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

All graduating students should check out the following sites:

• Dean Huff’s End of the Year Manual
• Journalism School Graduation Information & Calendar
• Columbia University 2006 Commencement

Today you will receive an e-mail from Melanie Huff regarding evaluating each of the classes in which you are enrolled. If you do not receive these messages (one for each class) by the end of the day, please let us know at dos@jrn.columbia.edu.

Here are the instructions contained in those messages:

Welcome to our revamped and completely anonymous evaluation site (through the CourseWorks system).

You may access evaluatios at http://courseworks.columbia.edu. Enter the site using your UNI and password and navigate to the course. The deadline to complete all evaluations is May 19, 2006.

Your role in providing feedback via course evaluations is of vital importance to the Journalism School. The information is used not only by future students to make informed balloting choices but also by faculty to evaluate their syllabi and to refine their practices and by the administration to make curriculum decisions and assess professor performance.

Course evaluations are one element in tenure, promotion and contract decisions; they can affect professors’ careers at Columbia.

We ask that you take your time and seriously reflect on your learning experience as you provide an honest answer to each question.

You may begin work on the forms immediately.

However, in order to make sure that all students have the time to do evaluations, we are asking seminar, workshop, M.A. discipline and RWI professors to schedule lab time for their classes specifically for evaluation completion.

You do not have to complete all the forms in one sitting. However, once you begin working on the form for a given class you must complete and submit it before exiting the system. Partially completed forms are not stored.

Completion of your evaluations is required. Although evaluations are now anonymous, we will know who has not done them.

Please be aware that professors won’t have access to your evaluations of them until after they have submitted their evaluations of your performance.

David Klatell, Vice Dean

M.S., M.A., and Ph.D. students graduating in May are invited to the following briefing sessions about various graduation-related events (continuing Part-time students who are just curious about the process are welcome to attend as well). These are identical sessions, so you can pick either one that works for you. We will discuss graduation at length, as well as some post-Graduation access to our facilities. Please come and bring your questions!

Graduation Briefing #1
Wednesday, April 12
12:30-1:30 pm
Room 601B

Graduation Briefing #2
Tuesday, April 25
6-7 pm
Room 601B

We will be serving: Individual Bag Potato Chips, Pretzels & Popcorn; Assorted Home Baked Cookies; Assorted Sodas & Bottled Water

CPJ has kindly set aside two seats for J-school students for this event. If you would like to attend, you MUST follow the instructions at the bottom. There is a chance they will be able to accommodate one or two more people closer to the event.

CPJ Luncheon: The Crackdown on the Private Press in Ethiopia

Following antigovernment protests last November, the Ethiopian government blocked most private newspapers from publishing; raided newspaper offices, confiscating computers, documents and other materials; expelled two foreign journalists; and issued a “wanted list” of editors, writers, and dissidents. Fourteen journalists were arrested and charged with genocide and treason, offenses punishable by death. Two more are in jail after being convicted of “press offenses” under Ethiopia’s restrictive media law.

On March 3, CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Julia Crawford, Nairobi-based editor Charles Onyango-Obbo, and CPJ Board Member Charlayne Hunter-Gault traveled to Addis Ababa to pressure authorities to release Ethiopian journalists jailed in the massive crackdown. The CPJ delegation met with Ethiopian journalists, lawyers, diplomats, and top government officials, including Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. CPJ was also allowed to visit Kality Prison, on the outskirts of the capital, where dozens of opposition leaders and at least 14 journalists are being held. The delegation spoke for close to an hour with several of the imprisoned journalists, all of whom professed their innocence.

CPJ is pleased to host a luncheon with Julia Crawford to discuss CPJ’s work in Ethiopia. Advance copies of a special report on the delegation’s findings will be available.

Friday, April 28
12:30-2 PM (light lunch served)
CPJ offices
330 Seventh Avenue (b/w 28th and 29th streets)
11th Floor

Below is a link to some of our recent work on Ethiopia:
http://www.cpj.org/regions_06/africa_06/africa_06.html#ethiopia

TO RSVP, please follow these instructions carefully:

If you haven’t registered on this site earlier, follow these instructions to post a comment - in this case, your interest in attending. If you have already registered, just go ahead and log in and indicate your interest, using your full name and Columbia e-mail address.

* To register for this blog (you only have to do this once for all future comments), go to http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/wp-register.php (once you are registered - includes a password being sent to you via e-mail), go to step 2.

* Click on the “Comments” at the bottom of this post and fill in your FULL NAME - first and last - and Columbia e-mail address (just fill it in once, typing in just “N/A” in the URL section if you don’t have a site.
Your name WILL NOT show up there immediately, but will be there when we approve the comment within a few hours.

If more than two people RSVP, those three and higher will form the wait list for any dropouts. There may also be more seats available closer to the event.
Confirmations will be e-mailed to those who will be attending by the day before the event.

Cheers, Deans Sreenivasan & Huff

REMINDER: If you are interested in academic discounts for digital cameras and/or computers, please see the earlier postings in the Daily Plan-it’s “discounts” category.

See below for a terrific opportunity. Many thanks to Prof. Kent for offering this course, which covers many topics we don’t usually get to cover during the academic year. You have to attend BOTH sessions (the first at Columbia, the second at the AP) in order to participate. Please see instructions below. Only 20 slots are available, first come, first served.

The Modern Newsroom: How It Works… And How to Survive In It
A two-session mini-course led by TOM KENT, deputy managing editor, The Associated Press - and adjunct professor at Columbia J-school.

A special two-class session on how modern newsrooms are organized and how to work most effectively in them. The first session, at Columbia, focuses on how to make the most of your first assignments, managing your time, accomplishing your biggest goals and avoiding some common stumbles. Since you’ll be a boss one day, the course also covers some effective techniques for leadership.

The second session, at the multimedia headquarters of The Associated Press in Manhattan, is a guide to organization of modern newsrooms: breaking down the walls that hinder coordination and multimedia production, the special writing demands of the Web and new ways of carving up work and assignments.

Any student this May is welcome to sign up (all concentrations welcome).

The sessions (you have to attend both) are:
Tuesday, April 25, 7-9 pm at the J-school - room 607a
Tuesday, May 9, 6-8 pm at the AP.
Sign-up info below.

Tom Kent bio: B.A., Yale. With The Associated Press: newsman in Hartford (Conn.), New York, Sydney (Australia) and Moscow; NATO and European Community correspondent, Brussels; chief of operations in Tehran; chief of bureau, Moscow; deputy World Service editor; World Service editor; international editor; deputy managing editor; adjunct professor, Harriman Institute, SIPA; juror, Pulitzer Prizes.

To sign up, please follow these instructions carefully.

If you haven’t registered on this site earlier, follow these instructions to post a comment - in this case, your interest in attending. If you have already registered, just go ahead and log in and indicate your interest, using your full name and Columbia e-mail address.

* To register for this blog (you only have to do this once for all future comments), go to http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/wp-register.php (once you are registered - includes a password being sent to you via e-mail), go to step 2.

* Click on the “Comments” at the bottom of this post and fill in your FULL NAME - first and last - and Columbia e-mail address (just fill it in once, typing in just “N/A” in the URL section if you don’t have a site.

* Please write in that you are able to attend BOTH Kent sessions.

Your name WILL NOT show up there immediately, but will be there when we approve the comment within a few hours.

If more than 20 people RSVP, those 21 and higher will form the wait list for any dropouts. Confirmations will be e-mailed to those who will be attending by the day before the event.

Cheers, Deans Sreenivasan & Huff

Many thanks to Rebecca Castillo, J2006, for sharing these notes from the recent lunch with Dean Lemann. Unlike other sessions where students talk to deans about administrative matters, graduation, etc., the purpose of this event was to hear Nicholas Lemann, one of the country’s best magazine writers, talk about the art of magazine writing.

“Everything you wanted to know about magazine writing but were afraid to ask” - notes from lunch with Dean Nicholas Lemann
Monday, April 17, 2006

By Rebecca Castillo, J2006
rc73@columbia.edu

The following are some of the highlights from Dean Lemann’s lunch event.

Dean Lemann began by prefacing that he would to prefer speaking about editorial aspects of magazine writing and would save the business aspects until the end.

• When getting started with a subject, ask your subject for a list of other people you should interview about them and then go out and interview them. Word will get back to your subject that you are following up on this and prove you are serious about your reporting. But don’t get hostile with your questioning in the beginning, get more information about your subject by listening.
• Our culture with the assistance of TV has helped people have a conception that being interviewed is an honor. There are not many times in peoples’ lives where someone wants to just listen to their stories.
• When writing about a well-known subject, make sure you do your homework. Read what is available about them and any writing that they have done, including dissertations and academic writings.
• If the person (your subject) is no longer alive, look for their archival history. If the person is well known then go to their peers and contemporaries. Use social history to find out if they left a paper trail.
• When approaching your subject about interviewing them, be honest and upfront at first approach. Make it clear how many times you will be visiting them and for how long. Lay it all out and don’t take an answer at that time, tell them to think it over and when you come back, if they are not sure or say no, move on to the next potential subject. There will always be another individual who can fill that role unless that person is unique in their role, such as Secretary of State, (there is only one person in that role). Always have others in mind who can be interviewed.
• Do not engage in debate or controversal confrontation unless you believe the reaction will make it to paper. If it will not cause your subject to add to your story don’t engage in it.
• Try not to write about characters who won’t let you use their real names. Some may argue with him on this point but he thinks if the name is not real, then what else is made up in the story? He recognizes that there are times that it is necessary to use a pseudo name - your subject may be engaging in something unlawful - but always attempt to get your subjects to let you write about it truthfully, without anonymity.

Dean Lemann’s final point of advice was about getting published after graduation: It is better to work at a small weekly or an alternative magazine than sitting in your apartment writing query letters to the popular magazines. By doing this, you will continuously be writing and getting published as opposed to getting published maybe twice a year. You will have to pay your dues but you will move up on the ladder.
-30-

FROM JOE HOWELL, BUILDING MANAGER: The Journalism School’s Building and Operations team is conducting a survey. Paper copies have been distributed to all of your student mailboxes. You are encouraged to take the time to complete it as it will assist us in providing better services.

Questions to building@jrn.columbia.edu

Dear Students,

If you graduated in October 2005, February 2006 or will graduate this May, please check out the link at http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/students/graduation2006/Grad1.htm

This is the information we will be using for the graduation program and to plan the Journalism School event. If your name is missing or any of the information is incorrect, please send an e-mail to mgh2@columbia.edu immediately.

Dear Students and Adjuncts:

As many of you have already heard, the Faculty recently voted to make the online student evaluations of courses and professors anonymous. This now brings us in line with the rest of the University.

Starting with the Spring 2006 evaluations, the evaluations will not reveal the students’ names. The system will, however, be able to track the students who do not complete the evaluations. i.e., we will know IF you have completed the evaluation, NOT what you wrote.

Please watch for mail from Melanie Huff about how students will be able to
do the evaluations this year. [UPDATE: Here is the info: http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/2006/04/25/evaluations-new-system-is-now-live/].

All questions to DOS@jrn.columbia.edu

Dear Students:

The latest in the series of Publisher’s Roundtables Dean Lemann is hosting (at each event, he will host a lunch for a major publisher and 15 students - current J-school M.S., M.A. and PhD students) is below.

We have seats available at the following Roundtable - first come, first served. RSVP required.

Wednesday, April 19, noon-1:15 pm
Boxed lunch will be served.

Mort Zuckerman, chairman and co-publisher of the New York Daily News; editor-in-chief and publisher of US News & World Report.

Please follow these instructions carefully:

If you haven’t registered on this site earlier, follow these instructions to post a comment - in this case, your interest in attending. If you have already registered, just go ahead and log in and indicate your interest, using your full name and Columbia e-mail address.

* To register for this blog (you only have to do this once for all future comments), go to http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/wp-register.php (once you are registered - includes a password being sent to you via e-mail), go to step 2.

* Click on the “Comments” at the bottom of this post and fill in your FULL NAME - first and last - and Columbia e-mail address (just fill it in once, typing in just “N/A” in the URL section if you don’t have a site.
Your name WILL NOT show up there immediately, but will be there when we approve the comment within a few hours.

Please do NOT sign up if you have already attended one of the previous Roundtables.

If more than 15 people RSVP, those 16 and higher will form the wait list for any dropouts. Confirmations will be e-mailed to those who will be attending by the day before the event.

Cheers, Deans Sreenivasan & Huff

Many thanks for your input for this year’s J-school Graduation speakers. Two terrific journalists will be addressing you in a few weeks (there will be a different set of speakers at the University-wide commencement ceremony).

The Pringle Lecture will be delivered on Tuesday, May 16, by FARNAZ FASSIHI, Middle East correspondent, The Wall Street Journal (including a long stint as a reporter in Baghdad). She is a 1999 J-school graduate.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/6/fassihi-baghdad.asp
http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?id=4894

The Columbia Journalism Award winner (and therefore, your main graduation
speaker on Wednesday, May 17) is JIM AMOSS, editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune since July 1990 and member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
FULL BIO: http://www.pulitzer.org/CurrentBoard/amossbio.html

The student speaker will be REBECCA CASTILLO, your class president - no introduction required.

Keep track of all Graduation ceremonies:
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/students/graduation2006/

From an e-mail received in the DOS Office.

Two journalism students - one graduate student and one undergraduate
student - will each win a $1000 scholarship and the opportunity to
intern at HuffingtonPost.com in New York or Los Angeles. The
scholarships will be awarded on Monday, May 15, 2006 to the two
students who best represent the new age of citizen journalism. Two
additional runners up will be offered the honor of interning at
HuffingtonPost.com. The contest will be judged by Arianna Huffington
of The Huffington Post.
Details at
DEADLINE: May 1, 2006
Questions: Citizenjournalism@gatherinc.com
DETAILS: http://journalism.gather.com