Newsletter
Fall 1997 Issue
Fall convention features Pulitzer-winning reporter
Deborah Nelson, one of three Seattle Times reporters who shared this
year's Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, headlines NINA's Fall
Convention Oct. 24 at Northern Illinois University.
Nelson is a 1975 NIU graduate and a former Northern Star reporter. Prior
to her move to Seattle, she worked at the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
and the Chicago Sun-Times.
About a year and a half ago, Nelson received a telephone tip from someone
at nearby Tulalip Indian Reservation. The caller told her to check out a
huge, taxpayer-funded home built for the reservation's housing director
and her husband. The house wasn't visible from the road, so Nelson and a
photographer hiked through the woods .
The house they found turned out to be the tip of the iceberg in a nationwide
tale of mismanagement of Indian housing programs within the U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development.
The resulting series of stories, published last December, prompted a federal
investigation into HUD's Indian housing programs -- and earned Nelson and
two other reporters the Pulitzer.
In her keynote address Oct. 24, Nelson will discuss how the prize-winning
series came about, as well as the state of investigative reporting in newspapers.
Nicarico symposium
The day's second feature will be a symposium on the controversial aftermath
of the Jeanine Nicarico murder trial.
It has been more than 14 years since the 10-year-old Naperville girl was
murdered. During those years since her death, two men, Alejandro Hernandez
and Rolando Cruz, were convicted of the murder, sent to prison, put on death
row and ultimately set free about two years ago.
In December 1996, three DuPage County assistant state's attorneys and four
sheriff's officers who worked on the case were indicted for conspiracy to
conduct official misconduct and obstruction of justice.
Among those talking about the media's role in those events will be Chicago
Tribune columnist Eric Zorn; Sun-Times reporter Tom Frisbee; and Hal Dardick,
a Tribune reporter and Press Publications columnist. Frisbee and Dardick
are writing books about the case.
When: Friday, Oct. 24
Where:
NIU Campus Life
Building, corner of
Lucinda and Normal.
Schedule
8:30 a.m.
Registration
9 a.m.
Keynote: Deborah
Nelson
10:15 a.m.
Symposium on the
Nicarico case
Noon
Awards luncheon
2 p.m.
Reception
Registration
$55 for one person, $25 for each additional person. Includes luncheon, refreshments
and parking. See the registration form inside.
Membership open to college papers
As part of its renewed emphasis on journalism education, NINA is offering
free membership to college newspapers in northern Illinois. Editors or advisers
may call the NIU Communication Department at (815) 753-1712 for membership
information.
In addition, students are being invited to participate in NINA's first-ever
general excellence competition for college newspapers. Entry forms have
been mailed and winners will be announced at the Oct. 24 luncheon.
NINA to expand training, resources for members
By John Etheredge
NINA President
I would like to think a lot of the necessary "nitty gritty" work
is now behind the NINA board of directors.
The new board committees have been named, a new mission statement drafted,
and a revised association constitution and set of by-laws await your vote
at our annual fall conference next month.
With that work out of the way, our board, with the help of the NIU Department
of Communication, now has the opportunity to achieve our overriding goal
of providing our member newspapers an even better value for their annual
membership and contest dues. I think we are well positioned to reach that
goal.
Here are a few of the reasons for my optimism:
* Our new programs committee, chaired by Cheryl Wormley of the Woodstock
Independent, is putting together what promises to be an outstanding fall
conference (see cover).
* Our new education committee, chaired by Rick Nagel of Press Publications,
is making no small plans. Nagel details his committee's efforts to establish
the first ever NINA internship network, but I will add as a committee member
we also plan to schedule up to three training forums for working journalists
next year. The committee is also exploring ways to increase NINA scholarships
to journalism students and has discussed the possibility of inviting journalists
and educators to a joint symposium at NIU. The purpose of the event would
be to develop an action plan for improving grammar skills of high school
and college students.
* Our new resource committee, chaired by Dr. Lois Self, a board member and
chairman of the NIU Department of Communication, is studying the possible
establishment of a resource base which would allow our members to access
information on a variety of useful topics.
* Jim Killam, adviser to the Northern Star, was officially hired by our
board last month to the new position of communications coordinator. Among
Killam's duties will be to oversee the regular publication of this newsletter,
our primary means of informing our members of the association's increasing
activities.
Historically, NINA's combined fall conference and awards luncheon always
has been our association's best-attended event of the year. But through
the scheduling of additional training sessions and other activities our
board is aiming to provide members with still more reasons for belonging.
I think we already have a lot in our favor. One of the key advantages that
NINA has over other professional newspaper organizations is that we are
the one closest to our members. To attend one of our conferences or seminars,
staff members don't have to lose a full day of work and publishers don't
have to raise the cost of subscriptions to pay the registration fees. The
board is committed to continuing that low admission pricing policy.
As a regional organization, many of our members face the same issues--especially
in growing and increasingly competitive suburban markets--and can benefit
by interacting at our meetings and seminars with staffers from their "neighbor"
newspapers.
I think geography and the tradition of low costs for members are huge pluses
for NINA. Now we're going to build on what we have.
John Etheredge is news editor of the Ledger-Sentinel in Oswego. Contact him at (630) 554-8573.
Here's an internship program worth more than a bad banquet meal
By Rick Nagel
NINA 2nd Vice President
One sleepless night before contest deadline. Two conferences a year -- the
big one and the one you skip.
Three plastic-looking green beans on a plastic luncheon plate.
Four wooden plaques to carry home.
Five beers to celebrate that contest time is over ...
For many years, this is what NINA meant to me -- a good seminar, a bad lunch
and a second chance to win awards for a staff I felt deserved recognition.
For a while, there were rumblings about petitions and protests of NIU policies,
but as far as I could tell, the contest and convention were all NINA did.
Since joining the NINA board last year, I have come to learn that, well,
yes, that's basically all NINA did.
Maybe that's all you think we do now. It isn't. In the last few months,
we've changed our mission statement, established a new committee structure
and set ambitious long- and short-term goals -- most of which are aimed
at advancing journalism education and training.
As chairman of the Education Committee, my job is to make progress in four
categories: scholarships, internships, continuing education and advising
educators on curriculum. Here's what we've done so far:
* Lonny Cain of the Ottawa Daily Times will put together a training forum
for NINA reporters on "How to conduct better interviews," which
will be held Thursday, Jan. 22, at the Daily Herald offices in Arlington
Heights.
* Rick Baert of the Daily Herald is drafting a letter to be sent to regional
school district, college and university administrators calling for a conference
to address a problem newspapers see frequently -- a decline of writing discipline
in the Information Age.
* NINA President John Etheredge of the Ledger Sentinel is looking at ways
to expand the amounts we give in scholarships. And Kim Kubiak of the Sycamore
News has volunteered to sit on the NIU committee that determines which NIU
students get NINA scholarships -- an important step in trust, partnership
and accountability.
My job is to develop an internship network for NINA members -- and that,
believe it or not, is the topic of this column. (Proposed headline: "Nagel
sets record for longest delayed lead in history."
My guess is that a lot of NINA-member newspaper editors and department heads
would like to have the high-quality, affordable help that interns can provide.
I'm also willing to bet we don't take on as many interns as we would like
because (a) it takes time and effort to do the training and paperwork; (b)
it takes time, effort and sometimes money to advertise for and interview
intern candidates; and (c) the interns don't always show up on time or perform
so well.
Often, newspaper managers would like to provide internships because, frankly,
we are such wonderful human beings. We know it can help a future reporter,
photographer, ad rep or page designer gain clips or experience. But building
a structured internship program -- one that would really help the student
improve -- takes, you know, time and effort.
What NINA would like to do, in the best interest of all possible worlds,
is to provide the means to make internships easy for you. We'll do the networking
and searching. We'll set up the program and offer E-Z step-by-step instructions
for managers. We'll find the interns who meet your requirements: paid or
for course credit, high school or college student, academic achiever or
student newspaper ace, graphics designer or display ad rep.
Ideally, the NINA network would help students by offering more internships
and better-quality internship programs. By acting as an organization rather
than as individual newspapers, we can create consistent criteria for performance
and evaluation, offer a service that will save time for harried newspaper
managers and build a reputation that will help us draw the best talent from
the best journalism schools.
That's the vision. The first step in making it happen is a questionnaire
that will be distributed to all NINA member publications. If a questionnaire
doesn't cross your desk soon, you can get a copy by calling me at (630)
530-6435, Jim Killam at (815) 753-4239 (e-mail jkillam@niu.edu) or visit
our Web site at www.star.niu.edu/nina.
The one-page questionnaire asks five multiple-choice questions, with the
option of filling in more information if you've got more to say. It will
take, I'm not kidding, two minutes to complete and drop in the mail.
The only other task I'm asking of members is that, if you already have an
established internship program, send copies of any materials you've developed
to me, c/o Press Publications, 112 S. York St., Elmhurst, IL 60126. Seeing
the material will help us build an internship network that is in harmony
with the program you've developed.
With luck, this internship program will be one of many services NINA will
provide its members.
And NINA will come to mean more to you than a wooden plaque, a sleepless
night or a hill of beans.
Rick Nagel is editor in chief of Press Publications, Elmhurst.
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