5 tips for young journalists from J-School grads

By Ryan Levi

Wikimedia Commons image from user Mojourcomm

As part of my extensive summer reading list (highlights so far include Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams), I took a look through our Letters Home series, a collection of letters from J-School graduates to students currently studying at the finest journalism school in the world. Below are five big-picture takeaways from their letters.

Can't go to the 2012 Online News Association Conference? Learn from it anyway.

By Andrew Gibson

Not everyone can go to the 2012 Online News
Association Conference, but that doesn't mean you
can't learn from ONA12.

Thursday marks the start of what might be the world's most talent laden and genuinely awesome gatherings of digital journalists.

The 2012 Online News Association Conference, happening in San Francisco through Saturday, features the likes of Liz Heron, Wall Street Journal social media and engagement director, and Juana Summers, a Politico national reporter -- and 2009 Missouri School of Journalism graduate -- who's been following around GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan.

In other words, Thursday marks the start of three heavenly days.

And of course, you're not going.

Well, neither am I. But there's still something you can do: scan the conference schedule. Maybe that sounds boring, but if you take five minutes, you might read about a session that intrigues you. Maybe something you want to learn about on your own. It's not necessary to fly west to learn data journalism, you know.

(For the record, ONA will livestream some parts of the conference. You should also follow the #ONA12 hashtag.)

Here are three sessions that caught my eye:

Calendar Alert: Covering the Election in Innovative Ways (5 p.m., March 15)

Join ONA Mizzou to learn how Politico and ProPublica
are covering the 2012 race for the White House.

Updated March 8 to include Christopher Ave

Do you find yourself scouring the Web for analysis of the ongoing election season? Are you refreshing Twitter 15 times in a hour to see who won a primary race? If so, we have the presentation for you.

Join ONA Mizzou on Thursday, March 15, for Election Innovation: New Ways to Cover 2012. We'll host a Google+ Hangout with Politico national reporter *Juana Summers (BJ '09), ProPublica applications developer Al Shaw and St. Louis Post-Dispatch political editor Christopher Ave. Summers will talk about how she's leveraged new media to cover life on the campaign trail, and Shaw will take us behind the scenes of how ProPublica tracks campaign finances through tools like this interactive Super PAC donation graphic.

The event will take place at 5 p.m. in the Spencer Room (200B) of the Reynolds Journalism Institute. This is a great opportunity to learn more about ONA Mizzou before our April elections.

Do you have questions you’d like answered at the event? Tweet them to us now (@ONAMizzou), so we’ll have a list before the discussion starts. You can also comment below or write on our Facebook Wall.

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*Subject to change based on campaign events
White house photo courtesy of Flickr user Bernt Rostad

Letters Home: Juana Summers

Juana's Twitter picture

Written Dec. 2, 2011

Dear ONA Mizzou,

If I could entrust you with one piece of advice during your time at what I consider the best journalism school in the country, I would tell you this: fail.

No, not your classes, because  -- let's face it -- your professors won't appreciate that and neither will your parents. But I want you to experiment with what you do, try different forms of storytelling, take a class in something completely foreign, get in front of the camera if you're more comfortable behind it -- all with the knowledge that you might not succeed.  You might trip over your words anchoring cut-ins at KOMU, or turn in a story for convergence reporting that sends Karen Mitchell into a "what were you thinking" tailspin.  But it's all worth it because you'll be learning what works and what doesn't.