Three 2015 resolutions that I just might keep... with lots of help from students

Myself, center, with the Owens Outlook editors. (Photo by Sean Ferry)

 

    Resolutions are made to be broken, right? Perhaps because they often focus on ourselves, and without much help from others.

    So I won’t waste my 2015 resolutions on myself. Instead, my wishes for success will focus on my Owens Outlook newspaper staff. The success of my resolutions will depend on us all working together as a team. 

   These are my joint resolutions for 2015:

1. Submit the Owens Outlook online student newspaper and its staff for the Pinnacle Awards.

   Pinnacle Awards, handed out during the annual College Media Association Fall convention, honor the best college media organizations and individual students for their work throughout the year.

   I have high hopes for this ‘little engine that could.’ As I scan over their photos and stories from this past semester, how can they not be strong contenders in a national contest on the community college level? I would even pit them against four-year schools!

   The CMA conference next year is in Houston. I can’t wait to sit there during the awards ceremony and hear our school called out.

2.    Start paying the Outlook staff and buy necessary equipment through ad and photo sale revenue.

The Outlook has a new paid student business manager, and I hope she hits the ground running. We

are looking at several ways to generate money:

·       Sell ads on the Outlook website.

·       Sell their photography through sites like Flickr or SmugMug.

·       Create an end-of-semester hard print magazine that features the best content of the semester, as well as fresh, longer-form photo stories. We are banking that local companies sponsor it.

   We were once considering going to a bimonthly print edition, but with a skeleton staff of under 10 each semester, and no journalism program to support it, that’s no longer an option.

3.    Recruit deans, chairs, administration, students and community members to subscribe to the online newspaper.

   The Outlook staff works hard to cover the entire Toledo campus, but we can’t do it without the support of readership support. We need their tips for story ideas, feedback on how we can do things better, and website hits to justify our existence.

   Lofty goals, indeed. So the Outlook staff and the entire Owens community need to work together to help make these resolutions come true!

The Owens Outlook newspaper: Then, now and the future

This is the Prezi presentation I recently did on the state of the Owens Outlook newspaper. Revamping the Owens Outlook is a work in progress, and we have lots and lots of work to do! As the new adviser, it's my job to make sure this work gets done, but at least I'm not alone. We have a small staff who are as committed as I am. When Owens lost the print edition of The Outlook about 4 years ago, the online newspaper went out of sight and out of mind. I think it's safe to say more than half, if not most, of the students/faculty/staff at Owens have no idea we have an online newspaper! What a shame! So, it's my ultimate goal to try and change that. I want the student staff of The Outlook to own it, and be proud of it. But they can't possibly do that without knowing what they are doing. So, let the training begin. Here's my adviser manifesto:

Owens Outlook newspaper student staffers have heart, guts

  Every time I walk into an Outlook student staff meeting on Thursdays, I am filled with pride at the dozen or so eager faces sitting around the table.

   They don’t have to be there. Consider the following obstacles these student staffers face:

·      Only the editor-in-chief and managing editor are paid

·      Most don’t get class credit for the extracurricular task of working for the school online paper

·      Most are inexperienced and untrained writers, photographers, designers, and editors who aren’t connected by a strong journalism curriculum

   As the new student media adviser, I consider the latter issue to be a big problem. It’s a shame Owens doesn’t offer a journalism course anymore. I often daydream about the pool of talent we could draw from if we only had a strong journalism major that offered basic print/broadcast/social media/digital journalism courses, as well as classes on media law/ethics, and newspaper design.

   With that said, we should at least be taking advantage of what we do have: business, English, commercial art (CRT) and photography courses. But at this point there isn’t a system in place that allows the Outlook to collaborate with these diverse courses.

   One of my primary goals is to get as many instructors of these classes on board as soon as possible. The business classes could help with advertising; the CRT students could design both the hard copy and online editions; the English students could write something for a real-world publication. All of these students could pad their portfolios and be more employable in the long run!

 The Owens Outlook newspaper, completely created by student staffers.

   It would be a great help if the instructors were willing to provide training through lesson plans, or at least offer incentives, like extra credit.

   At this point, I’ve been reaching out to Toledo Blade staffers and other area media to be mentors and trainers. Blade writer Matt Thompson shared writing tips during one meeting; and Blade sports reporter Don Emmons and art director Wes Booher has agreed to help.

   I am also training the students on a chosen topic every Thursday. Last week we covered interviewing sources, and this week we’ll go over writing lead sentences and how to put a story together.

   Despite all of these obstacles, our mission of going back to print is not insurmountable.  The editor’s have done a wonderful job recruiting their friends and classmates from the photography and commercial art departments.

   Currently, the small staff is cutting their teeth on the online edition. Yes, mistakes are plenty. Deadlines pass by. Stories are missed. But there is no doubt these students are willing to work together, and learn from their mistakes, which will allow us to move forward with our plans to publish a hard copy of the Owens Outlook beginning in Spring 2014.