Besides journalism, name a profession that respects college graduates who piss off their colleges.

I can’t think of one. But I know two recent grads who got jobs because administrators got mad at them.

Chelsea Boozer is a reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and she was hired partly because she was a pain in the ass at the University of Memphis.

Just last semester, Boozer won the College Press Freedom Award for battling her Student Government and administration. After she wrote an award-winning investigation into SG’s questionable spending, she was publicly berated by SG leaders, whose insults earned a standing ovation from the audience – which included a college administrator.

But that didn’t bother Boozer as much as campus cops accusing her of criminal misconduct after she demanded public records of a campus rape. Cops actually filed two reports against her. But Boozer didn’t back down. Instead, she got the backing of journalism organizations like the Student Press Law Center and the Society of Professional Journalists.

“I wasn’t intimidated by those administrators,” Boozer says. “The more questionable comments they made, the more fueled up I was to expose their (in my opinion) corrupt actions.”

When intimidation didn’t work, “Several administrators attempted to hint to me that I was hurting my job prospects.” Of course, it was just the opposite.

“I can’t tell you how many journalists encouraged me – and told me that every newspaper would want to hire me after they heard my story.” And that was true.

“The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette — being the statewide newspaper in my home state and No. 30-something in the nation’s Top 100 newspapers based on circulation — was my first choice of a job and the only place I applied to.”

She didn’t need a second choice. When she graduated last semester, the paper’s projects editor Sonny Albarado (coincidentally the national SPJ president) immediately hired her – even though “we rarely hire fresh college graduates.” While she certainly had the clips, Albarado says Boozer had something else…

I admired her tenacity in taking on college administrators and petty student government politicos because it showed me someone who wouldn’t be easily cowed by bureaucrats and petty local government honchos. Unlike a lot of recent graduates, she wasn’t intimidated by editors and senior reporters in the interview process. She wasn’t disrespectful or self-centered. She was self-assured, comfortable under questioning, and seemingly wise beyond her years.

Meet the other pain in the ass.

Karla Bowsher started last week as government reporter at the Chronicle-Tribune in tiny Grant County, Indiana. It’s the job she wanted, even though she had plenty of opportunities for more money in bustling South Florida – which is where I met her four years ago.

Bowsher was a Spanish studies major who rose to editor-in-chief of the Florida Atlantic University student newspaper. She was EIC when I was fired after 12 years as the paper’s adviser. Since we both believed I was canned for encouraging journalism that made FAU look bad – see the Sun Sentinel’s half-page story, complete with WAR ENDS-sized headline – we came up with the clever idea of me not leaving. I’d stick around and volunteer as adviser.

Administrators vaguely threatened Bowsher with student conduct charges if she persisted. They even banned her from meeting me in a bar off campus. Like Boozer, Bowsher enlisted the aid of an alphabet soup of journalism organizations. And because this is the United States and not Cuba, she won. She even won first place in SPJ’s Mark of Excellence contest for covering her own debacle. And she won work.

Since she was still in school after her term as EIC expired, Bowsher landed lots of freelance. Some came from the Broward Bulldog, one of those groovy new investigative journalism nonprofits. (Motto: “News you can sink your teeth into.”)

“I didn’t pursue the Broward Bulldog,” she says. “They came to me.”

She also landed an internship at the Sun Sentinel. “My Bulldog Broward references and clips were what secured my summer internship at a Top 50 newspaper – and my first post-graduation job.”

I was one of Bowsher’s references for the job she wanted. When I regaled the editor with her tale, the guy was impressed as hell. Bowsher was hired days later.

Here are the ABCs from Boozer and Bowsher.

1. Never fear. If you always fight, you’ll always win. “I knew for a fact that admin’s threats were bluffs,” Bowsher says. “And even if they tried to act on them, they’d invite a lawsuit or national bad press. Either way, I’d play the leading role of First Amendment underdog. And everyone loves an underdog – especially one fighting bullshit bureaucracy in the name of a constitutional right.”

2. Never doubt. “You have the power of the press on your side, and the power of truth,” Boozer says. “As long as you know that you’re handling those powers responsibly and you’re telling the truth ethically, what do you have to be scared of?”

3. Never shut up. When you’re getting screwed, Boozer urges, “Don’t be quiet about it.” Both Bowsher and Boozer launched their own websites. Boozer’s team had FreeTheHelmsman.com while Bowsher blogged at Owl Management. Local and even national media mentioned those sites.

4. Never go it alone. “Without Frank LoMonte at the Student Press Law Center, we could not have fought as hard as we did,” Boozer says. “He stayed countless hours on the phone and just reassuring us that we were doing what was right.” Bowsher adds that in her case, both SPJ and SPLC sent letters to FAU’s president – which helped defuse the crisis. (The president told her administrators to get this story out of the headlines so she could return to raising money.)

5. Never stop. “Remember what you stand for,” Boozer says. “Hold your administrators accountable. Give your readers important, valuable and interesting information that they wouldn’t have known if it weren’t for you. You can make a difference, and not many people can say that about their jobs.”

Here’s why you should hire these two.

Now we come to this year’s no-fear pair of college journalists. They graduated this month, and they’re looking for work.

Karl Etters has been all over this blog. Type his name into the search box at the top of the page to see what I mean. But here’s the bullet…

Etters was the duly elected editor of the Famuan, the student newspaper at Florida A&M in Tallahassee. But the j-school dean forced Etters to run for his job again. She insisted it had nothing to do with Etters’ investigative stories that embarrassed the university.

Meanwhile, the dean fired the adviser and hired a new one with no journalism experience – but lots of PR experience. In fact, the new adviser had written a glowing story about the dean for a school-related website.

The new adviser replaced Etters with a student who had almost no journalism experience. So he and a few of his pals started their own news site, InkandFangs. But Etters told me some of those students dropped out because the dean and other administrators warned them, “It’ll cost you.”

In the end, it cost Etters nothing. He was already freelancing for his local paper, the Tallahassee Democrat, and while he was getting insulted by the j-school dean, the paper sent him on assignment to the Everglades with a U.S. Senator, for a story that ran in USA Today. Now he’s looking for a full-time reporting job.

So is Emily Beatty.

As editor of the Racquette, the student newspaper at SUNY Potsdam in northern New York near the Canadian border, Beatty spent most of the spring semester fighting her Student Government. But unlike Etters, she wasn’t removed from office.

She just stopped getting paid.

The SUNY Potsdam SG insisted that, if Beatty and her staff wanted to keep earning a pittance, they had to rotate jobs every issue – out of “fairness” to all the staffers. So one week, you’d be the copydesk chief. The next, the sports editor.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s OK. I’ve spoken with Beatty several times over the past few months, and I still don’t quite understand it myself.

“I guess the main issue is they think that we are playing favorites and people are getting money that they don’t deserve,” Beatty told the Student Press Law Center, which gallantly tried explaining the complicated stupidity. “I asked them what the purpose of that rule was and they said fairness…but they themselves are exempt.”

That’s right, this rule doesn’t apply to the people who wrote it.

Alas, the Recquette stopped publishing before the end of the semester, and who knows if it’ll return in the fall. Beatty says many on her staff needed the little bit they earned so they could pay their bills.

I hope the staff Beatty leaves behind will continue to fight, and I hope the staff Etters leaves behind will do the same. Because if they fight, they’ll win.

Facing a righteous fight? Who do you call?

Email me, and I’ll put you on the proper path. You’ll get more help than you’ll know what to do with.

Seriously. I offered Etters free copyediting for his rebellious website – by recruiting college journalists from around the country to pitch in an hour a week. I offered Beatty free printing should she desire to publish an unofficial issue of the Racquette. But both graduated before those plans could happen.

If you’re facing a righteous fight next semester, you have weapons. I know it might look like you’re outgunned. But you’re not. Listen to sixth century Chinese writer Lao Tzu…

There is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong, nothing can surpass it.

…be like water. And make your censors sweat.

This photo? Shot in Kalamazoo. Won first place in Miami.

The SPJ chapter at Florida International University hosted a photo contest this spring. Even though the chapter didn’t exist a year ago – like most student chapters, it blinks in and out of existence – this new crew decided to think big.

So they covered Obama’s second inauguration, and they launched a nationwide student photo contest. Their judges just now chose two winners – one national, one from South Florida. The national winner is Adam Randall. Here’s his cutline…

KALAMAZOO, Mich. – At least 3,986 zombies staggered into the Arcadia Festival Place downtown failing to break a Guinness World Record currently held by Asbury Park, N.J. for 4,093 zombies.

Below is the South Florida winner, Sana Ullah…

On Feb. 2, 2013, hundreds of people gathered in and around the Sunlife Stadium in Miami Gardens for the national Color Me Rad 5K. Originally founded in Utah and inspired by the Hare Krishna festival of colors, CMR is famous for its colored powder bombs. At every checkpoint, runners are swallowed in colors of blue, green, pink, purple and yellow. After the final checkpoint, participants may take photos of their new body of art or stand by a lift for one last explosion of colors.

Not content with running its own photo contest, the chapter’s secretary wrote a story about it. Read on for that. And if you’re a student chapter vying for Chapter of the Year, FIU should be making you real nervous right about now.

By Brittny C. Valdes

When seven students and one professor chose to revive Florida International University’s chapter of Society of Professional Journalists last fall, photojournalism became their topic of interest.

Photos are critical companions to stories, but FIU didn’t offer any photojournalism classes. So SPJ-FIU made it a priority to fill that gap.

It began in November, when Miami Herald photographer Dan Bock and Barbara Corbellini Duarte, current SPJ-FIU president, held a photojournalism presentation at FIU’s Biscayne Bay Campus. There, they shared photo and caption examples, touched on technique and dove into the discussion about the difference one image can make in news.
By the spring semester, the idea to hold a photojournalism competition almost seemed natural. So they did. The contest: “Capturing Generation Y.”

“Photos are a great way to bring in a reader,” said Michae Baisden, SPJ-FIU vice president. “But a lot of students don’t know that this is really important. We wanted to put a focus on photography in journalism, and we wanted it to be interactive.”

For the contest, SPJ-FIU invited college and high school students around the country to submit one photo that harnessed the essence of their generation in any real moment. Photos had to be accompanied by a caption, and each was judged for content, quality, originality and grammar.

The contest received 22 entries and presented to an esteemed panel of judges, including: Jason Parsley, president of SPJ South Florida Chapter; Roman Lyskowski, photo editor at The Miami Herald; Chris Cutro, photographer at the Miami Herald; Chris Delboni, news director at the South Florida News Service; and Barbara Corbellini Duarte, president of SPJ-FIU.

A national and a South Florida winner emerged, and on the evening of April 25, at Yuca Restaurant in South Beach, about 30 people came together over mojitos, salsa music and Cuban tapas to award the South Florida winner.

Sana Ullah, a digital media studies student at FIU, won for her “Color Me Rad” photo featuring young runners in a 5K getting bombed with neon-colored powder.

“I couldn’t stop smiling,” said Ullah, whose her first reaction to winning was, “why me?”
“There are so many incredible photographers,” she said. “There’s no way this is for me. However, after being shocked, I felt honored and excited to have my work framed and appreciated by others.”

Adam Randall, a journalism student at Western Michigan University, won nationally for his “Kalamazoo Zombie Festival” photo, which highlighted a crowd of young people painted as zombies behind yellow caution tape.

Both winners will have their photos published in SPJ’s Quill Magazine and will be featured in the SPJ South Florida, SPJ Region 3 and South Florida News Service websites.

Ullah will also spend a day with a Miami Herald photographer out on the field as well as in the newsroom.

“I’m a little nervous,” said Ullah. “Photojournalists are professionals, and I consider myself an amateur.”

Sergy Odiduro, an SPJ South Florida chapter board member and reporter for the Forum Publishing Group, attended the event.

“This is a very enthusiastic group,” said Odiduro. “What you’re doing, keep on doing, and all the doors will open out of nowhere.”

If you’re in charge of a pro or student SPJ chapter, you might be wondering…

How the hell do we win a National Chapter of the Year award?

As one of SPJ’s 23 national board members, I can tell you: I have no friggin’ idea. All I know for sure is that there’s a byzantine system for choosing…
 

The byzantine system

• Each chapter uploads an annual report to SPJ headquarters in Indianapolis (and those suckers are due May 1 for campus chapters and May 6 for pro chapters).

• HQ forwards those reports to the corresponding regional directors – there are 12 of us – who read them and fill out their own reports.

• The regional directors send everything back to HQ.

• HQ dumps all of the pro stuff on the board’s pair of at-large directors, who choose the best large (75 or more members) and small (less than 75) chapters of the year based on…I dunno. Whatever they want, I guess.

• The student packages go to the vice president for campus affairs, who told me last weekend that he chooses one winner only from those the regional directors touted in their reports.
 

The nonexistent rules

Of course, this just tells you how the information circulates. It doesn’t describe what qualities a chapter must possess to impress.

You’d think for such a high honor, there’d be some rules or guidelines or even hints. But this is the only mention of the topic I could find on SPJ’s website, halfway down the page summing up the myriad of SPJ awards…

Outstanding Professional and Campus Chapter Awards
The awards salute chapters for overall excellence in supporting the Society’s missions, members and the profession. Up to three large and three small professional chapters will be selected each year for recognition, with one in each category being chosen as the chapter of the year. On the campus level, one will be selected from each of SPJ’s 12 regions, with one being chosen as the overall campus chapter of the year.

Weirdly, there are lesser chapter awards called the Circle of Excellence, and they get their own page. But it doesn’t tell you who does the choosing.
 

My criteria

The SPJ board meets again at the Excellence in Journalism convention in Anaheim this summer, and I’ll agitate for some clearer standards.

For discussion purposes, here are mine…

• Programming (30 percent) – Nothing else matters if you don’t do something. You can host lectures and panel discussions, but you get extra credit for hands-on creativity. I’m partial to my home chapter, SPJ South Florida, which gets serious (an obit-writing workshop in a funeral home) and humorous (a Speed Team Scrabble tournament) with its participatory programs.

• Membership (15 percent) – Good programs means more members. So if you do the former, you’re halfway home on the latter.

• Outreach (15 percent) – The next SPJ president, Dave Cuillier, blew my mind over the weekend when he told me, “We should be the Society for Professional Journalists.” He’s right. SPJ shouldn’t just train journalists, it should educate their customers – who are, basically, everyone who can read. Does your chapter visit high school classes? Speak about our craft to local business groups and charities? Defend free speech even when it’s not journalists doing the speechifying?

• Scholarships (10 percent) – Some chapters, like Western Washington, award a couple of $2,000 scholarships each year. But even if it’s just one for $200, you’re helping the next generation of journalists.

• National volunteering (10 percent) – SPJ needs judges for its annual Mark of Excellence and high school essay contests. It has committees that need members and regional directors who need assistant RDs (mine is Lindsey Cook). You can run for national office yourself – then help me fix these damn Chapter of the Year awards.

• Convention and conference attendance (10 percent) – Woody Allen once said, “80 percent of success is showing up.” Here it’s only 10 percent, because it costs money to attend SPJ’s national convention and even its regional conferences. Some chapters have more passion than cash, and they shouldn’t be punished for that.

• Reporting on time (10 percent) – If you turn in your annual report late, it costs you. Harsh? Hell, no. We’re journalists. We’re supposed to make deadlines.
 

Now what?

I suppose I could say, “Tell SPJ leaders what you think!” But when editorial page writers and op-ed columnists do that, not much usually happens. So I plan to announce my own SPJ Awards this summer. And unlike the official SPJ awards, mine will come with prizes. Weird prizes.
 

Meet two young student journalists whose schools are aging them quickly by acting slowly. And illegally.

For months, Florida’s Dylan Bouscher and Georgia’s David Schick have been trying to acquire some plain-vanilla public records from their public institutions. What should’ve been a mundane administrative task that took a week has mushroomed into a thermonuclear winter.

The result…

Two determined reporters – from a generation accused of technology-induced short attention spans – have been working with attorneys and refuse to give up. If anything, their schools’ slow-down tactics and silly excuses have taught them the value of fighting a long war…

When Dylan Bouscher first heard about the Clery Act, he was feeling good about his profession and his nation. Here’s a law that requires schools to reveal details about campus crime. But what keeps campus cops from lying in their so-called Annual Campus Security Report?

Bouscher decided to check into his school, Florida Atlantic University, after he learned this: “There was only one rape and one robbery reported on campus in 2011.” That’s among 28,000 students. Suspicious, no?

So Bouscher sought three years of campus police reports, which he planned to compare against the annual reviews. But FAU said those would cost him $17,000.

That’s because FAU insisted its lawyers must review every report. So upon advice of pro bono attorney Ana-Klara Anderson, Bouscher requested one lone, random report. He also asked an FAU alum to do the same. Both were delivered free of charge, with no attorney review. Busted. FAU lowered the price to $10,000. And so it went, excuses punctured by reporting, followed by new excuses.

“It’s been an agonizing four months of legal back-and-forth,” Bouscher says. “It’s down to a slightly-less-absurd $900 now.”

Bouscher is undaunted and even amused. “I can reflect on it now and laugh at myself for ever having expected less from this administration,” says the jaded 19-year-old, who has big plans for his summer break…

“Instead of wasting away in a lawn chair somewhere in the sands at Palmetto Park Beach, hopefully I’ll be holed up in the windowless newsroom on campus, making sure FAU police are following guidelines and keeping the university safe enough for other students – who will most likely be partying at the beach.”

If all politics are local, then all journalism is personal. That’s how David Schick decided to investigate a $16 million budget shortfall at Georgia Perimeter College.

“I was appointed editor-in-chief before the summer semester started, and I was taking summer classes when the news of the budget crisis hit,” Schick recalls. “When my adviser and mentor, David Simpson, became one of the casualities of the reduction in force, my motivation to find out what happened increased tenfold.”

But when he requested records to delve into the topic, weird stuff happened.

First, the school charged him $2,963 to forward him emails. When he got a volunteer lawyer who threatened to sue, the price tag was knocked down to $291. But then administrators printed out each email and then re-scanned them – which meant Schick couldn’t search them for keywords. Oh, and administrators alternately claimed they didn’t have the records he sought, then told him they were being used in an investigation.

“Obviously, this whole situation brings me great frustration,” Schick says. But it’s also given him great determination…

“I hope to be a lawyer once I finish my education. And due to this situation, I’d like to start a nonprofit organization to hold organizations accountable for adhering to their own open-records laws. I definitely enjoy being a reporter, and hope to have a solid career as a journalist before completing law school. But I think I’d enjoy going to court to fight for a truly free press more than anything.”

He’ll need to keep fighting: “I put a new open records request to Georgia Perimeter College this past Monday and got a response of $1,300 – for a list of positions.”

This attorney is unhappy.

Frank LoMonte is executive director of the Student Press Law Center just outside of Washington, D.C. He’s worked closely with both Bouscher and Schick. Unlike most attorneys, LoMonte speaks in plain English. So here’s him, talking crap about FAU…

It’s astonishing that in the year 2013, a police department can’t put its hands on incident reports — basic, foundational documents that are a staple of police work — without endless hours of searching. That’s a pretty remarkable commentary on the competence of this university and its police.

We’ve worked with colleges elsewhere that were able to compile the same information for a fraction of what FAU eventually arrived at — and that’s after our attorney volunteer, Ana-Klara Anderson, engaged in multiple back-and-forth haggling sessions to get the initial inflated price down to a fraction of the “sticker price.”

Police incident reports should be sitting in a binder on a bookshelf with a total retrieval cost of whatever time is required to walk across the room. This isn’t the LAPD — it’s not like the FAU police department is responding to hundreds of felonies a day. If the agency is so disorganized that it literally can’t find its own incident reports, the public shouldn’t be paying the price of that incompetence (or deliberate opaqueness).

And here’s LoMonte on Schick and Georgia Perimeter College…

David Schick has shown amazing creativity and tenacity in pursuing records about a story that is really the story for the entire Georgia Perimeter community — how did the college get itself deeply into debt, who knew about it, and why wasn’t it stopped sooner?

The University System of Georgia literally cannot keep its own lies straight anymore, having at various times told David both that the documents were secret because they were being used in an ongoing investigation and also that they didn’t have them.

First, the state tried to make him go away with a laughably inflated bill that, after help from a terrific volunteer lawyer, Dan Levitas, we were able to negotiate down to pennies on the dollar. Having failed in that strategy, the state is just going into the stall and hoping David will graduate, or maybe die of old age. But to his credit, David has his jaws clamped down on this one and he’s not letting go.

These advisers are proud.

David Simpson is still Schick’s “mentor,” even if he’s no longer his official adviser. Simpson was either laid off for budget reasons or fired for journalistic reasons, depending who you ask. (And if you ask me, it was for the aggressive journalism he taught.) Here’s what he says about Schick…

David Schick turned into an open-records bulldog during his time at The Collegian. He also believed in shoe leather, so he would make inconvenient trips downtown to the Board of Regents office to press his requests in person and build relationships. I don’t have the analytics, but his reporting last summer in the aftermath of 200-plus layoffs got heavy readership and buzz among faculty and staff.

David was among quite a few students I met at GPC who caught fire and did great work after being exposed to real-world journalism at the student newspaper. Not incidentally, those students served their audience by reporting on serious issues at their college. 

Dan Sweeney advises FAU’s newspaper. Before that, he spent most of his career in alternative journalism, most notably at Village Voice-owned weeklies. So Bouscher’s surreal investigation really appeals to him…

This swiftly metastasized into a new story about student journalists’ access to public records – especially once the newspaper received an estimated cost in the low five figures, after a very long wait. Through it all, and through the subsequent negotiations between the university’s lawyer and a lawyer working pro bono, Dylan kept one eye on the final prize – the Clery Act story – but also followed the records requests through all their twists and turns, realizing that he had a second story on access to public records.

When the university finally agreed to drop its $17,000-plus price for three years of police records down to $900, Dylan was practically salivating at the mouth. He never lost hope or focus, and I expect the paper to have a great story come fall semester because of it.

So what happens now? Stay tuned.

We have not yet begun to fight.

The SPJ student chapter and its j-school have, for three decades, hosted something called the Freedom of Information Congress. Past speakers have included Carl Bernstein, Nina Totenberg, and Anderson Cooper.

And now me.

When I told friends and colleagues I was invited and I didn’t exactly know why, the younger ones accused me of humblebrag. (The older ones already know I’m an arrogant asshole.) But it was an objectively curious decision for a j-school to pay travel expenses for someone who’s been expelled as a student and fired as a newspaper adviser.

(Maybe this is also humblebrag, but I declined an honorarium. I’m not charging when my predecessors included Helen Thomas, Daniel Schorr, and David Broder.)

It turns out the University of Memphis is a quirky and contradictory place. It both depressed and impressed me. Here’s why.

The unkindest cuts and cops

If the University of Memphis is known to journalists outside the city, it’s for tormenting its student newspaper, The Daily Helmsman.

Last year, editor Chelsea Boozer and her staff won the Student Press Law Center’s College Press Freedom Award for fighting “a retaliatory budget cut while enduring a campaign of harassment by campus police.”

It’s a long story, but one worth reading. Or watching. I met Boozer at SPJ’s annual Will Write For Food program only days before she won this award. Her managing editor (and now SPJ chapter president) Christopher Whitten had also been accepted into what I believe is the toughest journalism weekend in the country. Both shined.

So I knew something about Memphis students when I flew up there last Tuesday. But I didn’t know squat about the faculty.

Burying the news

If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s this: Just like big newspapers, big j-schools aren’t always the best. Both can be too massive to steer nimbly, too nervous to try anything new, and too arrogant for self-analysis.

The Memphis j-school lives in the shadow of its bigger (and richer) brother at the University of Tennessee, but it doesn’t seem to suffer from an inferiority complex. Maybe that’s because it’s a short drive to the famous Beale Street barbecue and bar scene, and after one night there myself, I was feeling rather mellow.

Whatever the reason, the Memphis j-school is small in all the right ways. Example: One student told me he had been arrested for stealing textbooks because he was too broke to buy them, and he got so depressed he stopped going to class. He only went back when journalism department chairman David Arant called him – and with kind but firm words, told him not to sacrifice his career over a mistake.

How many department chairs call a student in trouble? Or call a student ever?

This incident reveals something else about the University of Memphis: Many of its students are older and broker than in other places.

I spoke to three j-school classes and the Daily Helmsman staff before my keynote Wednesday evening. In each encounter, I met weary but earnest students in their late 20 or early 30s, many with one child and some with two and even three. A father told me the average student is 26 with a small kid and huge loans.

By the book

Under these circumstances, you’d think the professors would flee as soon as they got a whiff of another job offer. But all three who invited me to speak to their classes were pleased with their surroundings, and two are recently published.

Joe Hayden is the author of The Little Grammar Book, which he told me he wrote precisely because his students – who often work one or even two jobs to pay the bills –  were too frazzled to wade through musty grammar tomes. He wanted a slender, cheap paperback that would impart the crucial basics. And he succeeded.

He gave me a copy, and I read it on the plane back to Fort Lauderdale. I finished it somewhere over the Gulf without knowing I was more than halfway home. How often does a grammar book cause you to lose track of time?

Pam Denney‘s Food Lover’s Guide to Memphisis entirely different.

The veteran food critic published a gastronomic tour of her city last year, covering everything from barbecue joints to organic markets to local recipes to the city’s “food politics.”

(Memphis is, according to one study, the nation’s fattest city. Weirdly, Denney is a wisp of a woman. And few of the students were anywhere near obese – but one wryly told me that’s because they can’t afford food.)

SOL with the FOI

Unfortunately, my keynote didn’t offend, despite the photos of genital tattoos and a full-body cavity search.

(I thought it would be amusing for an FOI event to censor my slides – all of which were, of course, educational. I’m not an anarchist.)

The Memphis Flyer, the local alt-weekly, posted a mostly softball summary of what I said. I believe journalists go flaccid when they cover their own kind, out of some twisted professional courtesy.

And in fact, that was my theme for the night – “There’s nothing more hypocritical than a thin-skinned journalist.”

That led to the only Flyer flak…

I believe there are hypocrites in every profession. I don’t think one profession boasts a larger amount of hypocrites than another. … I expected that Koretzky would make some statements that were debatable, and this indeed was one of them.

Soft.

SPJ has very few edicts – mandatory rules that national board members like myself must abide by. One of them is hosting an annual journalism conference within my region. Ever obedient, I organized last weekend’s MediAtlanta and recruited staffers from The Red and Black to tell the tale.

Careful readers of this blog will note I’ve written about The Red and Black before, and it wasn’t exactly flattering. But my beef was with the professionals, not the students. (In fact, my beefs are almost always with the old farts who should know better.)

So here’s what three journalists at the award-winning Red and Black – it fared quite well in the regional Mark of Excellence contest – learned at MediAtlanta…
 

4 Lies Your College Will Tell You

By Shannon Adams

Picking four lies colleges tell student journalists was tricky for Frank LoMonte, the executive director of the Student Press Law Center. But he was able to narrow it down to just four.

Lie 1: You’re defaming the school!

“Well, the fact of the matter is, it’s really freaking hard to defame a college,” LoMonte said. While the Supreme Court has ruled that it’s possible to libel someone even in an opinion piece, what most colleges call defamation isn’t.

“Libel is a false statement of fact that is made with some degree of negligence or recklessness,” LoMonte said. Colleges may claim that journalists are libeling or about to libel them, but usually it’s just an intimidation tactic.

“We hear colleges say to their student journalists, trying to intimidate them, ‘You’re about to libel our college’ – and what they really mean is, ‘You’re about to hurt our reputation by publishing something about us that is harmful but true,’” LoMonte said. “And if it is harmful but true, it doesn’t matter how harmful it is.”

This concept stems from the idea that student journalists are there to make the school look good. Instead, students should look at their relationship to their college as a consumer relationship.

“The schools want you to think of it as, ‘You are a representative of the school, and you have to make us proud,’” LoMonte said, “But the fact is, you’re paying these people a lot of money to provide you a service in a consumer transaction.”

Lie 2: Everything we have is a FERPA record

FERPA – the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act – was intended to protect students from snooping of other government agencies. But reports of employee misconduct, court documents and teachers’ emails in their “in” box are not protected by FERPA.

“Just because it has a student’s name on it doesn’t mean it’s protected by FERPA,” LoMonte said. Records must be directly related to the student and be maintained by the school in order to be protected by FERPA. For example, “Police records – records created for law enforcement purposes – are never ever ever ever FERPA records,” LoMonte said.

Lie 3: This is a HIPAA violation

“FERPA’s uglier cousin is HIPAA,” LoMonte said. HIPAA is the federal healthcare privacy law.

“HIPAA does say that people who are covered by HIPAA can’t give out information about people’s individual confidential medical information,” LoMonte said. “But HIPAA only covers two types of people: It covers your health care provider – your doctor – and your health insurance.”

Taking pictures and writing about injured people and accidents are not HIPAA violations, although some officials might tell you it is.

“If somebody says ‘HIPAA,’ what you should hear is ‘I’m lying to you right now,’” LoMonte said, “because it’s always wrong. The law is largely misunderstood and misquoted, but journalists would be hard-pressed to violate it. There is no such thing as invasion of privacy of something that you do in a public space.”

Lie 4: if you take pictures where you shouldn’t we get to delete them

Once you take pictures, they’re your property. No one can seize them. “The reality is that’s stealing,” LoMonte said.

“If you wouldn’t let somebody rip up your $20 bill, don’t let them delete your pictures either,” LoMonte said, “There is not ever a time when the law says that the right answer is for the police or somebody acting like a cop to delete your photos or make you delete them or to otherwise take them away.”
 

Journalism in the Middle East

By Sarah Anne Perry

Former Cleveland Plain Dealer managing editor Tom O’Hara looked forward to adventure in the Middle East — and he found it.

The United Arab Emirates is ranked 114th out of 179 in the Press Freedom Index and labeled “not free” by Freedom House. it’s not an obvious hotspot for journalists on the job hunt.

But for O’Hara and Georgia State University profesor Matt Duffy, it was. Between 2010 and 2012, O’Hara worked as a desk editor at The National, an English-language paper praised as the best and freest in the Arab world. Duffy taught journalism as a professor at Zayed University. Saturday, both men spoke about their experiences at MediAtlanta.

O’Hara said although he couldn’t find a reporting job in the United States, he found two in the Middle East within two days of searching. A recruiter from The National lauded Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s intentions to create “The New York Times of the Middle East.”

That wasn’t quite what O’Hara encountered. Working at The National meant battles not just between writers and editors, but between news staff and the constant threat of censorship.

Censors were only concerned with certain topics, O’Hara said — namely, those that might reflect badly on the government or threaten its stability. In the midst of the Arab Spring, any writing that might portray the U.A.E. government negatively was deemed a potential cause of civil unrest, and thus unprintable.

Fortunately for him, O’Hara was safe behind the foreign news desk, where few stories seemed to possess the potential for political catastrophe.

Self-censorship was the norm at The National, O’Hara said. Paranoia kept the paper’s editors worried about offending not just Sheik Khalifa but also the Bahraini rulers, to whom he’s related. Even the president’s own words were edited for Shia references so as not to upset the paper’s Sunni Muslim readers.

O’Hara said the top editors at The National spent much of their time proofing copy rather than performing the administrative duties often expected of the highest-ranking members of the newsroom.

In the U.A.E., libel was a criminal offense, Duffy said. Arab publications even used initials in crime reports instead of names to protect suspects’ pride — truth wasn’t necessarily a viable defense when a reporter was brought to court for defamation of character.

Arab readers could circumvent censorship by getting their news from the Internet, Duffy said. Still, he said he was surprised by how little his colleagues knew about current events in their own country.

“I was surprised by how few people were paying attention,” he said.

Duffy described the U.A.E. as a lovely place to live, with many people prospering from oil money and therefore content with life as they knew it — and often unconcerned with the news. He said Arab culture and Islamic tradition created a welcoming atmosphere for him.

O’Hara also said he felt welcome, and that he rarely encountered anti-American or xenophobic sentiments from sources and others.

“You kept hearing this: ‘I love Americans. I don’t like America,’” he said.

O’Hara said Arabs’ dislike for America had more to do with its support for Israel than for its culture. He added that not knowing Arabic is no deterrent to reporting in a country whose population consists mostly of expatriates. Neither is gender, he said, although he advised female reporters to enter the Middle East with a tough skin.

“Arab men are not subtle,” he said.

O’Hara and Duffy agreed that their experiences, though challenging, were invaluable. O’Hara recommended that reporters work abroad early in their careers so they can apply the lessons they learn there to the careers they build in the United States.

Both men also expressed hope for the future of free speech in the Middle East. Social media isn’t going away, Duffy said, and neither is the freedom of expression it provides.
 

Weird Careers in the Media

By Chelsey Abercrombie

In the rapidly evolving world of media, careers can be found where you least expect them. Nobody I know grew up with dreams of being a “social media editor” — how could they? Five years ago, it didn’t even exist as a profession.

While some doomsayers may preach that the advent of technology will herald the extinction of journalism, Michael Koretzky, the leader of MediAtlanta’s “Weird Careers in the Media” session, begs to differ. He offered several pieces of advice to help aspiring journalists get the ball rolling.

Don’t get an internship when you can get a part-time freelance gig.

While internships are practically guaranteed to involve their fair share of coffee runs, copy-making and fun-filled trips to restock the printer, freelance gigs guarantee the one thing an internship can’t: actual experience.

And in addition to grabbing you a few real-world bylines, most freelance jobs are also paid and can bring you into contact with some great names for the reference section of your resume.

Dailies are still hiring writers, photographers, and designers…so long as they’re all the same person.

In our technology-saturated world, everything is about multimedia, and staff writers are no longer expected solely to be able to write.

Proficiency in HTML, Photoshop, Flash and InDesign can skyrocket your chances of landing an interview and ultimately a career.

Newspapers will run like magazines. Magazines will run like radio stations.

Now that anyone with a GoDaddy account can run their own quote-unquote news service, publications’ best bet for survival lies in finding their niche readership.

Koretzky ran through several examples of magazines devoted to everything from lawn croquet to yachting crews. While it may not be your dream job, when it comes hiring time, the randomness of your resume may just be what lands you an interview.

Writers also don’t need to specifically share their publication’s interest.In two different cases, writers for a gay magazine and a Native American magazine weren’t even gay or Native American.

Journalists will have at least one job in their career they never expected.

And here comes the “weird” part: Your best bet at a career in journalism might not be in publications at all.

Many businesses are now hiring writers to blog about their products, events and services. Advocacy groups have also begun to hire their own freelance investigative journalists to pursue causes that might not be at the top of a mainstream news service’s priority list.

Some companies want journalists instead of public relations specialists.

In the same vein of unexpected career opportunities, many companies and businesses are overlooking the typical public relations grads to run their PR in favor of journalists, who know how to spice up a would-be boring post and are no strangers to thinking on their feet.

Ultimately, while first jobs can be daunting in the fast-paced world of journalism, the key to success isn’t always sticking to your guns.

Sometimes you have to get creative – and maybe a little weird – to find the right first step towards the career of your dreams.

“It’s funny that the most interesting thing about our convention,” MediAtlanta speaker Karla Bowsher mused Saturday night, “is someone else’s convention.”

Bowsher was strolling through the Westin hotel in downtown Atlanta, just a few blocks from the SPJ regional conference we hosted earlier that day. She, me, and five other MediAtlanta speakers were lured inside by intense journalistic curiosity.

The Westin was hosting Furry Weekend Atlanta, a gathering of 2,000 “furries” and their fans. If you don’t know what a furry is, you can read the ponderous Wikipedia description. But here’s my own simplistic, journalistic version…

Furries are perhaps the most laughed-at legal subculture in America. In varying degrees, they enjoy dressing as anthropomorphic animals – think of a cross between college football mascots and the suited characters who lumber through DisneyWorld, but with an anime and sci-fi edge.

Some furries get sexually aroused wearing these suits, which can cost thousands of dollars. Others just enjoy the camaraderie that comes from being around a critical mass of fellow outsiders – who, for that one weekend, are suddenly the insiders.

Like everything else journalists are forced to describe in only a few words, these are just the broad strokes, not the subtle shadings. Since it’s so hard to define them, you can imagine how misunderstood many furries feel. Popular culture tends to malign what it can’t define, and it’s worse for furries because of their cute suits.

But the more we spoke with the Furry Weekend attendees, the more the MediAtlanta crew – which included Michele Boyet, Gideon Grudo, Cassie Morien, Tom O’Hara, and Chris Persaud – admired them. That was partly because they were so willing to speak to us.

I’ve covered other subcultures as a journalist, from Jewish gun-lovers to Nazi submariner re-enactors. But I’ve never met a group more willing to talk freely about their scene, even as I heard catcalls from the public walking by the Westin. O’Hara chatted with one furry for 15 minutes, delving into the topic of the sexual practices and sexual orientations of both furries and their fans.

Furries embody everything I value as a journalist: Thick skins (quite literally) and an outsider’s view of the rest of the world, but with its own tight-knit community that won’t exclude anyone with an open mind.

Grudo, who helped coordinate last year’s annual Will Write For Food weekend, suggested a similar event called Will Write For Fur: “We should publish a furry convention newspaper the next time they do this.”

I agree. The journalistic value is plain…

If reporters and photographers can sensitively cover this subculture, capturing its essence in a way that enlightens the public while still informing the furries themselves, that’s the pinnacle of our craft.

If you’re interested in joining us, email me. We’ll need all the help we can get. I predict this SPJ grant application is gonna be a hard sell.

Tomorrow: Read about MediAtlanta itself, as reported by the staff at The Red and Black, the independent student newspaper at the University of Georgia.

Below are the Region 3 winners in SPJ’s college journalism contest, called the Mark of Excellence. The first-place winners compete nationally against their peers in 11 other regions. SPJ will announce those results May 2.

But even the second- and third-place winners who aren’t competing nationally have nothing to complain about. They’re still some of the best college journalists in the southeast United States – which covers Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Oh, and if you don’t see a second or third place listed, it’s not a mistake. It just means SPJ’s hard-ass judges don’t dole out awards like a T-ball league or a Student Government banquet. The MoEs matter because they’re friggin’ hard to win.

So anyway…

PHOTOGRAPHY

Breaking News Photography (Large)

First Place
Kristy L. Densmore
Trayvon Martin protest
University of Georgia

Second Place
Charles Pratt
Barrackin’ the Burrow
Florida Atlantic University

Feature Photography (Large)

First Place
Kelly Smith
State of solitude
University of Miami

Second Place
Kelly Smith
Swimming with pride
University of Miami

Third Place
Rachel Steinhauser
Love at first bite
University of Miami

Feature Photography (Medium)

First Place
Joseph Jacob
Mangue Banzima doesn’t think, he just shoots
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
Joseph Jacob
A pirate’s life for the weekend
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Feature Photography (Small)

First Place
Sarah Williamson
Together again
Flagler College

Second Place
Brittany Mullins
The specter of the countess
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Atlanta

Third Place
Cait Duffy
2012 Republican National Convention
Eckerd College

General News Photography (Large)

First Place
Dana Edwards
Willy Dickey picks peas from Orchard Pond Organic Farm
University of Florida

Second Place
Christine Capozziello
FAU’s faculty rip President Saunders and higher-ups in annual survey
Florida Atlantic University

General News Photography (Medium)

First Place
Joseph Jacob
Operation New Hope gives dogs and inmates a second chance
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
AJ Gonzalez
Walkers continue their journey to end domestic violence
Barry University

Sports Photography (Large)

First Place
Caitlin Trotter
Sidelined
University of Alabama

Second Place
C.B. Schmelter
Football celebration
University of Georgia

Third Place
Ryan Murphy
FAU football
Florida Atlantic University

Sports Photography (Small)

First Place
Dom Cuppetilli
Wakeboarding competition
Eckerd College

Second Place
Lincoln Andres-Beck
Women’s rugby win
Eckerd College

Third Place
Pablo Serrano-Otero
Savannah Derby Devils
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Photo Illustration (Large)

First Place
Randy Schafer
Honey Funk records
University of Georgia

Second Place
Kelly Smith, Ivana Cruz, Sophianna Bishop
Political issue cover
University of Miami

Third Place
Pablo Serrano-Otero
Honey Funk records
University of Miami

Photo Illustration (Medium)

First Place
Kayla Sloan
Can you disconnect
University of North Alabama

WEB

Best Affiliated Web Site (Large)

First Place
Staff
The Red and Black
University of Georgia

Second Place
Staff
The Miami Hurricane
University of Miami

Third Place
Staff
The Crimson White
University of Alabama

Best Affiliated Web Site (Small)

First Place
Staff
The Online Current
Eckerd College

Best Independent Online Student Publication (Large)

First Place
Staff
South Florida News Service
Florida International University

Best Independent Online Student Publication (Medium)

First Place
Staff
District
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Best Independent Online Student Publication (Small)

First Place
Staff
The Connector
Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta

Second Place
Staff
Flagler College Gargoyle
Flagler College

Online Feature Reporting (Large)

First Place
Christina Miller
Twice read: a story about letters
University of South Florida

Second Place
Emily Bloch
FAU’s Bonfire Bands
Florida Atlantic University

Third Place
Randy Schafer
Photographer poses perfection, almost
University of Georgia

Online Feature Reporting (Medium)

First Place
Danielle Austin and Joseph Jacob
Operation New Hope gives dogs and inmates a second chance
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
Susan Kemp
A-Town Get Down remembers student through music, art
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Third Place
Brandon Buchanan
The Ultimate Reconciler, Robby Waddell
Full Sail University

Online Feature Reporting (Small)

First Place
Lauren Ely
A Difference Between Faiths: Politically Irrelevant
Flagler College

Second Place
Tiffanie Reynolds
Bible study group bridges religion and sexual orientation
Flagler College

Third Place
Adam Hunt
A Look Into the World of Local TV News
Flagler College

Online In-Depth Reporting (Large)

First Place
Karla Bowsher and James Shackelford
Public Distrust
Florida Atlantic University

Second Place
Lindsey Cook
The problems with Study Abroad
University of Georgia

Third Place
Jacob Sadowsky
Man Filing Hazing Charges Against UCF ATO
University of Central Florida

Online In-Depth Reporting (Medium)

First Place
Staff
2012 Savannah Film Festival
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
Shannon Craig
T-SPLOST
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Online In-Depth Reporting (Small)

First Place
Ryan Buffa
Preacher or protester?
Flagler College

Second Place
Michael Newberger
Is your house making you sick?
Flagler College

Online News Reporting (Large)

First Place
Luis Giraldo
Tale of Two Marines
University of Florida

Second Place
UP Staff
Lowdown on the lockdown
Florida Atlantic University

Third Place
Jacob Sadowsky
Entry Fee
University of Central Florida

Online News Reporting (Medium)

First Place
Shannon Craig
Free HIV test: excuses need not apply
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
Daniel Alvarez
Student finds footing in lawsuit against school
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Online News Reporting (Small)

First Place
Sarah Williamson
Muslim student responds to ignorance
Flagler College

Second Place
Ryan Buffa and Joshua Santos
Mitt Romney visits Flagler College
Flagler College

Online Sports Reporting (Large)

First Place
Christina Miller
Bowling in the 21st century
University of South Florida

Second Place
Ryan Black
Celebrity’s glare transforms Georgia athletics
University of Georgia

Third Place
Jake Rakoci and Eric Py
UCF Hopes to Grow From Tough Loss
University of Central Florida

Online Sports Reporting (Medium)

First Place
Allen Duncan
Money reallocations disband three student teams
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Online Sports Reporting (Small)

First Place
Eric Albury
Athlete endures religious fast
Flagler College

Second Place
Jaycob Ammerman
Jillian Unitas won’t mind seeing Brees break record
Flagler College

Third Place
Eric Albury
Minor leagues hold dreams for Flagler men’s baseball
Flagler College

Online Opinion & Commentary (Medium)

First Place
Susan Kemp
Columns
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
Staff
Columns
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Online Opinion & Commentary (Small)

First Place
Phil Grech
Columns
Flagler College

Second Place
Nikki Igbo
Columns
Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta

Third Place
Erin White
Columns
Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta

BROADCAST

Best All-Around Radio Newscast

First Place
Staff
WUFT Front Page
University of Florida

Second Place
Staff
District
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Best All-Around TV Newscast

First Place
Staff
Carolina Magazine
University of South Carolina

Second Place
Staff
WUFT NEWS First at Five
University of Florida

Third Place
Staff
NewsVision
University of Miami

Radio Feature

First Place
Jenny Williamson
Smart meters electrify debate
Florida Gulf Coast University

Second Place
Nathalie Boyd
memorials
Troy University

Third Place
Nathalie Boyd and Paul Boger
Funds for football
Troy University

Radio In-Depth Reporting

First Place
Nicholas Lawrence
This collegiate life: generations
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
Luis Giraldo
Venezuelan voters: the personal journey
University of Florida

Third Place
Nathalie Boyd and Paul Boger 
Funds for football
Troy University

Radio News Reporting

First Place
Cameron Taylor
Cedar Key oyster industry in trouble
University of Florida

Second Place
Rebecca Farmer
Mayport ferry
University of Alabama

Third Place
Susan Kemp and Danielle Austin
Newt Gingrich holds rally in Savannah
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Radio Sports Reporting

First Place
Taylor Crosby
Student rec center expansion
University of Alabama

TV Breaking News Reporting

First Place
Cameron Taylor
Growing Evidence suggests missing UF student likely murdered
University of Florida

Second Place
Joshua Santos and Ryan Buffa
Mitt Romney visits Flagler College
Flagler College

Third Place
Tommy Townsend
Snow fell on Alabama
University of Alabama

TV Feature Photography

First Place
Luis Giraldo
Art education
University of Florida

Second Place
Jacob Fisher
Radioiodine therapy
University of South Carolina

Third Place
Chelsea Parler
Celtic festival
University of South Carolina

TV Feature Reporting

First Place
Kyara Massenburg
The three little bears
University of South Carolina

Second Place
Hannah Moseley
Spina bifida: Thomas Clark’s story
University of South Carolina

Third Place
Mary Beth Harrison
Pomping process
University of Alabama

TV General News Reporting

First Place
Tommy Townsend
Championship gear
University of Alabama

Second Place
Mamie Shepherd
Voting from behind bars
University of Georgia

Third Place
Krista Bagley
Fake IDs
University of South Carolina

TV In-Depth Reporting

First Place
Kierra King and Aaron Tillman
The need to belong
Florida A&M University

Second Place
Shannon Sommerville
Tommy John surgery
University of Miami

Third Place
Douglas Scarpa, Nicholas Lawrence, Shannon Craig, Kenneth Rosen
The final stitch
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

TV News Photography

First Place
Brandon McMullen and Kristen Swilley
The promise
Florida A&M University

Second Place
Valeria Sistrunk
Obama and welfare
Florida A&M University

Third Place
Laura Christmas
Herding Gator
University of Florida

TV Sports Photography

First Place
Victor Makali and Danielle Austin
Get to Know: SCAD longboarding club
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

TV Sports Reporting

First Place
Jen Somach
Quarterback
University of Miami

Second Place
Mike Wadsworth
Lakeisha Sutton
University of South Carolina

Third Place
Tori Petry
Gemma Spofforth
University of Florida

PRINT

Best All-Around Daily Student Newspaper

First Place
Staff
The Crimson White
University of Alabama

Second Place
Staff
The Oracle
University of South Florida

Best All-Around Non Daily Student Newspaper (Large)

First Place
Staff
The Red & Black
University of Georgia

Second Place
Staff
The Miami Hurricane
University of Miami

Best All-Around Non Daily Student Newspaper (Medium)

First Place
Staff
The Flor-Ala
University of North Alabama

Second Place
Staff
The Minaret
University of Tampa

Third Place
Staff
The Chanticleer
Jacksonville State University

Best All-Around Non Daily Student Newspaper (Small)

First Place
Staff
The Current
Eckerd College

Best Student Magazine

First Place
Staff
Distraction Magazine
University of Miami

Second Place
Staff
Centric Magazine
University of Central Florida

Third Place
Staff
The Fine Print
University of Florida

Breaking News Reporting (Large)

First Place
Will Tucker, Ashley Chaffin, Katherine Owen, Mary Kathryn Patterson
Police arrest Temerson Square gunman
University of Alabama

Second Place
University Press
Lowdown on the lockdown
Florida Atlantic University

Editorial Cartooning (Large)

First Place
Phillip Henry
Cartoons
University of Georgia

Editorial Cartooning (Medium)

First Place
Jeffrey Vossler
Cartoons
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

Second Place
Michael Beckom
Cartoons
Savannah College of Art and Design

Third Place
Brandon Murray
Cartoons
Troy University

Editorial Writing (Large)

First Place
Staff
Editorials
University of Alabama

Second Place
Elizabeth De Armas
Editorials
University of Miami

Third Place
Julia Carpenter, Nicholas Fouriezos, Polina Marinova
Editorials
University of Georgia

Editorial Writing (Medium)

First Place
The Flor-Ala Staff and Josh Skaggs
Editorials
University of North Alabama

Editorial Writing (Small)

First Place
Ely Grinfeld
Editorials
Eckerd College

Feature Writing (Large)

First Place
Jonathan Reed
Harder than we thought
University of Alabama

Second Place
Tiffany Stevens
A full life. A fatal fall
University of Georgia

Third Place
Tyler Jett
Silenced voices
University of Florida

Feature Writing (Medium)

First Place
Jackisha FanFan
Back, hip and knee problems caused by heels
Barry University

Feature Writing (Small)

First Place
Malena Carollo
EC student travels home to Venezuela
Eckerd College

Second Place
Emily Hoover
Farm cultivates new life for disabled veterans
Flagler College

Third Place
Tiffanie Reynolds
Vets find strength in numbers at college
Flagler College

General Column Writing (Large)

First Place
Blake Seitz
Three columns
University of Georgia

Second Place
Jake Howell
Making Life mean more than just class
University of South Alabama

General Column Writing (Medium)

First Place
Zach Tyler
Columns
Jacksonville State University

Second Place
Alex Lindley
Columns
University of North Alabama

Third Place
Alex Caraballo
Columns
University of Tampa

General Column Writing (Small)

First Place
Max Martinez
Columns
Eckerd College

General News Reporting (Large)

First Place
Cassie Fambro
USAPD officer kills student
University of South Alabama

Second Place
Jordan Friedman
Emory Intentionally misreported admission numbers
Emory University

Third Place
Karla Bowsher and James Shackelford
Who’s In charge here?
Florida Atlantic University

General News Reporting (Medium)

First Place
Alex Lindley and Matt Wilson
Campus responds to delayed police reporting of rape
University of North Alabama

General News Reporting (Small)

First Place
Ryan Buffa
Preacher or protester?
Flagler College

Second Place
Megan Thompson
Live @ the Librar
Samford University

Third Place
Malena Carollo
Professor’s cousin and well-known journalist killed in Syria
Eckerd College

In-Depth Reporting (Large)

First Place
Karla Bowsher and James Shackelford
Secret pasts
Florida Atlantic University

Second Place
Randy Schafer
Rhythm and race
University of Georgia

Third Place
Evan Mah
Emory shuts down departments, programs
Emory University

In-Depth Reporting (Medium)

First Place
Edward Bailey
Tuition, fees up 50.8 percent in 4 years
Troy University

In-Depth Reporting (Small)

First Place
Seth Ravid
Judicial fines fund student life projects
Eckerd College

Second Place
Elizabeth Tomaselli
On patrol with campus safety
Eckerd College

Third Place
Malena Carollo
College makes headway in acquiring Arabic minor
Eckerd College

Non-Fiction Magazine Article

First Place
Patrick Riley
The Basketball diaries
University of Miami

Second Place
Laura Monroe
Will tweet For food
University of Alabama

Third Place
Caroline Huftalen
Unmatched.com
Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta

Sports Column Writing (Large)

First Place
Ryan Cortes
Sports Columns
Florida Atlantic University

Second Place
Ryan Black
Sports Columns
University of Georgia

Third Place
Andrew Clay
sports columns
Troy University

Sports Writing (Large)

First Place
Ryan Cortes
Schnellenberger unhinged
Florida Atlantic University

Second Place
Marc Torrence
Fight on, fight on
University of Alabama

Third Place
Erica A. Hernandez
AmpSurf offers locals a new lease on life
University of Florida

Sports Writing (Small)

First Place
Kelly Coston
Senior Gibson thrills with speed on the field
Eckerd College

Second Place
Malena Carollo
Jenks serving up English
Eckerd College

This is how I spent my Monday night.

Yesterday, SPJ’s Generation J committee started soliciting logos that, you know, capture its essence. Here are the details.

So what’s the essence of Gen J?

Not a clue. It’s a committee of under-30 pro journalists who struggle mightily to represent that schizophrenic demographic – too old to care about college, not old enough to care about 401(k)s.

I’ve attended Gen J committee meetings before.

All I’ve really learned is that they call themselves Gen J, instead of Generation J. The rest of the meetings involve cultural references I can’t grasp. But they’re ambitious.

They’ve hosted some of the edgier sessions at SPJ conventions, and they update their SPJ blog several times a month – which is the most out of all 24 (yup, count ’em) blogs that SPJ keeps alive, although not exactly kicking.

Think you can design a better logo than me?

If so, you win a free year of SPJ membership. But I like my chances. Especially with this last one – I hear the ’70s are in again, and spanking never goes out of style. Or am I wrong about that last part?

The contest ends March 1. Here are those contest details one more time.

Two weeks ago, I played my first – and last – game of Words With Friends against a fellow journalist.

Gideon Grudo is a former editor at the student newspaper I advise at Florida Atlantic University. He’s now managing editor of Florida’s largest gay publication, which is only a few miles away.

So I know him well. And I know he doesn’t know words like anta, which he plunked down early in our game.

I texted him, “Anta? Seriously?”

“Anta is an architectural term defining posts, or some such,” he texted me back. “Learn something new everyday.”

(But not, apparently, that everyday should be every day in this usage.)

Gideon quickly followed up with khat (a flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa) and jee (a variant of gee, for the letter g).

Obviously, Gideon just dragged those letters onto the board to see what Words With Friends would accept.

Of course, he could’ve simply typed those letters into one of the many websites that’ll spit out obscure words for you. But I don’t believe Gideon is that ambitious.

Either way, playing Words With Friends is like playing chess against your computer and tapping “undo” whenever you make a stupid move. To wit…

You can tell yourself you’re learning something new “everyday,” but those lessons aren’t seared into your brain as if you made the same stupid move in front of a human being who immediately burns you for it – and perhaps gloats afterward.

Words With Friends is bad enough for average folks. But for journalists, it’s worse.

Making enemies of Words With Friends

This is my 15th year advising college journalists, and I’ve seen many fail because they had skill but no spine. You can’t succeed in this field if you fear having to issue a correction every now and again.

Words With Friends teaches journalists nothing. Scrabble, on the other hand, teaches them nerve.

Like poker, you can bluff in Scrabble: Lay down a bunch of letters that don’t spell a real word, and your opponent can challenge you. If he’s right, you lose a turn. But if he’s wrong, he loses a turn. And you can’t use a dictionary or a smartphone until the challenge is issued. Till that moment, you’re on your own.

I’m not the only journalist who values Scrabble over its diluted and distorted impersonator. Next weekend, SPJ South Florida hosts a free event called FWWF – short for F@%# Words With Friends.

If you’re in South Florida on Saturday afternoon, join them for Speed Team Scrabble, which pits two people at one tray, with a tight deadline of 30 seconds to lay down each word. SPJ will provide the Scrabble boards, referees, dictionaries, pizza, and craft beer. The winning duo receives a pair of $10 Amazon gift certificates.

Changing the world, one tile at a time

If you share SPJ South Florida’s outrage over the dumbing down of America’s word games, I implore you to sign our online petition demanding that Zygna, the creator of Words With Friends, allows players to butch up and…

    • set a time limit of 60 seconds to make a move.
    • disable the sissy function that reveals if you’re placing a real or fake word.
    • issue Scrabble-like challenges of real consequence.

We just want the option to play like thinking adults. Let the mindless masses keep their computer-assisted amusement that requires all the brain calories of tic-tac-toe. But give us something that truly embraces the can-do spirit that made this country great.

George Washington didn’t have GPS when he crossed the Delaware. Lincoln didn’t have spell-check when he wrote the Gettysburg Address. Is it too much to ask for a little personal responsibility in our word games?