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| The NAA Foundation focuses on Newspaper In Education, newspaper youth content, scholastic journalism and diversity. In this blog, you'll learn about products, programs and resources that emphasize the use of newspapers and other media by young people. You'll also learn about programs and activities that can help news media companies transform their cultures in order to grow business and increase readership and audience. |
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Changes in Audit Bureau of Circulations qualifications and reporting approved by the ABC Board in March take effect on Oct. 1. With that in mind, the Foundation is hosting the "Updates on ABC and NIE" webinar on Aug. 10. John Murray, NAA vice president of audience development, gives an overview of what NIE professionals can expect from the ABC changes. Register now for this free session. Meanwhile, ABC provides a variety of helpful tools and resources tools to help prepare for the upcoming changes in the Newspaper Support Center.
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You aren't missing out if you missed the Virtual Young Reader Conference, or if you just missed a session. Presentations can be accessed through our webinar archive. The mix includes downloadable PowerPoints plus recordings of the session with the 2010 Young Reader Award winners.
Our Ideas Gallery showcases best practices in young-reader and diversity initiatives. Currently featured are eight different approaches to NIE fundraising. From purses to pets to books, NIE professionals are finding innovative ways to bring in much-needed revenue. Each downloadable PDF contains a brief description of the fundraiser as well as contact information for the people behind the projects.
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Happy New Year! The NAA Foundation is starting off 2010 with a number of projects.
The first concerns the current state of Newspaper In Education programs. We've launched an online survey to help us gather information for a report that will be written by Mary Arnold, a former Foundation staff member who now heads the journalism program at South Dakota State University. The report will look at how NIE programs are evolving and innovating amid the current industry challenges.
The survey includes questions on NIE budgets, staff size, circulation and more. If you haven't already taken it, we hope you will do so very soon. Also, please share the survey with anyone in the NIE community you think may have not received it.
March 1 is shaping up to be a big day - it not only marks the start of NIE Week, but it also is the deadline for two programs.
A teacher's guide, in-paper feature and Web banner ad are available for NIE Week 2010, which runs through March 5. Critical Thinking Through Core Curriculum: Using Print and Digital Newspapers, which is aligned with national learning standards, features a five-subject approach that takes advantage of the wide range of subjects covered by newspapers. Topics include financial literacy, nutrition, the environment, character education and information technology. Lessons can be taught individually or as a unit.
The March 1 deadlines involve News Challenge and the 2010 Young Reader Awards.
News Challenge, an innovative training session for upper-level college students interested in digital media, takes place the first week of June. The NAA Foundation pays all costs for participating students. Program objectives are to give students a sense of the digital and multimedia opportunities at newspapers and to interest them in working for the industry. If you have any ties with local colleges or know of students working part-time or as interns at your newspapers, please encourage them to apply.
The Young Reader Awards showcase new and noteworthy ideas in NIE and YEA programs. Seven award categories are available to U.S., Canadian and international newspapers and newspaper associations. "Young reader" refers to those up to age 18. Cost to enter is $30 per category.
Two serial stories are now available for Black History Month in 2010 and 2011. "Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told" and "The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage" by Walter Dean Myers are offered courtesy of HarperCollins Children's Books.
Speaking of serial stories, HarperCollins Children's Books also is providing 11 poems by Shel Silverstein for a serial to run in conjunction with National Poetry Month in April. Jennifer Hind of The Royal Gazette in Hamilton, Bermuda, is currently working on a teacher's guide. We hope to post the materials well in advance of Poetry Month, pending approval of the guide by the Silverstein estate.
And finally, have you checked out our new case study? It details how the "SchoolHouse News" program developed by the NIE department of The Patriot News in Harrisburg, Pa., helped improve the reading comprehension of local fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders. The report also offers suggestions for other newspapers interested in launching similar programs.
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This new e-newsletter from the NAA Foundation is designed to provide you with timely information about our young-reader and diversity initiatives. Watch your in box for regular updates about Foundation programs and products - research reports, curriculum guides, case studies, grants, training and more. You also can read Foundation Update on our blog.
Join Our NIE and Youth Editorial E-forums
The Foundation offers e-forums for Newspaper In Education professionals and youth editors. Both e-forums operate as part of NAA Community, a social network that lets users interact in a variety of ways.
Pressed for time and just want the e-forums? Simply register for NAA Community and participate through your personal e-mail system. Once you're registered, e-forum messages come straight to your in box, where you can read and respond. However, note that signing into Community allows you to share and download files, check the e-forum archives for past posts on multiple topics, read the Foundation blog and see what's in our photo gallery.
"The Foundation's forum for NIE has been a true go-to source for information about our industry," says Dana Plewka, educational services manager for The Denver Post. "This ‘old grey mare' had some difficulties getting through the learning curve, but now I can truly appreciate the robust features that the forum can offer, such as file sharing, blogs and the photo gallery. The ability to search past topics is a gold mine of ideas and support."
Note These Dates
Nov. 30, Youth Content Contest deadline: This contest recognizes original stories, artwork and photographs by students ages 13 and up who work with their local professional newspapers to produce youth content.
March 1, Young Reader Awards deadline: Designed to recognize, showcase and disseminate new and noteworthy ideas in NIE and YEA programs, this contest features seven award categories. U.S., Canadian and international newspapers and newspaper associations are eligible to enter. Winners receive travel stipends to attend the Young Reader Conference.
March 1-5, NIE Week 2010: As always, the Foundation will provide a free teacher's guide for this annual celebration of NIE. The 2010 guide will include lesson plans linked to national learning standards on financial literacy, nutrition, environment, character education and information technology. Each of the five units will contain lessons for three levels: grades three to five, grades six to eight and grades nine to 12. Teachers will be able to use all five lessons or just one. The guide, written by Hollister Kids, will be ready for download in early January.
May 6-8, Young Reader Conference: A full slate of programming for NIE and youth editorial professionals will be offered at the conference facility next door to the Foundation's office in Arlington, Va. Sessions will begin on Thursday afternoon and end at noon Saturday. The emphasis will be on new media technology as teaching tools, U.S. Department of Education trends and how to implement and lead change in young-reader programs.
Watch our Web site for details about these and other events.
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Are newspaper journalists hungry for online? That's the question addressed in a new study from the Media Management Center at Northwestern University, which looks at the digital attitudes of nearly 3,800 people in 79 U.S. newsrooms.
Results of "Life Beyond Print: Newspaper Journalists' Digital Appetite" reveal that most respondents are "eager to compete in a digital world." And the move from print to digital is not going fast enough for nearly half of them.
Specifically, the study offers six profiles of journalists:
- Digitals (12 percent) - "spend most of their time working online"
- Major Shift (11 percent) - "the most dissatisfied with their current state, more pessimistic about staying in the business long-term and want the most pronounced change"
- Moderately More (50 percent) - "want a roughly equal split between online and print"
- Status Quo (14 percent) - "believe the 30 percent of effort they contribute to online is sufficient and expect little disruption to the way they work now"
- Turn Back the Clock (6 percent) - "just wishes it would all go away"
- Leaders (5 percent) - "publishers, editors and managing editors ... their roles are primarily print-focused but want to shift to online."
The top two predictors of "digital appetite," according to the study, are "heavy Internet use outside work and having knowledge of online audiences and their preferences." Other predictors are: "openness to change at work and adaptability; proactive pursuit of the training necessary to learn online skills; [and] keeping up with company initiatives and industry developments."
Interestingly, researchers say that age is not a factor in digital appetite. Neither are experience and encroaching retirement: "[O]lder employees are just as likely to want to shift online as younger ones."
The key is Internet usage beyond the office. "... [T]he more engaged journalists are with the Internet on their own, the more eager they will be to transition to online at work."
Researchers advocate a more lenient attitude from management toward employees who surf the 'Net. "Leaders who want staff to be ready to go online should not punish them for frittering away a little down time at work online. In fact, they should be encouraged to edit video, tweet, upload mobile photos to Facebook pages and otherwise keep current in online trends."
They also urge managers to "educate staff about who [your] users are and what they want online. In doing so, you will develop employees who desire to do more online and will meaningfully bridge the gap between your print and digital staff."
Moreover, leaders should avoid "equating happy employees with those ready to change" and "devoting inordinate amounts of time to print loyalists."
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Career development these days calls for different tactics. Success involves identifying pockets of opportunity and strategically developing new skills. With that in mind, the NAA Foundation is presenting a free webinar on reinvention.
"Launching Your Reinvention Game Plan" (2 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 29) covers:
- Networking strategies, including building a network outside the immediate realm;
- How to get the momentum going;
- How to put together a reinvention budget and assemble an informal advisory board; and
- How to sustain the reinvention effort despite the demands of life.
This is the final installment of Foundation's "reinvention" webinar series with Pamela Mitchell, founder and CEO of The Reinvention Institute and a noted career reinvention expert. She has appeared on NBC's "Today" show and has been quoted in top media publications, including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, More and Black Enterprise. Prior to starting TRI, Mitchell spent nearly 15 years in senior-level roles for media and entertainment companies.
Again, the webinar is free but registration is required. Sign up here. If necessary, cut and paste this link into your browser: http://www.naa.org/Events/EventWebinarDetails.aspx?sitecoreID=%7bEA7502A1-0C8C-4695-94F4-00D0D41794A0%7d .
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John Sturm, president and CEO of NAA, reflects on the educational value of newspapers in his latest message to industry executives.
"It's one of the surest signs of approaching fall - scores of school buses on the streets as America's children head back to school," he writes. "Perhaps it is seeing those buses as I step outside to retrieve my morning paper, but this time of year also reminds me of the deep connection between newspapers and education. Daily newspapers are not only a valuable resource for information on local school issues and school sports. From reporting and editorials to investigative journalism, the newspaper medium is engrained in education curricula and remains a fixture in many classrooms across the nation."
Sturm's "Above the Fold" message appears in full on NAA's Web site, along with a column by Jay Mathews of The Washington Post. This portion of NAA's site is open to all. Remember, the Foundation's site is open to all 24-7.
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Twenty-one high school journalism instructors attended the NAA Foundation-funded Emerging Media Adviser Workshop June 19-21 at Ball State University.
Workshop participants learned how to write code, build Web sites practically from scratch, embed video, write for the Web and create photo galleries and slideshows that will draw students to the sites.
Check out the results here.
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Today's edition of NAA's Online Publishing Update newsletter features an item on something that might be helpful to those working with young journalists, or those seeking to polish their video reporting skills:
"YouTube has launched a Reporters' Center that houses instructional videos from professional journalists on how to handle video journalism challenges, such as shooting video with a cell phone, fact-checking and interview skills. The videos are aimed at citizen journalists. YouTube hopes the Reporters' Center will foster collaboration between citizen journalists and professional news organizations, Poynter reported."
Sources: Poynter, YouTube
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The Journalism Center on Children & Families has announced the winners of its 2009 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism. This annual awards program honors "distinguished coverage of disadvantaged children, youth and families," according to the Casey Web site.
The winning journalists, who hail from newspapers, television and other media, typically delve into a wide range of topics with tenacity, sensitivity, creativity and the utmost respect for sources. Among this year's winning efforts are stories about a 10-year-old growing up with bipolar disorder, the effect of industrial pollution on schoolchildren and the human cost of the economic downturn.
It all makes for compelling reading and viewing -- and excellent teaching material for those who seek to inspire young journalists.
-- By Marina Hendricks, NAA Foundation manager
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The NAA Foundation News Challenge was held May 31-June 5 at the University of Nevada-Reno. The intent was to give college students a sense of the opportunities at newspaper companies in digital media and to interest them in working in the industry.
Over the course of the week, the students heard from a number of digital executives and leaders, including Jennifer Carroll of Gannett Co., Gary Kebbel of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Chris Hendricks of The McClatchy Co., Kerry Oslund of Schurz Communications and Eric Brown of ImpactGames.
The "challenge" portion of the workshop divided the students into three teams, each charged with developing a news game that would enhance understanding of current events while also being fun to play. Teams had to develop a concept, outline the proposed audience, develop a marketing plan and present the business model, outlining revenue potential. Each team also had an industry professional who served as a mentor.
The first game was "Jack Brown, Secret Agent," in which Brown travels to different hot spots, trying to capture Mexican drug lords, for instance, or stop North Korean missiles. While playing, users learn more about each of these topical issues.
The second game was tied to the release of the forthcoming film "2012," which predicts the end of the world. Players travel to different parts of the globe, get clues and essentially try to stay alive.
The last game, "Unemployment Joe," was a retro, Pac Man-like game in which a character loses his job and then learns about employment Web sites, how to apply unemployment benefits and more. It was also a template that could be used with a number of issues and easily be localized.
We will post the presentations for all three games, plus photos from the week and more, on the NAA Foundation Web site (http://www.naafoundation.org/) and in NAA Community soon.
And in case you're wondering, "Unemployment Joe" was the winner.
- Jeanne Fox-Alston, vice president, NAA Foundation
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Editor's note: This is the last in a three-part series on digital tools that already have or potentially could have an impact on NIE.
The social networking Web site Twitter has been deemed both a blessing and a passing fad.
Users post - "tweet" is the correct term - updates from their computers or cell phones to a group of subscribing "followers." The catch? Updates must be no longer than 140 characters each.
In a world where more than 1.8 million people (and counting) follow actor Ashton Kutcher's every thought, could professionals benefit from this service? Some already have.
Laura Walker, who works at a school near London, thinks Twitter can help educators. Alan Wilbourn, public information officer with Fayetteville (Ark.) Public Schools, is a Twitter user who posts updates regarding school system news. Some teachers have already made Twitter a part of the classroom.
In addition to having a Twitter account for news, The Post-Standard in Syracuse set up a Twitter account for its Voices section, which is written by and for area teens.
And the mass migration to Twitter doesn't stop at professionals. Carmel (Ind.) High School's school newspaper created a Twitter page to provide news updates.
The system is in place. Only time will tell if Twitter becomes (or remains) a viable tool.
-- By Rashad Mulla, NAA Foundation intern
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Editor's note: This is the second of a three-part series on digital tools that already have or potentially could have an impact on NIE.
With the newspaper industry in the midst of an Internet-induced makeover, another tool is positioning itself to jump into the mix.
Amazon's new Kindle DX handheld reading device can store 3,500 books and features a 9.7-inch screen, but the aesthetics are not all that's new. Textbooks, magazines and - yes - newspapers are all finding a home on the Kindle.
Randy Bennett, NAA senior vice president of business development, recently discussed the Kindle on Bloomberg News. See the Digital Edge blog post here.
Ryan Kim of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote on May 7 that The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe "have signed on for a pilot program in which they will offer reduced-price subscriptions to select customers outside their traditional delivery area[s]."
Can the Kindle save newspapers? Here are yes and no takes on the subject.
-- By Rashad Mulla, NAA Foundation intern
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Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part series on digital tools that already have or potentially could have an impact on NIE.
Over the last few years, e-editions have become the primary cog in some NIE programs. These digital versions of newspapers cost less for consumers (subscriptions) as well as newspapers (printing), educators recently told reporter Ann Work of the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Some newspapers are beginning to take their e-editions to the next level.
Maria Ravera, director of audience development at The Sacramento Bee, charted the success of her paper and others during an NAA webinar on April 21 (see PowerPoint presentation here).
She found that papers such as The Orange County (Calif.) Register, the Houston Chronicle, The Denver Post and USA Today all have comprehensive e-edition services.
Papers such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution have upgraded their NIE programs to include - and sometimes feature - e-editions, while papers such as the Austin American-Statesman, The Huron Daily Tribune in Bad Axe, Mich., and The Boston Globe are focusing on possible benefits (going green and free access to e-editions for paid subscribers and newspaper employees).
With the NIE and newspaper industry landscape changing quickly, The Bee itself is engaged in these and many other digital endeavors.
- By Rashad Mulla, NAA Foundation intern
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Ever wonder what goes on inside the minds of the youngest newspaper readers? John Humbird Elementary School students in Cumberland, Md., can provide a glimpse.
During the school's recent career day, students from grades three through five heard from Cumberland Times-News reporter Brigette Cosgrove in addition to other professionals.
In a May 2 Times-News article, reporter Kevin Spradlin documented the students' pleasure at coming away with newfound nuggets of knowledge. Among other things, students learned about the "five Ws" (who, what, when, where, why), the types of stories the newspaper covers and the hard work needed to become a professional journalist.
One student said his teacher brought a newspaper for the class to read every week.
Judging by the student responses, it's probably not a bad move.
-- By Rashad Mulla, NAA Foundation intern
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