Screen Drill

Online training helps editors polish the skills of young journalists.

By Dinah Eng

First Published: Fall 2007

Youth editors are giving high marks to a new online training resource, “Coaching Tomorrow’s Journalists,” that offers tips from veteran colleagues and an interactive simulation that lets them practice giving feedback to a virtual student staffer.

The course, available free to registered users at www.newsu.org, is funded by the Foundation and created by News University at The Poynter Institute.

“Our paper’s going to be launching a teen page [this fall], and while I have a little experience teaching students at our local college, I don’t have a lot,” says Michelle Oyola, Web and youth editor for The Washington Missourian. “It’s hard coming from a newsroom where you’re used to being told to change things in stories to working with teens who have fragile egos. You have to walk on tippy-toes when talking to them.”

Oyola says the course’s interactive “Coach’s Challenge,” which gives strategies on providing feedback to young writers, was most helpful to her.

“You’ve got to tell the students that [suggested] changes will make their story stronger, or more clear,” she says. “It’s not about pleasing me as the editor. It also gives great guidelines on how to give feedback through e-mail, which is even more direct. You can’t use your tone, so everything has to be more chipper, with no room for misinterpretation.”

Vicki Krueger, editor at NewsU, says that by the end of September, 576 people had enrolled in the course since its launch in July. Not everyone fills out a profile page, she notes, but of those who have:

• 13 percent are newspaper professionals in the United States, including NIE coordinators, youth editors, reporters covering kids’ issues and other newsroom staffers
• 20 percent are high school teachers
• 14 percent are college teachers
• 27 percent are from outside the United States, including users who are high school and college educators in Canada, Great Britain and Colombia
• 26 percent are other media-related individuals.

“I’m delighted with the response we’ve gotten to this course because I know it’s reaching people who wouldn’t get training otherwise,” Krueger says. “This course represents our philosophy at NewsU: Learning should be engaging, interactive and fun.

“You should learn from correct answers in activities as well as incorrect answers. And you should be able to get the training you need when you need it. A user can pick the part of the course he or she wants to explore and come back to the other parts later.”

The course, based on a Foundation handbook titled “Youth Content: Getting Started,” also features best practices from current teen programs in all market sizes, as well as student perspectives.

“We also realized that while teachers of high school newspapers are teachers, they may not be writing teachers, so we wanted to provide information that scholastic advisers could use as well,” says Sandy Woodcock, director of the NAA Foundation. “This is a great opportunity for people in shrinking newsrooms, who are multitasking, to have access to training and renewal on a schedule that works for them.”

Dinah Eng, a freelance writer and columnist for Gannett News Service, can be reached at dinaheng@earthlink.net.