Back at Elon!

So, first of all, I want to make it known that we were done with production before 11 p.m. tonight. It was the greatest night of my life.

Getting to go to the CMA conference was such a great experience for me. I got so many new ideas that I want to try at The Pendulum, and I can’t wait to share the things that I learned with the other executive staff members.

We always talk about “taking more design risks” with the Style section and the Sports section, but no one is ever really sure where to go from there. Do we throw in a random font that may not make sense to someone not on staff? Do we tilt photos? (Different staff members will tell you different answers to this one!) The sessions at the conference gave me so many new ideas on how to take risks with our newspaper, but risks that will pay off and not just be a one-time thing that doesn’t work out.

It’s a major plus that, in addition to learning all these cool new things we can do (which I’m not revealing in this blog so that they’ll be new(!) and exciting(!) when they’re actually in our paper), I got to strengthen my friendship with some of our staff members, and of course, our adviser. This was probably one of the best things about the whole trip, wandering around New York with some of the best people.

While New York was definitely a blast, I’m so excited to be back at Elon and ready to take our paper to new places!

-Kristen Case

Goodbye NYC

Now we are all back at Elon and its time to share what we’ve learned from the convention. I really enjoyed my time there and I know my fellow peers did as well. There was a ton of staff bonding and we all got to go to really cool talks that applied to our interests and positions in the paper. I learned a lot on social media. One example of something I didn’t realize is the Facebook algorithm. ESPN only updates their Facebook page seven times a week. They pick only the best to post. Posts that will get a lot of feedback or likes because the more activity a post gets the more you will appear on peoples news feed. This is one of the great things we can implement at The Pendulum.

-Elizabeth Nerich

Session 9: Schmoozing With the Stars (and an Ode To New York)

The CMA Conference ended in all the perfect ways.

Monday night brought with it a delicious dinner at Three Monkeys with Elon alumni, all of whom gave great career advice and really alleviated some of my fears about the summer internship search. The best part, though, was strolling the streets of Times Square with Kate, Elizabeth and Kristen that night. I have yet to experience a more electric place than Times Square, and getting to enjoy it with three of my favorite girls was so much fun. I’m so grateful to The Pendulum and Colin Donohue for allowing us to roam the city and have fun outside the walls of the Sheraton New York. It made all the difference, and turned our trip to the CMA Conference from interesting to unforgettable.

Tuesday morning, too, was a perfect end to the conference itself. I attended one last session — “Schmoozing With the Stars: How to Break Through the Actor and Interview the Person” — led by Jeff Giles, executive editor at Entertainment Weekly. It was, without question, my favorite session of the conference. One thing that set Jeff apart from most of the session leaders was that he really answered everyone’s questions. There were so many instances throughout the conference when a question would be asked, the session leader would start on the right track, then end up somewhere completely different (most of their answers would end with, “Not sure if I answered your question,” which is slightly disheartening).

It was extremely refreshing to chat with Jeff, because those of us who had questions got them answered directly and concisely, assisted by Jeff’s sense of humor and overwhelming arsenal of pop culture knowledge (which probably makes sense, considering the publication for which he works).

This last session was a near-perfect conclusion to the CMA Conference. Attending nine different sessions provided me with knowledge about summer internships, the post-graduation career hunt and, most importantly, how to improve The Pendulum beyond the great product we have now. I learned so much about further transforming The Pendulum into a full-blown news organization — receiving criticism on two of our editions from this semester was more helpful than I could have anticipated.

I truly can’t wait to return to The Pendulum next week with these lessons in mind. We’re winding down our school year soon, but I know we can start implementing these changes immediately to help The Pendulum flourish in the future. And I’m so, so grateful to have had the chance to attend this year’s CMA Conference. I strengthened my friendships with three wonderful, hard-working staff members (and our advisor, of course!), while simultaneously stockpiling a ton of great information for working on The Pendulum, and as a journalist in general.

Until next time, New York!

–Rebecca Iannucci

It was fun, NYC!

First of all, I would like to point out that I’ve been up since 4 a.m. for a flight home (thanks Colin, ha!) and am quite tired, so if anything in this post seems unreasonable, my apologies.

The conference, overall, was an awesome experience. I think that all Pendulum staffers who attended learned a lot that could definitely be implemented at The Pendulum really quickly. I have learned about various story ideas and new ways to approach an “old” idea for a story. We need to brainstorm more! We also don’t need to be afraid of stepping out of our comfort zone to attempt something never done before, such as a story about sexual health, relationships or love. I think this has the potential to bring in more of a student-base of readers, which is something that we, as a student news organization, should really strive to achieve.

I think that the newspaper critique that we received about two of our newspapers from this semester could provide some excellent insight to the future of the newspaper as a whole. A lot of what was pointed out were items that I know have been discussed before, but that have also not really been implemented into the daily happenings of The Pendulum. I hope that this conference and what we learned from the sessions, as well as the critique, to actually change things. I am determined, and I know that Elizabeth, Rebecca and Kristen are as well.

- Kate Riley

Session 8: How to Write the Fake News (Opening Keynote)

There are few things more awesome to me than when I get to meet and/or listen to someone who works for one of my favorite TV shows. I think it comes from the pop culture geek in me, but anytime I get a sneak peek at life behind the scenes of a TV show, I completely fan out.

Such was the case with today’s opening keynote for the CMA Conference, “How to Write the Fake News,” led by Zhubin Parang and Hallie Haglund, two writers for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I absolutely love both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, especially because they shed such necessary light on our government, our media and the state of our world in general. I’ve always really admired the writing staffs for each show, because having to find a punchline every day for every current event seems like the exact opposite of an easy task. They have my complete respect, and my crossed fingers during the Emmys.

So, sitting in a room with two Daily Show writers was a big deal. As expected, both Zhubin and Hallie were hysterical throughout the 90-minute keynote, and shared a lot of interesting stories about the writing process for The Daily Show, how they interact with each other, how they come up with that day’s jokes, etc.

The only thing was, though… they didn’t really explain how to write the fake news. And on top of that, not all of us want to write the fake news for a living. When I think of a keynote, I think of an all-encompassing speech that gives advice and inspires people and pushes people to go out and do something. But Zhubin and Hallie really did neither, which was such a shame. For those in the audience who do want to end up writing satirical political comedy, they probably left feeling like they didn’t actually learn how to do so. And for those of us who want to end up in an entirely different field of journalism, how did this keynote help us in our careers?

I think, ultimately, I expected the keynote to be more general. For Zhubin and Hallie to talk about the challenges they faced breaking into the industry; what they would do differently if they were back in college; what we should do as college students to get our names out there and be noticed. Instead, the keynote was narrowly tailored. And while I got some great entertainment out of it (and walked away with a handful of mental notes), I’m not sure I would have attended the keynote if it weren’t required. If only I wanted to go into the funny business of fake news writing.

–Rebecca Iannucci

How to Write the Fake News

I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t have a lot to say about this session. This was supposed to be the opening keynote, and I was under the impression that it was supposed to be more general and something that catered to a lot more people. Hallie Haglund and Zhubin Parang who are both writers for The Daily Show basically spent the whole hour and a half talking about Jon Stewart and what their day-to-day life is like. Which is great and everything if you’re interested in comedy or comedy writing, but I’m not in the least. I didn’t learn anything that might be useful for me, and was actually rather bored the whole time. I may have spent a good portion of the session – because that is what it turned in to – engaged with my phone. It was basically just a question-and-answer session, where Hallie and Zhubin couldn’t even get through much of an answer before there was someone else who had a question.

The one thing I did learn: you shouldn’t try to be clever and witty when asking questions of comedy writers. Dumb.

On the upside, Hearst tour tomorrow! Then lunch with Rebecca for our last hour or so in the city and it’s back to Maryland for me. Bittersweet, because I’m leaving New York City but I get to see my family and eat lots of delicious home-cooked food! (Which I have been craving for weeks, ask anyone in the office.)

-Kristen Case

Hot Pages: What’s Trending in College Design

This may have been the most exciting session of the day, not because it was particularly compelling or anything, but because The Pendulum was featured in it! Randy Stano, who led the session, talked about the popular trends in college newspaper design and what works in design. He also talked briefly about what didn’t work, but the focus was on the good things that papers were doing.

It was great to know that a page from our newspaper made it into his presentation, that he deemed it good enough to mention, but I didn’t agree at all! It was an inside page, from the Sept. 14th edition, and it had zero art on the page. There were two SGA stories on it (which he dinged us for, because both used “SGA” in the headlines and that’s a no-no), one of which had a more online box, the briefs, a correction box and the calendar. That was it. It’s the kind of page that makes me so unhappy because there wasn’t a single picture. Just a lot of boring text. He praised us for being able to work with so much text and the fact that the page had good horizontal and vertical movement, which were both valid points. I just wish there had been art, or that we had managed to get recognized for a more interesting page! There have been so many other great pages that I wish could have made it in to his presentation, and instead we had a page with no art. Sad face.

He really emphasized that we don’t have to be so serious and that we can take risks with our papers because we are still in college and don’t need to be stuck on being stuck up.

ALSO! He had these great examples of turning things sideways! Which we’re totally going to implement at the paper. It’s something that you can really only do once or twice a year and for something great, but it’s going to happen! Look out for sideways Pendulum pages in the future.

-Kristen Case

Session 7: The A-List

There are some sessions that just… flop. This was one of them.

“The A-List: Landing Interviews with Presidents, Rock Stars and Hollywood’s Elite,” led by Sharon Santus of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, sounded like it had some awesome potential. As an aspiring entertainment journalist, it’s really important to me that I know how to approach celebrities (or their publicists) and ask for an interview, no matter how long. It’s a super-crucial part of the process to land interviews with people, and knowing how to do that with celebrities would be wildly beneficial.

But Sharon’s session never quite got off the ground. It could have been that she stuck to the generic PowerPoint structure, leaving the bullet points and pictures to do all the talking. Or it could have been that, five minutes into the session, Sharon truly could not speak at all — she’s currently battling a cold, and somehow lost her voice just after the session began. It took nearly 10 minutes for her to regain her speaking ability, which included much awkward silence and some sad moments in which people got up and left. Kate and I stuck out the session, but it ultimately included more name-dropping on Sharon’s part than anything else. Her step-by-step process for landing interviews was helpful, and I’m glad I have the notes as reference. But the session lost its way early on, and never quite got back on the right track.

–Rebecca Iannucci

Get That Job

This was one of the session that lived up to my expectations almost completely. I didn’t expect to be a super thrilling session, but I figured it was one that I could come away with a lot from it, and I was totally right. It was all about breaking into the magazine industry in New York as a designer.

Some of the main things that I took away from it were that the design staffs are fairly small, so creatives have to “wear a lot of hats.” Also, the panel, which was made up of Leah Bailey and Dennis Wynn, assured the audience that you can exist on a freelance salary. Everyone seems to have this idea that being a freelancer means that you’re working out of the corner of your bedroom on occasion, but that’s not the case at all. They both were adamant that freelancing just means you’re paying for your own insurance, and it was just a status on how you get your check, it’s still a full-time job. Another big thing they emphasized was that magazine design is all about working from a proactive stand-point, instead of the reactive designing that happens at a newspaper. The art directors at magazines do a lot more dictating what visual content and photos go on a page.

They also talked a lot about portfolios, and I took away a lot of things that I’m going to implement in my working portfolio.

-Kristen Case

Chicken Salad Part II

Koretzky impressed me so much yesterday that I was seriously looking forward to today’s Chicken Salad session. I didn’t see how it was too different from yesterday’s session, other than rewriting ledes, but I was excited nonetheless.

He definitely talked about a lot of useful things in his session. But the big things I took away from it weren’t about design in the least. The major things that I got from it were that 1.) we’re right to emphasize NOT putting dates at the top of your story unless it’s really, really relevant and 2.) stories should be more about perspective than process. Student voices should be emphasized, and administration/administrative things should be down played.

I was a little bummed that he designed the majority of the pages in an alternative magazine style because it isn’t really something we can implement at The Pendulum. Also, while I appreciated and enjoyed a lot of his designs, I wasn’t sure how I felt about his word choice in his rewrites. I completely agree that we need to be writing more like we speak to keep our audience, who is mainly students, interested. However, we are still writing for faculty members as well, and I don’t really think they would appreciate the lack of professionalism that using the word “sucked” indicates. It kind of makes it seem like we aren’t taking our work seriously and just using slang like it doesn’t matter that we have an older audience as well as a college-aged one.

Also, as much as I enjoy him as a presenter, I feel like he shows some things solely for shock value. Yesterday, his Chicken Salad session included a full-frontal nude photo, which was actually relevant to the topic and had a purpose. Today, he included a photo at the end of his presentation that wasn’t really a photo, but a woman’s naked body made completely out of letters and type. It was thrown in at the end of his presentation to show us the power of type, but it really seemed like it was just stuck at the end to shock the audience. He’s a captivating enough speaker on his own, he doesn’t need stupid gimmicks like the promise of a “naked” woman to keep people paying attention.

-Kristen Case