Hawthorne High School’s Journalism class and Journalism Club, attended the Journalism 101 workshop sponsored by The Record/North Jersey Media Group at The Record headquarters in Woodland Park on Thursday, May 1, 2014. The trip offered students the opportunity to learn news writing from professionals and to partake in the behind-the-scenes workings of the newspaper.
The students were greeted by Joe Dziublenski, the production copy editor of the paper, who gave a tour through the editorial offices. During the three-hour program, the journalism students were introduced at half-hour intervals to writers and editors who explained their field and the processes involved in their work.
The first speaker was Better Living editor, Marc Schwarz. After explaining the process of story assignment and the production schedule, Schwarz gave the students tips to improve their own writing. He reminded students to always remember the needs of the reader. “You know something the reader does not,” he explained. “Ask yourself, ‘Why am I writing this? What is new here that my audience does not know?'” He also recommended that news writers read their stories aloud before publishing them. This helps the writer hear awkward or confusing sentences.
The next speaker was Hannan Adely, staff writer, who spoke about news reporting and writing. She defined her writing method as taking the core of a local story and finding the larger theme within it. For example, Adely’s assignment on this day, on which a destructive senior prank in Teaneck High School was front page news, was to write about senior pranks in general. When asked by HHS journalism student Natalie Tousignant, “How do you find people to interview?” Adely explained that she can’t wait for a story to hit before making contacts. She is always building her network, attending town meetings, introducing herself to town and school officials, exchanging information, following up and keeping in touch.
The students then sat in on a morning news meeting, where the assignment editors met with Record Editor Martin Gottlieb to discuss potential stories for the next day’s edition of the paper. During the meeting, the editors went over the lead story about senior pranks and reviewed the purpose of headlines in articles. Each editor, presented the top stories that were being covered that day as Gottlieb made suggestions about what to include and how best to cover the story. This meeting gave the students an up-close look at the news in action.
Following the meeting, the Journalism class met with news assignment editor Christina Joseph Robinson. Robinson discussed story ideas and development and offered tips on how to find strong topics and develop them by digging behind the surface story you hear on news shows. Robinson also emphasized the importance of following a lead and the equal importance of fact checking all information.
The last speaker of the day was Renee Ernst, The Record’s social media editor. Her job consists of running the paper’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as keeping the articles live online. She also spends a lot of time censoring comments on the Record’s online site. Additionally, Ernst creates reports by analyzing the online information so she can understand the most popular pages and stories as well as the most valuable commenters.
According to HHS senior Robert Dutzar, “It was really cool seeing and hearing everything that goes on. Because I want to get into the industry, it shows what I might do.”
Journalism Club advisor, Theresa DiGeronimo, accompanied the students on the trip and was very satisfied with the experience. “All the people we met at The Record were so kind to share their time and expertise with our students. They spoke to us as reporters, interested in learning more about the world of newspaper writing and publishing. It was an extremely successful field trip.”