Can in-class 'zine launch careers?
(Feb. 14, 2003) For a second year, my Beat Reporting students will use a simple "webzine" to self-publish their stories about Boston and neighboring communities. Story drafts will be online for in-class users only. After students have an opportunity to discuss and revise the stories, we may offer selected articles to other online or print publications -- or take the whole site "public."
My original idea was that the site -- with the admittedly too-cute name Boston Beanbag -- would give the students a place to show their preliminary work to each other, then show their more polished work to the people they wrote about.
The only complaint I had was from one senior, who asked that I "hide" her work from public view a semester later. By then she knew she could do better and was embarrassed by her less-polished efforts. In case other students feel the same way, I've come up with a new approach: The first-draft site will remain "on-campus only," but the public page will carry only headlines and summaries. The Web links to revised full-length stories will go to versions mounted in the students' own Web spaces. That way they can revise stories as they see fit -- or delete them -- after I've recorded their final grades. (I'll have to come up with a carefully-worded disclaimer for that main page, I guess.) All of this is open to discussion by the students and anyone else who cares to send me a comment...
The best news: Another student, who had been too busy to write for the campus newspaper, brought her Beanbag "clippings" to a suburban paper's editor as writing samples. He read them, gave me a call, and offered her a real job, full-time, covering an interesting Boston suburb. Two months later, she has started a scrapbook of her "page one" bylines from a traditional "dead trees" newspaper!
Back to the bag: Why Boston Beanbag? (I did challenge the students to come up with a better name.) The Beanbag inspiration was the old Chicago newspaper column about "Mr. Dooley," who once said, "Politics ain't beanbag." If the students were all writing about politics, the name would make more sense. However, now I can add my own tagline: "Self-publishing ain't beanbag... It can get you a job!"
Go Independent: Meanwhile, for students seriously interested in launching their own online titles, I recommend a visit to TheIndependentPublisher.com. It's a how-to guide created by my former graduate assistant, Mac Slocum (M.A. 2002), as his master's project.
Note: An almost-amusing bug in Userland Radio causes the log to list this Feb. 14, 2003, entry as a continuation of a note made two months ago on the same day of the month.
8:47:40 PM 
|
