Each fall we host several hundred students from across the region for a day on the Samford campus. We bring in industry leaders, mix them with our faculty and try to give the high school students a day of fun and a little learning.
Here are a few pictures.
Dr. Dennis Jones talks about newspaper design:
Samford alumnae, and CBS 42 reporter, Kaitlin McCulley leads a large session on broadcast reporting:
Kyle Whitmire, who recently joined The Birmingham News and al.com, talks about online journalism to this group:
Samford’s senior photographer, Caroline Summers talks about digital photojournalism. (Naturally I take a shaky picture of this.)
Buddy Roberts of The Leeds News & St. Clair News-Aegis has a full house for his sports reporting session.
Birmingham News business reporter Marty Swant discusses intermediate reporting.
Finally, and joined in progress, here is Dr. Julie Williams, who leads a session on beginning writing. She illustrates her first point by making peanut butter sandwiches. The people in the session have to help her.
What you don’t see is their order to open the bread. She grabs the back and rips it apart, flinging the bread everywhere. They tell her to tear off a paper towel, and she pinches off a corner of one sheet.
I edited that on my phone, while walking from one building to the next. This technology still amazes me.
There were other sessions, but they were all opposite mine, so I could not visit them. I talked about building an organization, staffing the newsroom and the various challenges and successes you have in school newsrooms. It was so gripped my room stayed three extra minutes.
