Drones are coming to ONA!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Budi Nusyirwan 

By Katy Mersmann

Did you see CNN's experiment with drone video of Selma earlier this month? Have you heard about Mizzou's own use of drones to report for KBIA? Perhaps more importantly, have you heard about the Federal Aviation Administration's grounding of Mizzou's program?

So...what gives here? Why can CNN fly a drone and we can't?

How to #NICAR15 If You Missed #NICAR15

By Madison Feller

Last week, a gaggle of journo/coder hybrids overtook Atlanta, Georgia for the 2015 Computer Assisted Reporting conference. Over three-and-a-half days, students and professionals alike came together to learn about everything from Fusion Tables to APIs. It was a jam-packed weekend, but if you happened to miss it, don't worry. ONA Mizzou is here to tell you how to get everything you can from #NICAR15—even if you didn't actually go.

Blogging the way into existential disrepair

by Emerald O'Brien

A photo of the author after finishing this blog.
Photo courtesy of Mike Licht/Flickr

Are you in a journalism class that requires you to blog for a grade? Are you masochistic enough to be writing a blog just for fun? (Or are you really just blogging because its a class requirement?)

Well, you are in luck because in my 7 years of forced blogging experiences, I have collected a pool of invaluable blogging tips, and I'm here to share them with you.

On taking a break...again

By Katy Mersmann

From Flickr user Jason Howie

We have talked about it before: the need to take a break and a breather from the newsroom to maintain some semblance of sanity. At Mizzou, we've taken to calling it #MyPersonal45, encouraging student journalists to take a 45 minute break, everyday, from work and stress and do something they really care about. (And then tweet and tell us what they do!)

So, it was kind of fitting when I was perusing the national ONA Twitter account and saw a link to a Poynter story about the mental exhaustion social media managers and reporters face when following graphic, disturbing stories. The problem is especially pervasive right now, with images of horrific executions of journalists coming out of Syria. Poynter quotes Bruce Shapiro, executive director of The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, who mentions that the images and stories can be especially challenging because so many of the social media managers following them are young and inexperienced, and not used to viewing extreme suffering.

Live Blog: FOIA How-To Session

By Kara Tabor

Welcome to the live blog of our FOIA How-To Session

Our featured presenter today is Mark Horvit, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and associate professor at the University of Missouri. 

"None of you should graduate from this university without having made one or two open records requests," Horvit says.

Horvit teaches the Investigative Reporting class and says that students should make records requests while still in school so that they can learn by going through the process before they go out into the workplace.

He says working with data and journalism begins with the right attitude. This attitude consists of having a document state of mind, assuming that the information you need is public, assuming it's free and searching for the databases behind the documents.