critical thinking skills, which better prepares them for whatever profession they choose when they graduate.

   Nope, this is no April Fool's joke. April 1 is the day Owens gets their student newspaper back!

A big giant THANKS to the following Toledo Blade employees who donated their time and expertise during the News Academy training sessions this semester:

Alex Mester, animal welfare reporter; Dave Hackenberg, sports columnist; Don Emmons, sports reporter; copy editors Heather Denniss and Shannon Kolkedy; Perrysburg beat reporter Matt Thompson; photojournalist Katie Rausch; webmaster Nabil Shaheen and education reporter Nolan_Rosenkrans.

Assertiveness is just one of many attributes of a photojournalist

PHO245 student Paul Murray works the room in the Sunshine Home. (Photos by Lori King)

Be assertive, yet respectful.

   While watching the students work during their team community project at Sunshine Home this week, I was struck by a single observation: BE ASSERTIVE PEOPLE!

   Being timid is a natural instinct in the beginning for most scholastic photojournalists. It seemed the students felt uncomfortable disrupting the working environment of the nurses and therapists working with the residents of the Sunshine Home, which serves people with developmental disabilities. There were several times I had to push and prod them to see and capture what was happening right in front of them, like when a resident was wheeling a laundry cart down the hall piled with folded clothes. Or when a therapist was holding hands with an energetic and social bed-ridden man in his 70s.

   “Shoot a close-up of their hands! Get in there!” I energetically instructed.

    There is no doubt photojournalists sometimes walk a fine line between shooting the need to know (news) and sensationalism (paparazzi). That’s a big reason why  photographer's rights, the First Amendment and the definition of news are covered during the first month, before they shoot a single photo.

   If you are there to tell a story, then you need to tell that story in the most truthful and thorough way. Sometimes that means getting close to your subjects. And sometimes that means being noticed.

    Learning to see everything around you and only shooting what is relevant is a learned skill that takes training (school) and experience (on-the-job). This team project satisfied both of those requirements.

   I’ve come up with a list of attributes I think the average photojournalist should possess:

• Be assertive, yet respectful
• Be curious
• Pay attention to detail
• Be ethical to a fault
• Be cautious of being manipulated
• Don’t be shy, yet don’t be disruptive, either
• Develop a keen sense of news and what makes a good photo
• Be well aware that there is always room to learn and grow
• Have an attribute you think I’ve left out? Please comment!

   Obviously, I can’t follow around students during most of their assignments, though sometimes I wish I could. Heck, even I, an experienced photojournalist, would benefit from following around another experienced photojournalist because there is always room to learn and grow.

Welcome back!

    Greetings scholastic journalists! 
    Prepare to be educated about the field of photojournalism and the growing role social media plays in our lives. Here are a few highlights from the course:

• Learn how to shoot feature, portrait and sports assignments;
• Know your law, ethics and photographer's rights;
• Use social media to share yours stories and lessons learned;
• Work as a team to document an event and produce a Soundslides story;
• Build a portfolio.

    New to the course this semester is the requirement to tweet. Blogging and tweeting are essential skills to learn in a very competitive market. 
    I struggled with the decision on whether to add Twitter to the curriculum, considering this is only an intro class. Since my goal as an instructor is to prepare the next generation of citizen communicators, how could I not include it? But tweeting is not an additional lesson; it simply replaces the discussion board, which students were required to use last semester. The discussion board is a good tool to practice writing skills, but their comments were enclosed in a bubble. That changes with Twitter, a micro-blogging tool that is a nice addition to the storytelling toolbox.
    So, let's get to work, shall we?