Sources:
Joyce Knight
Director, Disability Support Services
jbknight@vcu.eduRocky Dailey
Instructor, School of Mass Communications
radailey@vcu.eduMike Harris
Head Sports Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch
mharris@timesdispatch.comInside a newspaper job
Mentoring shows students what happens in a newsroom
By Bobby McBride
For years, I have been a big sports fan and would like to be a television sports broadcaster. So last month, when I was selected to participate in Mentoring Day at the
Richmond Times-Dispatch, I was happy to see my assignment: I got to spend the day with Mike Harris, the newspaper’s new sports editor.
On October 18, 2006, about seven students from across Virginia came to the main building of the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper to participate. This is an event held for those students with disabilities who are seeking a job in journalism.
At the beginning of the day, students introduced themselves to some of the newspaper’s employees, and were each sent to the head of a certain section of the newspaper, which was determined based on each student’s journalism aspirations. Each student got to spend two hours with their section leader, and got to oversee what he/she was doing at his/her job.
One of the key things students got to attend was the morning business meeting, where
all of the section leaders met up to discuss what the day’s paper would look like,
what stories would be in it, and where each story would be located. Also, John Dillion, the deputy editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, displayed a slide show on a screen that consisted of several newspapers that had their front pages showing, in order to show the writers how newspaper are designed. Writers here are given the chance to critique the paper’s look.
After the students’ period of time with their section leader was up, they ate lunch before they turned in their resumes that they did in college and discussed about them.
One of the main people responsible for choosing the students who would represent Virginia Commonwealth University at this event is Joyce Knight, the director of Disability Support Services at the university. When I asked Knight about how the event would work, she did a rough summary of it.
Knight also said that if students do this event, not only would they get their knowledge about the job they want to go for, they would have the chance to get their picture in the newspaper.
Another person helping out selecting these students is Rocky Dailey, an instructor at VCU’s School of Mass Communications.
“The way they’re chosen is, when a student comes to our class who has been through the program, they need to give us paperwork if we need to make adjustments for the class, whether it’s more time to take exams, things like that, so we know usually because of that if a journalism student will fit that criteria,” Dailey said.
With a huge amount of technology that students have to learn in order to get the hand of
doing the job, Dailey considers this event to be an important part of VCU’s Disability Awareness Month.
“I think it’s very important, because again, this is an opportunity for students who want to go into journalism who may be apprehensive about going into journalism, because it’s a very dead lined focus industry, and there’s a lot of technology. It may be their concern before trying it then. It’s something they can’t do, and hopefully this type of event will get them in touch to let them know there are opportunities for everyone to get into journalism; in most cases, very minor modifications,” Dailey said.
In this case, the demands for the head of the sports section of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Harris, can be very demanding.
“I have to go to a lot of meetings,” Harris said. “My main goal during these meetings is to not to go to sleep.”
Harris had recently been hired as the new sports editor of the paper. While Harris was at his new post, he described how a section of the newspaper is written.
We are given a series of blank pages,” Harris said. “The layout will tell us how much space is available for a section of the newspaper, as well as ad placements.”
Also, writers have to budget ideas for stories before beginning work on them, as well as answering any e-mails that come up in their inboxes.
While I was at Harris’s desk, I saw him working on the brief outlooks of most of the state’s college football teams, such as the Virginia Cavaliers and the Virginia Tech Hokies. Of all sports, Harris favors college basketball the best.
