SPRING CONFERENCE When 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, April 28 Where Campus Life Building, NIU, DeKalb. Map Cost $20 (includes lunch) Parking Free. Use the NIU visitors lot. Map. Tell attendant you're with the NINA conference. Registration Deadline is Friday, April 21. Call Dana at 815-753-1564, or e-mail dditrichs@niu.edu.     NINA home Newsletters Board Members Member Newspapers Bylaws Contests Calendar Job Listings (via the Northern Star) Journalism Links Job Hunter's Guide About NINA Contact Us

 

Having trouble hiring reporters for your newsroom? Then try your own backyard.

That's the message Jim Jennings will spell out at the April 28 Spring Conference sponsored by the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association.

Jennings will outline a nontraditional solution to recruiting and hiring talent for the newsroom. As vice president and editorial director for Thomson Newspapers, he has helped develop a training program that can be customized for any newspaper job and allows newspapers to recruit from their own circulation area.

Joining Jennings will be Trevor Brown, dean of the School of Journalism at Indiana University and chairman of the Accrediting Committee for the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

Brown agrees that it has become more difficult to persuade journalism graduates to consider smaller markets, and the Thomson approach might be one solution.

Brown also will discuss the accrediting mission for journalism schools and the current effort to re-examine how standards are measured. For years, standards focused on staffing levels and the resources needed to produce quality graduates. The new emphasis will be on the finished product: Are journalism grads well-prepared?

Jennings will explain the background and goals and will share the curriculum used for Reader Inc., an editorial training center set up in Oshkosh, Wis., for Thomson papers. The center has graduated its first class of reporters, who now are working at hometown papers.
Thomson advertised for and easily found community residents who wanted to be reporters but had no formal training. Those who passed an initial screening enrolled in a 19-week course. Participants included a minister, two lawyers, a prison officer and a pizza delivery driver. Their average age is 36.

Jennings sees the training center as the first of its kind in North America. He had hopes of eventually opening the center to other papers, but the future of Reader Inc. is now uncertain. Thomson recently announced it is selling off all its U.S. papers. Jennings has put Reader Inc. on hold ... but not the idea.

Jennings still believes the training center provides an important alternative to papers that are having a hard time hiring -- especially reporters who have knowledge of and a commitment to their communities.

The NINA conference begins at 9:30 a.m. at the Campus Life Building at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Payment may be made at the door, but advance registration is required by Friday, April 21.

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SPRING 2000 NEWSLETTER