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Posts Tagged ‘LSU’

How networking helped land most of my jobs

Posted in Professional networking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 25, 2016| 10 Comments »

This continues my series on professional networking.

I credit my skills and hard work for most of the success I’ve achieved professionally. But my professional network has helped tremendously, too.

In this post, I’m going to run through the jobs I’ve landed and explain how my network helped me get most (but not all) of the jobs in my career:

Because my mother read the newspaper …

Chuck Offenburger, right, gave me my first job in journalism back in 1971.

Chuck Offenburger, right, gave me my first job in journalism back in 1971.

I was on a canoe trip in the summer of 1971, between my junior and senior years of high school, when my mother read a notice in the Evening Sentinel that Sports Editor Chuck Offenburger was looking for a sports writer. I didn’t know Chuck, and had no network connection to him. But Mom called the notice to my attention. I applied and I got the job (and Chuck and I remain friends).

But the network connection that mattered here was my mother. I’m not a fan of nepotism or family interference, which didn’t happen here. Mom didn’t even know Chuck. But she tipped me off to the first job of my journalism career. And Mimi has alerted two of our sons to opportunities that led to jobs for them. Listen to your mom. (more…)

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Dean Baquet: Don’t place tradition above mission

Posted in New York Times, tagged , , , on December 1, 2015| 2 Comments »

Dean Baquet

Dean Baquet addressing students and faculty at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication.

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, a New Orleans native, visited LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication Monday.

In an afternoon address, the Q&A that followed and in an informal chat with the staff of the Daily Reveille, Baquet expressed excitement about changes in journalism and stressed that our mission as journalists is more important than the platforms we publish on.

These tweets from Manship School students best summarize some of his key points:

For more detail, here are tweets from Baquet’s speech (including some interaction from Twitter):

 

Pictures from Baquet’s visit

I didn’t catch all of Baquet’s visit to LSU and Baton Rouge, but these tweets show the different groups he visited with.

The Reveille and Advocate both reported on Baquet’s afternoon speech. And here’s a video of the speech:

Dean Baquet from LSU Manship School on Vimeo.

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My students will learn about interactive storytelling tools, but I won’t teach them

Posted in Digital journalism tools, Journalism education, tagged , , , , , on October 17, 2014| 13 Comments »

I told faculty of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in January that one of their most important jobs was to help students learn for themselves how to use new tools. That’s what I’ll be doing next semester: I’ll be teaching without teaching.

Dean Sarah Bartlett had asked me to speak at a faculty meeting about what journalism graduates needed to succeed in digital media. Back then, I was thinking I’d be working the next several years at Digital First Media. A key point of my presentation was that students needed to learn how to use digital tools — not that a school needed to teach any particular set of tools, but that students needed to learn how to learn new tools by themselves. Whatever tools a journalism school teaches students, some of them will become obsolete before long, and new tools will come out soon after any student graduates. So it’s important that journalists have some experience and comfort with the process of figuring out how a tool works and how to use it to do better journalism.

Well, that Digital First thing didn’t last as long as I thought, so I’m teaching now. And next semester, I will be teaching a class in interactive storytelling tools. Only I won’t be teaching the students how to use the tools (some of them I may not know myself). Instead, I’ll be guiding the students in exploring how to learn new tools themselves. (more…)

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My next adventure: teaching at LSU

Posted in LSU, tagged , , , , on June 16, 2014| 50 Comments »

Steve ButtryThe next chapter of my career will be at Louisiana State University. After I wrap up my work at Digital First Media July 1, I will become the Lamar Family Visiting Scholar at LSU’s Manship School of Communication.

I have enjoyed teaching as a part-time pursuit for several years now. I am excited about making it my full-time job. I’ll be teaching, working with students on a social media project and working with other faculty and staff to improve digital journalism education at the school.

Jerry Ceppos, dean of the Manship School, emailed me the morning of April 2, as I was on the train to New York to get the word about DFM’s plans to shut down Thunderdome and eliminate more than 50 jobs. He asked if I’d be affected. I told Jerry that my job would be one of those eliminated, and he told me later that day that he wanted me to come to LSU as the Lamar Visiting Scholar at the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs. After a May visit to Baton Rouge and more emails and phone calls than I will bother to count, we sealed the deal this month.

I enjoyed the dynamic of teaching the first time I stood before a classroom at Central College in Pella, Iowa, in 1980. I taught two courses at Central in the 1980s as an adjunct professor, and ever since thought that might be something I’d like to do someday. (more…)

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