Keep the fire burning . . .

It’s been a solid week since we returned to Elon from the CMA/ACP Louisville conference and we jumped right into production.  Now that I’ve had some time to process the information, reread my notes and blog posts, and finish other Pendulum related business, I’m ready to share what I’ve learned on how to make The [...]

Back at Elon…and ready to get started!

After session after session…after session of great information at ACP/CMA in Louisville, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. I took so many notes and jotted down so many ideas, that I literally don’t know where to begin. The Pendulum is in a great place as an organization, but that doesn’t mean we’re in the place [...]

Up at 4:30, back to Elon, production and applying what we learned tomorrow.

It’s hard to want to focus this post on any subject but one. If you’re reading this, you probably already know what that is. But I’ll start at the beginning. When we first arrived at the Galt House in downtown Louisville, I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t know what I would get [...]

So maybe it wasn’t as easy as I thought

These kids with their infinite knowledge cameras probably did know a little bit more than I did, because that was much harder than I expected. It’s not like I haven’t done it before—I’ve covered events and stories and put together photo slideshows, and I have some that I’m pretty darn proud of—but this time it [...]

In my mind I’m going to Carolina

So after three full intensive days in Kentucky I am excited to be back in Elon, N.C. and ready to start sharing everything I learned and improving our paper. Although we were all upset that we didn’t win Pacemaker or Online Pacemaker, our loss just gives us more motivation to make our paper better and [...]

You win some, you lose some.

So we didn’t win a Pacemaker. But we just found out today that our paper won Best in Show for a four-year non-daily newspaper as well as Best in Show for our website! We were all pretty disappointed last night, but it was great to get the good news this morning, via a hash tag [...]

Where to find news

Stories are everywhere. As our keynote speaker had said, “we swim in an ocean of stories.” The trick is knowing where to look and recognizing a story. Clay Scott generated a list of ideas that could lead to potentially great news and feature stories. Although the majority of journalists like to talk and tell stories, [...]

Congratulations all around

A big CONGRATULATIONS to the staff of the Pendulum for their Pacemaker finalist recognition in the Newspaper and Online categories. They were honored at the Associated Collegiate Press awards ceremony Oct. 30 in Louisville. The Pendulum online was one of 50 finalists and the Pendulum newspaper was one of 38 finalists from throughout the United [...]

Writing for the web should be ‘magical’

Today was a successful day multimedia-wise. I attended writing for the web after free online tools to extend your story and both generated a lot of idea that I can’t wait to bring back to The Pendulum. Leonard Penix talked about online journalism as the Harry Potter approach. I have never seen any of the [...]

It’s all about angle.

Michael Koretzky taught a session today called “An Entertaining Way Into the Magazine Business.” He said that the biggest difference between a newspaper and a magazine is collaboration. If you want to work for a magazine, you have to know a little bit of everything. “You have to be able to write, to design and [...]