Live Blog: ONA Student Leader Elections for 2013-14 school year

5:00: Applications distributed
5:08: Amy introduces ONA Mizzou and explains how the application and election process works.
5:11 Erin Dismier introduces herself to those in attendance.
5:12 Vice-President Dalton Barker introduces himself. Secretary Laura Davison introduces herself.
5:13 Social Media Coordinator Anna Burkart arrives and introduces herself
5:14 Amy Simons introduces the candidates
5:15 Presidential candidate Andrew Gibson gives a short speech detailing his involvement with ONA Mizzou. Gibson joins the meeting via Google Hangout, because he is studying abroad in Brussels, Belgium. Gibson shares his vision to bring in speakers from the New York Times and to revamp the blog. He believes ONA can be a bigger club within the journalism school and have a bigger presence on campus.
5:18 Erin reads Candidate Ryan Schuessler's (currently in Pamplona, Spain) application and Amy Simons reads a short introduction Ryan wrote
5:19 Candidate Bridget Bowden gives a short speech detailing her plan as president. Her main goals work with expanding outreach to freshmen and younger students. She details her involvement on campus: Phi Sigma Pi and Mizzou Rec instructor.
5:20 Amy Simons conducts the election for the office of president.
5:22 Votes are counted and Andrew Gibson is elected president.
5:23 Cole Kennedy gives a speech about his passion for digital journalism.
5:25 Amy Simons counts votes and Cole Kennedy is elected as vice-president.
5:26 Elise Schmelzer gives a speech about her experience working on an online newsletter, being AISEC web developed and being a freshman.
5:27 Hannah Schmidt gives a speech about working with the 3D printing club and Newsy. She hopes to bring these connections to ONA.
5:29 Elise Schmelzer is elected to the office of secretary.
5:31 Bridgit and Hannah both give a short account of their experience with social media.
5:32 Erin Dismier reads the applications from Megan Rentschler, Nicole Shaddy and Katie Yaeger.
5:37 Bridgit Bowden is elected to the position of the Social Media Coordinator
5:40 Amy and Erin thank the masses and they disperse.


Final Results for incoming officers for the 2013-14 academic year:
President: Andrew Gibson
Vice-President: Cole Kennedy
Secretary: Elise Schmelzer
Social Media Coordinator: Bridgit Bowden

EVENT ALERT: ONA Elections

ONA Mizzou Election Day is finally here!  Whether you're a candidate, want to have a say in who's running your favorite j-school club, everyone should come and see how our elections work!

WHEN: April 25 at 5 p.m.

WHERE: Neff Student Lounge

Live Blog: Guest Speaker Dan Oshinsky from BuzzFeed

Miss the full meeting? Click through to read the live blog.

EVENT ALERT: Creating Sharable Content

Dan Oshinsky, a convergence and RJI fellow alum, is joining us via Skype to talk about creating content that makes people want to share it. Oshinsky is the founder of Stry.us and currently works for BuzzFeed. Come with questions about being a journalism entrepreneur and be prepared to laugh.

WHEN: April 18 at 5 p.m.

WHERE: RJI 100A (Palmer Room)

We want YOU to become an ONA Mizzou leader!

Credit: BostInno

By Erin Dismeier

Have a passion for digital journalism? Looking for a way to be more involved in the journalism school? Trying to add more leadership experience to add to your resume? Here's your chance to fulfill all of these hopes and desires!

ONA Mizzou Executive Board Elections are at 5 p.m. on April 25 in the Journalism Student Lounge in Neff.  

What a snowstorm taught me about interactive journalism

This blog post was originally published on ONA Mizzou Secretary Laura Davison's personal blog.  

By Laura Davison  

This semester I’m working on the Community Outreach Team at the Columbia Missourian. Our goal is to make the news gather process more open and make it easier for readers to participate in the process. A lot of the work we get to do is experimental. Here’s the short list of what we do:

• Try out new tools to better report and tell stories
• Use social media both to communicate and to listen
• Look at site analytics to see what content is resonating with people
• Brainstorm new ways that the Missourian can expand its reach and that we can  bring the community into the newsroom (both literally and figuratively)

The week of Columbia's first big snowstorm was definitely one of my favorite weeks on duty this semester. The day before the storm hit, the team was busy planning ways to cover the snow. Community Outreach director Joy Mayer has been talking about RebelMouse, an embeddable page that aggregates posts from social media. The page is customizable to include posts with certain hashtags, updates from select accounts or by manually entering posts the moderator selects. This page included posts from Missourian staff members and other photos or tips posted by social media accounts using the hashtag CoMoSnow.
Rebel Mouse CoMoSnow.

Student Work: Katie Yaeger on why journalism is a useful major

Sophomore news editing student Katie Yaeger is currently an education reporter at the Columbia Missourian. The Atlanta native originally published the following reflection on her blog.

By Katie Yaeger

Dear general public: Journalism is not a “useless” major that limits one to working in one type of career. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Before spring break, I interviewed journalism professor Charles Davis, who will be leaving MU at the end of the academic year to become dean of the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. (How ’bout them Dawgs?)

Sure, it was nice to talk about our beloved home state and The Varsity (an Atlanta and Athens landmark that serves delicious F.O.s — Frosted Orange shakes — and other American-style food), but that’s not what I liked the most about our conversation. I asked him what he thought students should be learning in journalism schools, and I was surprised by how much his answer stuck with me.

He didn’t mention anything about a newsroom, or a magazine office, or an advertising agency. He didn’t talk about this ambiguous term of “convergence” (for you non-journalists, that’s the combination of photos, video footage and text stories into one package for the audience) that’s discussed as a possible future of journalism. He didn’t talk about how print newspapers are dying, how people in the industry need to experiment with how to make a profit and survive online, blah blah blah blah blah (insert additional industry chatter here).

He said students should learn to multitask.

He said students should gain the often undervalued ability to take unsynthesized information and condense and translate it so that it makes sense to the general public.

He said students should graduate with the ability to think and move and write fast while maintaining professional standards.

These tangible skill sets, he said, can plug into lots of different workplaces.

Not newsrooms. Not magazine offices. Not TV and radio stations. Not public relations firms. Not advertising agencies. Workplaces.

Read the full post on Katie's blog.