Just as in any newsroom, this one is filled with decisions and deadlines, stories and sound bites, visuals and variety. There is coffee, candy, kudos and cussing.
But this newsroom won’t produce a paper or a broadcast; all the work done here appears online. And not one of the journalists gathering news has been out of college for long. Some are fresh from graduation.
This newsroom is the hub of the Poynter Summer Fellowship for Young Journalists at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. Twenty-five young people are taking part in Poynter’s six-week boot camp preparing for jobs in other newsrooms. Maybe yours.
The Fellows come from different schools and vastly different backgrounds. There are 10 reporter/writers, five photographers, five designers and five editor/producers. They work in teams of five, covering geographic beats in and around St. Petersburg, Fla. They produce multimedia story packages on strict deadlines enforced by the program’s directors: Sara Quinn of Poynter’s visual journalism faculty and Jacqui Banaszynski, the Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism and an Editing Fellow at Poynter.
The Summer Fellows also must attend daily classes or workshops presented by Poynter’s experienced faculty and by visiting professionals from places such as The New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times, Forbes magazine, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Detroit Free Press, and many others representing print, online and broadcast media.
If it sounds like a full schedule, it is. There are lessons in things like Flash animation and headline writing, story forms and online design. Each Fellow also receives individual coaching, expert editing and advice on writing resumes and searching for jobs.
There is energy here; sometimes it’s fueled by collaboration and coaching, other times by caffeine and sheer determination.
Last Friday, the Fellows finished up their third week of work and their second set of projects. These stories, graphics, videos and packages now are available on the 2008 Poynter Summer Fellows Website. This new Web site also contains information about the Fellows themselves, their beats and the Poynter summer program for college grads. Best of all, it is searchable. For example, you can find a story if you know who wrote it or if you’re looking for different media such as audio, video, slideshows or photography. Check it out. New material will be added each week.
We invite you to experience what’s coming from this littered but lively newsroom and get to know the Poynter Summer Fellows. They could be in your newsrooms soon.
Jan Leach is a Poynter Ethics Fellow who spent two weeks teaching and coaching in the college program. She is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University.
