Just Sports Coverage, or Something More?

Sports coverage is a vital part of every school's journalism program. Like Alan said earlier, it is a great way to give your students a lot of publicity. Students love seeing themselves in photos or mentioned in stories. Sports stories are a great way to involve most everyone at school.

At Winnetonka, the theatre program is enormous. It's popularity in terms of student involvement is on par with many of our sports programs. A lot of what we learned today about sports coverage can apply to the theatre program at my school. Stories about performances or rehearsals can be very similar to the sports story ideas we discussed today.

In honesty, the example stories we saw today, the story ideas that we shared and discussed are the most beneficial component of the Institute for me. I enjoy developing and discussing concepts, so the talk we had this afternoon was best suited to the questions I have about doing journalism.

It's too bad we couldn't practice more video projects. I thought that today's discussion of page design was beneficial, but it didn't apply to me as a broadcast teacher. However, the same concepts apply in designing a broadcast. I would have loved practicing designing graphics and adding motion and flavor to a broadcast with those graphics.

I feel like I can help my students develop their ideas into stories and videos (although I may struggle helping them narrow their focus for more unique ideas). Who, what, when, where and why are easy enough concepts to grasp and to teach. I can spot their existence or their absence in writing, but I don't advise a newspaper, so I'm really left wondering how what we learned today can be transferred to the production of a news broadcast. Like I said, the same concepts apply, as far as balance and color are concerned, for example, but I'm left without an thorough understanding of how to advise or create a broadcast.

Frustration.

It's too bad smoking isn't allowed in newsrooms any longer. 

If these two weeks have taught me anything, it's that there are a ton of components to producing a piece of journalism, to taking everyone's ideas, developing each of them individually and then bringing them all together into one package, whether that be a newspaper, a yearbook, or a broadcast. It's a balancing act. I just need to keep breathing and create something. I just want to be proud of the work we produce.


Zachary McNulty
Winnetonka High School
Kansas City, Mo.