Media Junkie Fodder
Some Beaumont Enterprise readers are as loyal and addicted to the newspaper as Texas Longhorns fans are to their newly crowned national football champion.
They scour every square inch of the day's edition. They get angry when their paper arrives late or, sometimes, not at all. They call to complain about errors, spelling, factual or otherwise.
If it weren't for these savvy subscribers, newspapers might be less on their toes about striving to put out the best edition possible every day.
We're newspaper fans, too, and have our own ways of learning from our peers and seeing how we stack up against them, from story ideas to how a particular story played that day on Page 1A. I swipe a lot of story ideas from other newspapers and retrofit them to Southeast Texas.
Today, I'll let you media junkies out there in on some of what we like to look at.
First, I offer this little professional-development gem, The Poynter Institute:
http://www.poynter.org/
This is arguably the premier U.S. training ground for journalists. They offer workshops for all things media, from television to newspapers and beyond. Based in St. Petersburg, Fla., the place is run more like a university than it is your average training center. The staff is highly trained and experienced, and the sessions are well-organized and, for the student who attends one, unforgettable. I went there for a week in late 2004 and not only learned a great deal, I made a bunch of new friends.
Anyway, Poynter also has a killer web site, which offers helpful information on everything from news within the media as well as professional development and story ideas. Most editors at the Enterprise pay a daily visit to Poynter.
Another great place to go to know more about the media is the American Press Institute - http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/ - also a leading professional training ground, located in Reston, Va. I spent an unforgettable week there as well a few years ago.
For those curious about how the Enterprise plays stories and writes headlines vs. their peers nationwide, the Newseum in Washington, D.C., offers some one-stop shopping: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ .
Here, dozens of newspaper from around the nation - and world - are posted daily. Not only is it fun to see how the stories play elsewhere, but it's also a gas to see the clever headlines on those spicy stories that beg for some pun fun.
So there it is, and that's all I've got to say about that!
They scour every square inch of the day's edition. They get angry when their paper arrives late or, sometimes, not at all. They call to complain about errors, spelling, factual or otherwise.
If it weren't for these savvy subscribers, newspapers might be less on their toes about striving to put out the best edition possible every day.
We're newspaper fans, too, and have our own ways of learning from our peers and seeing how we stack up against them, from story ideas to how a particular story played that day on Page 1A. I swipe a lot of story ideas from other newspapers and retrofit them to Southeast Texas.
Today, I'll let you media junkies out there in on some of what we like to look at.
First, I offer this little professional-development gem, The Poynter Institute:
http://www.poynter.org/
This is arguably the premier U.S. training ground for journalists. They offer workshops for all things media, from television to newspapers and beyond. Based in St. Petersburg, Fla., the place is run more like a university than it is your average training center. The staff is highly trained and experienced, and the sessions are well-organized and, for the student who attends one, unforgettable. I went there for a week in late 2004 and not only learned a great deal, I made a bunch of new friends.
Anyway, Poynter also has a killer web site, which offers helpful information on everything from news within the media as well as professional development and story ideas. Most editors at the Enterprise pay a daily visit to Poynter.
Another great place to go to know more about the media is the American Press Institute - http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/ - also a leading professional training ground, located in Reston, Va. I spent an unforgettable week there as well a few years ago.
For those curious about how the Enterprise plays stories and writes headlines vs. their peers nationwide, the Newseum in Washington, D.C., offers some one-stop shopping: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ .
Here, dozens of newspaper from around the nation - and world - are posted daily. Not only is it fun to see how the stories play elsewhere, but it's also a gas to see the clever headlines on those spicy stories that beg for some pun fun.
So there it is, and that's all I've got to say about that!
posted by Brian Pearson at 1:40 PM
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