Just the facts: 29 broadcast sessions, one TV station, one radio station, XX awards.
Author Archives
SANDY CANCELLATIONS
We’ll add to this list as we’re notified…
The Law School pre-convention workshop Law School scheduled for Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon has been cancelled. Attendees will be notified by email about reimbursement.
Bill Elsen’s Editor in Residence has been cancelled, as is his Thinking Like An Editor session scheduled for Thursday at 9 a.m.
David Copeland’s Stick It: Rock Your Paper’s Website on Saturday at 9 a.m. has been cancelled.
Gary Metzger’s Controversies on Campus on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. has been cancelled.
Holly Johnson’s Top Chops 1: Beat the Competition and the Deadline on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. has been cancelled.
STORM UPDATE
Hurricane Sandy won’t hit Chicago, but it will hurt many attendees who are struggling with cancelled flights along the East Coast. From GO12 co-director Logan Aimone…
The effects of Hurricane Sandy and other storms along the East Coast are already having an impact on travel. If your travel has been delayed, you may not arrive in Chicago on the same day as planned. Attendees unable to arrive on time should contact the hotel to avoid being charged a no-show fee. Call the Sheraton at 312-464-1000.
Sandy may also affect our speakers, forcing some sessions to be canceled. Check the G012 mobile app for updates as we hear them.
GO12 ON THE GO
GO12 opens two weeks from today. If you’re trying to figure out what to do once you get there, download the GO12 mobile app.
It not only has the entire schedule of sessions and special events, it allows you to create a personalized list of just the stuff that interests you. Also included: custom hotel maps to help you find your rooms and a searchable list of sessions by speaker and topic. Best of all, it’s free.
Point your mobile device – iPhone, iPad, Android phone, or Blackberry (sorry, Windows Phone users) – to http://crwd.cc/go12 to get it.
WHOLE LOT OF HARROWER
If someone tells you Tim Harrower wrote the book on college journalism, it’s not a figure of speech. He really did write the book.
Two, actually.
Harrower is the author of the textbooks Inside Reporting and The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook, and he’s coming to GO12.
If you haven’t read these – and you can preview some of the pages by clicking the links – you might be thinking, “Who cares? This guy writes textbooks.”
Trust us, you should care.
How many textbook authors say this about the textbook market: “I would probably skip college altogether, to be honest. Especially if I wanted to be a journalist.”
Intrigued, we asked him to elaborate…
Why? Let’s say you’re an editor at a respectable publication. Before you are two resumes: One’s from a journalism major who attaches some clips from her school newspaper. The other’s from a freelancer who says, “I skipped college and used that $50,000 to travel around the world shooting video, blogging, and submitting articles to magazines like Outside and Wired. Here’s a link to my multimedia website.” Which one impresses you more?
Strong words from a former college professor.
Thankfully, Harrower doesn’t think the same about college conventions. At GO12, he’s presenting sessions with provocative titles like, “Everything You Need to Know to Become a Digital Journalist” and “FUN 101.”
Yes, textbook authors can be fun.
ON AIR & ON FIRE
A brand-new broadcast awards program? A workshop where you get to keep the camera? And 29 sessions on everything from Final Cut to the FCC?
Yawn.
To GO12 broadcast chair Jim Hayes, that’s just the usual kick-ass stuff he expects from the fall college media convention.
What has him really psyched is something more…
A live television newscast from the convention floor, run by students and aired nightly.
It’s called NCMC TV, and Hayes says without any hint of hyperbole: “It’s one of the coolest things we’ve ever tried to do with regard to broadcasting at any convention.”
It’s also one of the most complicated, which you won’t find it happening anywhere else…
To have a working television studio set up at our convention will be amazing, no doubt. But to use it for the production of a live newscast, where selected students from a variety of schools get to train with professionals, go out in the field to produce packages, and ultimately work together under deadline to produce a complete newcast live – I think it’s the definition of experiential learning.
As they say on TV: But wait, there’s more!
There’s also a streaming radio station called NCMC Radio. “We have a team of professional radio mentors who will work one-on-one with students who sign up to be a DJ on our live streaming radio station,” Hayes says.
But that’s not all!
“Maybe the most important session for students,” Hayes says, “features Chicago Public Media COO Alison Scholly and Chicago Tribune Managing Editor Jane Hirt – since they’ll be talking about what it takes to get a job in media after graduation.”
You can find that session and a whole lot more at the GO12 Broadcast page – including a radio session in the dark, FCC discussions from a guy who actually worked at the FCC, and a lawyer telling you what the f^@# the law means to you.
OPENING DAY…
GO12 is officially open for business.
Starting today, you can register online for the fall college media convention. You can also…
- sign up for a workshop or a critique
- get a discount on a flight to Midway or O’Hare
- reserve a hotel room and an airport shuttle
…all by visiting our registration page.
PICTURE PERFECT
Some college media contests give their winners plaques. The Pinnacle Awards will give away camcorders.
Canon ZR800 camcorders, to be exact. And you don’t even have to win to win – anyone who’s already entered the Pinnacles or does so by the June 1 deadline is automatically entered into a drawing.
If you know cameras, then you know the ZR800 was really hot stuff – in 2009. Yeah, the Pinnacles are doling out old camcorders.
But before you sneer at the offer, listen to Jim Hayes, the electronic media adviser at Vanderbilt University and a Pinnacle organizer…
The ZR800 is compact and user friendly. It also works well in almost any lighting condition. Best of all, it has an external microphone input – so you can use a lavalier microphone to capture awesome interview audio.
Oh, we forgot to mention: If your name is drawn, you walk away with five ZR800s. And there will be eight winners in total.
So why are we doing this?
Because these camcorders are perfect for equipping a student media outlet. Let’s face it, the latest tech has a way of walking out of a newsroom, no matter how many signatures, blood oaths, or retina scans you require.
But five ZR800s will set up a reporting and recording staff quite nicely. If you bought these on your own, they’d cost more than $500. And that doesn’t include shipping.
But our winners can pick up their cameras at the Pinnacle Awards ceremony at GO12, and Jim Hayes will be on hand to answer any questions you have about using them. All for $50 per Pinnacle entry.
HALLOWEEN IN CHICAGO
Due strictly to a calendar coincidence, the opening night of GO12 falls on Halloween. And since the convention hotel is right downtown, you won’t have to walk far to have a horror-able night.
In fact, Chicago has three websites dedicated solely to the city’s satanic shenanigans…
…and while these sites won’t win any Pacemaker or Pinnacle awards, they’re already previewing the weirdness that’s still six months away.
GO12 will host its own costume contest, too. Prizes and details to be announced soon.
What about the weather?
You can’t choose an appropriate Halloween costume if you don’t know the temperature – will it be too cold for a dress made out of newspapers? Or too hot for a full gorilla suit?
(Both were actual costumes at previous fall conventions.)
Well, here are some historical Halloween highs and lows, courtesy of the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office…
- The “normal high” for Halloween in Chicago is 56 degrees. (“The record high is 84 degrees set in 1950.”)
- The “normal low” for Halloween is 39 degrees. (“The record low is 23 which occurred in 1873.”)
- And our favorite stat: “The most frequent amount of precipitation recorded on Halloween is 0.00 inches.”
Finally, what about snow? Says the Weather Service…
“There have been five instances in Chicago’s history where snow has fallen on Halloween, but there has never been a measurable amount. The last time that it has snowed on Halloween was in 1993 when a trace of snow fell.”
So dress accordingly.
