The Daily Plan-it / Dean of Students Blog, Columbia J-school

Two items below from the duPont Center on the seventh floor.

1. Volunteer request.
2. Winners Circle invitation.

To: All Journalism School Students
From: Jonnet Abeles & Mary Kay Duffy, duPont Center
Date: December 23, 2005

Re: duPont Events, January 18 and 19, 2006

The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards will be presented on Wednesday
evening, January 18, 2006, in Low Library in a ceremony hosted by Bob
Schieffer. Michel Martin of ABC News, Dean Nick Lemann and Columbia President
Lee Bollinger will join Schieffer in presenting the awards to 13 outstanding
television and radio programs. At the ceremony, we will be shooting final
scenes for our PBS documentary, Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast
Journalism, produced by FRONTLINE Producer Martin Smith.

The duPont Awards are the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, and this
event is a gathering of the clan of the television and radio news industry. We
will need 25 students to volunteer to help us at the duPont events, and the
first 10 volunteers will be able to attend part of the reception. All
volunteers will be able to attend the ceremony. Please email
dupontawards@jrn.columbia.edu to volunteer.

In addition to the awards ceremony on January 18, we will hold our annual
Winners. Circle discussion for students on Thursday morning, January 19, from
10:00am to 1:00pm in the Lecture Hall of the Journalism School. We will show
excerpts and discuss three of the winning programs with the reporters,
producers, and editors who made them. The lineup for these three discussions is
attached.

Broadcast students are required to attend the Winners. Circle, which will be
moderated by members of the faculty and the duPont Jury. All other students
and faculty members are welcome to join us if their workshops are not scheduled
at that time. The Winners. Circle is a wonderful opportunity to learn about
what makes great broadcast journalism at a local tv station, on public radio
and in a large-scale documentary for PBS.

Read about the 13 duPont Award winners at www.dupont.org.

Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism will air on PBS stations
nationwide beginning January 24. It will air in the New York area on
Thirteen/WNET on Thursday, January 26, at 10:00pm ET. Check local listings
elsewhere.

o o o o o

You are invited to attend

THE DUPONT WINNERS. CIRCLE

A Discussion of Three Award-Winning Programs
With the reporters, producers and editors who created them.

Thursday, January 19, 2006
10 A.M. . 1 P.M.

Lecture Hall, Room 301
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
116th Street and Broadway

WFTS-TV, Tampa
Crosstown Expressway Investigation
10 A.M. . 11 A.M.

Mike Mason, Reporter
Adam Wische, Executive Producer
Bill Carey, VP & General Manager

North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, Chapel Hill
North Carolina Voices: Understanding Poverty
11 A.M. . 12 P.M.
Emily Hanford, Senior Editor & Producer
Leoneda Inge, Producer
Joan Siefert Rose, General Manager

FRONTLINE: The Secret History of the Credit Card
(a co-production with The New York Times)
12 P.M. . 1 P.M.
Lowell Bergman, Correspondent
David Rummel, Producer
Lawrie Mifflin, J.74, Executive Producer for
The New York Times

Note: Radio lab and 601A schedule updated below.

EQUIPMENT ROOM: The equipment room will be open Monday, December 19-Thursday, December 22, from 10am to 6pm. It will be open on Friday, December 23, from 10am to 1pm. The School (and the equipment room) will be closed December 26-30. However, the building will still have 24/7 swipe access.

EDIT SUITES: As of Monday, December 19th, the 5th floor linear edit rooms will be closed to allow the tech staff to set up the Avid editing suites for the second semester. If you have editing work to do between now and January 17th, there will be two linear editing stations set up for you on the first floor in Fred Friendly suites area.

COMPUTER LABS: In preparation for the second semester, the tech staff will begin reformatting the lab computers as of January 2. Anything stored locally (on the D drive or the temporary storage drive) will be erased. All files stored properly to students’ network drives will remain stored. Room 601A will be closed Dec. 28- Jan. 6.

RADIO LABS: Because of construction in the Radio Annex and the Radio lab (511B), both rooms will be closed during the break. The current Annex (504K) will be closed starting today (12/19) through the entire break and reopen in the spring across the hall in 504H. 504K will become an Avid editing suite. The lab (511B) will be closed from Dec 27th-until January 13th for ceiling construction. These closure dates are subject to change and notices will be sent out if necessary. The radio computers will also be cleaned up and any orphaned files (those left outside of folders and scattered about) will be deleted.

Here’s the information from Professor Weiner on his wonderful book
club, which will meet the first Monday of every month, beginning
February 6. The group will meet in room 601C from 11:00-1:00. All you
have to do to participate is read the book(s) and show up.

“We’ll meet at the J School one morning a month. Columbia will
provide box dinners and (for students) free books, too. The main idea
is to give people at the J School an excuse to read. Our first four
months’ of readings will be Saturday, by Ian McKewan; Radical
Evolution, by Joel Garreau, and Elementary Particles, by Michel
Houellebecq; Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder; and
possibly The Lost Painting, by Jonathan Harr. All students are
welcome, in or out of the J School; so are teachers and friends.”

Subject: Lucille’s Ball Photos available for purchase

The event is now in the history books and the photos are now available
for purchase.

The address is: www.islandphoto.com

Go to “View Your Photos” and click on “Special Events”

The password is “lucille”

The photos will be available until Dec. 22nd.

Any questions, please contact Megan Chan, meganhchan@aol.com.

From: Dean Klatell:

I am pleased to announce that Alexandra Peers has agreed to teach Feature Writing this spring. Since 2002, Ms Peers has been Features Editor for The Weekend section of The Wall Street Journal; she was a founding editor of the section, formulating editorial policies, designing and editing recurring features, and substantially increasing the paper’s coverage of arts news, entertainment, plus food and travel stories. She also has been principally responsible for the hiring and training of young employees and identifying talented young reporters. From 1996-2002 she was Senior Special Writer/Art Editor at The Journal.
Ms. Pool earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University and the M.S. for this school in 1981.

Students interested in signing up for her course will be able to do so through the normal add/drop procedures.

o o o o o

From: Dean Klatell:

I am pleased to announce that Linda Steiner, Professor of Journalism and Mass Media at Rutgers University, has agreed to teach our Journalism History elective next term. Professor Steiner is a very experienced and lively teacher, with particular interests in public journalism, the role of women in news organizations, and the changing characteristics of the readership and audience for news and information. She has published widely on subjects ranging from journalism research to major ethical issues confronting newsrooms.

Linda earned her B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania, and her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois.

From Dean MacDonald, rm37.

To Columbia Journalism Students:

The application deadline for the Master of Arts program is now
February 9, 2006 at 11:59 p.m. (PST).

The deadline to submit the Financial Aid application form remains the
same, February 28, 2006.

Use you time wisely. Enjoy your short break.

The Wall Street Journal
Thursday, December 15, 2005
OPINION

Mightier Than the Pen
Why I gave up journalism to join the Marines.

BY MATT POTTINGER
Mr. Pottinger, until recently a Journal correspondent in China, is scheduled
to be commissioned a second lieutenant tomorrow. He spent the last three
months at Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Va. As of early December,
his three-mile run was down to 18 minutes and 15 seconds.

Here’s how it starts:

When people ask why I recently left The Wall Street Journal to join the Marines, I usually have a short answer. It felt like the time had come to stop reporting events and get more directly involved. But that’s not the whole answer, and how I got to this point wasn’t a straight line.

See full story here. Reax?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007681

REMINDER/UPDATE: Professors cannot access the student evaluations of classes until the professors submit their evaluations of the students.

From Dean Melanie Huff.

Dear Fall 2005 Journalism Faculty,

Two reminder items:

1. Grades
2. Evaluations

1. The online grading system is now open for your Fall semester grades.

Please note that the Master’s Project is a two-semester class. You must submit a grade for the Fall semester even though the projects are not completed (corrected adviser assignments for broadcast students will be in the system before Dec. 5).

To submit grades, you must have activated your Columbia e-mail address/UNI. Information on how to do so can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/acis/accounts/create/current.html.

Once your e-mail is activated, you can proceed to https://ssol.columbia.edu/

There you will be asked for your UNI and password. Once logged in, please click on WEB GRADING. It is the last item on the right side of the page. You will then see a list of the classes you are teaching.

The deadline for grade submission is Tuesday, December 27.

2. Final evaluations (for RWI, RWII electives, and M.A. seminars) must be given to the students (with copies sent to dos@jrn.columbia.edu) ASAP, but no later than Tuesday, January 17.

If you have any questions, please contact me at mgh2@columbia.edu

KUDOS to Tom Kent, our first professor to turn in all his grades and evaluations.

Melanie Huff
Assistant Dean of Students

From: SPJ President, Rebecca Castillo.

You are invited to the Annual Graduate School of Journalism Holiday Party
(named for Lucille, Joseph Pulitzer’s daughter).

Graduate School of Journalism and the Columbia chapter of the Society
Professional Journalists invite you to join the faculty, staff and students
of the School in a celebration of the Holidays on Thursday, December 15, at
Faculty House, 400 W. 117th St., (right next to the President’s house,
behind the law school.)

6 pm - 6:30 pm: Mingling

6:30 - 7:45pm: The Annual J-School Follies & Variety Show (including
faculty-skewering skits)

8:00pm - midnight: Party begins.

- Spouses and significant others are welcome

- No RSVP required, just show up.

- Attire: Reporter semi-formal meaning: ties and jackets - and pants! - for
men; cocktail dresses or something similar for women).

All general questions about the event please email ColumbiaSPJ@gmail.com

NOTE NEW TIME -

From Dean Fishman.

For TV Broadcast Master’s Teams:

Professor June Cross will offer the following master’s prep session to
provide some valuable insights on long-form producing:

Date: Wednesday, December 7th (this Wednesday)
Time: 7:30-9:00 pm
Place: Room 607C

What: How to organize your broadcast project so that you are in control of
it instead of it being in control of you. A discussion of how to approach
research, character, access, and how to keep the facts in front of the story
without losing your story in the process. What we mean by assembly, rough
cut, and fine cut. Come to an informational session on how to approach your
broadcast master’s project.

i* Tuesday, Dec. 6, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
“Nick at Night” - open house on the Seventh Floor - no RSVP required; come
meet Deans, other students in an informal atmosphere. Coffee, tea,
cookies, brownies served.
ALL ARE INVITED.

* Wednesday, Dec. 7, 11 a.m.-noon
For M.A. students only: Dean Lemann, Klatell, Cornog, Huff and Sreenivasan
will be hosting a spring briefing session on Wed, Dec. 7, 11 am-noon, Room
607B. No RSVP required. Just bring your questions and comments.
M.A. STUDENTS ONLY.

- Dean Sreenivasan

To see a multimedia report on the Nov. 2 Columbia Journalism Dialogues event, “The Changing Media Landscape, 2005″ (sponsored by the Hearst Foundation and featuring four journalism veterans and the founder of craigslist), see this Poynter column: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=92918.

If you haven’t read it yet, please read the incredible NYT Magazine cover story for Sunday, Nov. 27, by adjunct professor Barry Bearak (he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning former NYT co-South Asia bureau chief). It’s called “The Day the Sea Came,” and looks at what happened to six survivors in Indonesia during the tsunami and in the months since. According to an editor’s note, it’s the longest piece ever published in the magazine. At 18,000 words, I imagine it’s one of the longest stories by a single writer in the history of the entire paper (in fact, I’d like to hear of anything that was longer). If you missed the hard copy, there’s the online version at http://www.nytimes.com/magazine (at least through the end of this week).

On that site, you can also see an archive of the NYT’s multimedia coverage from Dec. 26, 2004. They did a very good job of covering the tragedy as it happened. Now, with Bearak’s piece a year later, you get to see the devastation in context.

Because of the holiday weekend, I was away in Baltimore and didn’t see the magazine till Monday night. I did something I had never done before: read an NYTM cover story at the first sitting, beginnning to end. Usually, when the Sunday sections arrive on Saturday, I pick up the magazine and start with The Ethicist, William Safire, Lives and flip through the mag, eventually coming back to the bigger stories later in the weekend. Not this time. What an amazing piece of journalism - as someone who followed the tsunami coverage closely, I thought I knew what happened that day, but he showed me so much more and took to me places I never thought I’d go and made me experience things I had no idea about. I urge you to put away a copy, printed or electronic, for your files.

//Sree//

Dec. 3, 2005: ALUM SARAH BACHMAN RESPONDS: I, too, read the whole article at first sitting. Bearak’s byline always signals great content, writing and heart.

Signature Bearak anecdote: The poor fisherman who survived by his
wits and grandfather’s instruction pleading with an official. The
official says only the landlord who owned the fisherman’s humble
rented shack deserved full compensation for his lost property. The
fisherman and his family get nothing. Many writers would say, in so
many words, that the tsunami changed everything and nothing.

(Reminds me of another signature Bearak anecdote in a story from
Bangladesh about a village trial of a man who threw acid on the face
of a married woman who had turned down his romantic advances. The
village elders let the man off lightly. The woman remained horribly
disfigured. The woman’s husband was despairing, thoroughly disgusted
with the village version of justice but unable to change it. In the
story’s last line, he says, ‘But have you seen her?’)

I also appreciated the first person account at the end of the tsunami
story saying exactly how long Bearak had been in Aceh, how many
people he interviewed, etc. Usually, that stuff is buried in an
editor’s note, but this time, it was integrated into the article.
Putting a human face on the story-teller made both him and the story
more down-to-earth, puncturing the epic feel of his great metaphors.
Another instance of heart.

I wonder how the editor decided to run the story? Was the decision
made mostly on the take-your-breath-away writing, or because of the
unusual and utterly devastating nature of the disaster produced
unusually compelling stories, or for some other reasons? What would
it take to get more long narratives like this one in print?

Sarah

For M.A. students only: Dean Lemann, Klatell, Cornog, Fishman, Huff and Sreenivasan will be hosting a spring briefing session on Wed, Dec. 7, 11 am-noon, Room 607B. No RSVP required. Just bring your questions and comments.

Don’t forget the last Nick@Night of the fall semester is on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005, 5:30-6:30 p.m. on the 7th floor.

A note from Dean Fishman. Please consider attending both. One requires sign-ups, the other doesn’t.

Dear Students:

Two upcoming events designed to help with your master’s project:

Tuesday, December 6th
7pm in the Lecture Hall

All Class Lecture with Bruce Porter: How to write your Master’s Project

Note from Professor Porter: “You have two magazine stories in your mailboxes in connection with next Tuesday’s talk. Please read them and bring them to the talk. See you Tuesday at 7 p.m.”

- - -

Wednesday, December 14th
7:30-9pm in room 607B

One-time workshop on long-form writing with journalist Paula Span

Note from Paula Span: “Tapes transcribed, 25 notebooks stacked next to the keyboard, books and articles all dog-eared and underlined — now what? A 90-minute workshop adroitly timed for those facing the first draft of their master’s projects. We will discuss long-form and narrative writing using a 7,000-word story from the Washington Post magazine as an example. A copy of the article will be placed in the mailboxes of students who sign up. You’ll want to read the story before the session.” Pls sign up for Span’s session at: http://www.ersvp.com/r/span

Find Span’s bio at http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/faculty/span.asp

From CU’s VP of technology, Candy Fleming.

To: COLUMBIACOMMUNITY@cuvmc.ais.columbia.edu
Date: Nov 30, 2005 10:26 PM
Subject: Email Issues Resolved

As many of you are aware, the failure of one server caused severe
problems on the University email system this week. We sincerely
apologize for this disruption in service. The server recovered
at approximately 10am today, Wednesday morning. Mailbox problems
that had been caused by this failure and that were reported to us
during the day were fixed very quickly. We are attempting to
systematically identify any remaining such problems and fix them
without requiring calls to the Help Desk. We are also taking
steps to ensure that this server will not fail again.

During this week we are also accelerating the move to the Cyrus
system, which stores the incoming mail on several servers, rather
than relying on one server. As we move people to this much more
reliable and higher capacity email system, those remaining
temporarily on the old system will also notice better
performance. Please see http://www.columbia.edu/acis/email/cyrus/
for ongoing updates related to the Cyrus migration.

Candy Fleming
VP Information Technology
Columbia University

“Lucille’s Ball,” the Student Holiday Party named for Joseph Pulitzer’s daughter, is Thursday night, Dec. 15. Details to come.