Viva Journalism

I went from having never been to Las Vegas to going there twice in one year. This time was a lot different though, because I went for the National Convention of the Society of Professional Journalists instead of just to hang out. We drove down in a van and it was pretty sweet. I love any excuse to get out of town.

I heard from:

• Paul Overberg, database director for USA Today
• David Haddix, training director for IRE
• Victor Hernandez, director of domestic newsgathering CNN
• Mike Toppo, senior director of news operations & production CNN.com
• Rich Barbieri, deputy managing director of CNN Money
• Roy Harris, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter
• Alexandra Berzon, reporter for the The Wall Street Journal
• Mark Maremont, senior editor for the Wall Street Journal
• Rob Curley, Las Vegas Sun media guy
• And many other really cool people

Learned:

• A lot of things. About Journalism.

The group at the Review-Journal (stolen from Cerissa):

We went there and met with the managing editor, which was really interesting. And they gave us free pizza, which is always a plus.

And some more fun in pictures:

I wish I was in the real Paris… but this will have to do.

The convention was in Planet Hollywood. We spent a LOT of time waiting in this spot for the van haha.

Note the new skirt I’m in love with that I bought at Anthropologie (!) very much on sale in Caesar's Palace.

The Mini-Resume

I’m going to Vegas next week for the Society of Professional Journalists National Convention, and when my professor sent us a list of things to pack, he included on it resumes. This made me excited because of an idea from one of our briefers in D.C. They said one of the coolest things they had seen was a girl who gave them a business card that was really a mini-resume. Ever since I’ve wanted to make one for myself. If you think about it, the idea makes a ton of sense, especially for those of us who theoretically should be starting to think about looking for a job. Or something.

This provided me an excellent excuse to play with InDesign, which I have been missing. I only ordered 20 cards because I really anticipate giving maybe one away, but it was still pretty fun playing grown-up. Maybe they’ll have one of those sweet business card raffle jars and I can stick one of these in.

You’ll have to let me know what you think, though, since this was an experiment. I couldn’t decide between super traditional and, well, something that would stand out but could be potentially tacky, so I tried to design something in between. During one of my summer jobs I literally went through stacks and stacks of resumes of people applying for teaching positions at PCC, and I saw a lot of over the top ones that turned me off (all pink floral with a scent? Is that necessary?), but also millions more that looked like they had used the same template in Word.

Which reminds me, I should probably work on my real resume because I definitely used one of those Word templates. My bad.

Front:

Back:

Flavor of Fall

For me, fall means pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Actually, I have been known to eat them year round. As anyone who went to Washington Seminar with me should know, since I made some for dinner group and then proceeded to feed the entire building.

But I especially crave them once it gets close to Halloween and Thanksgiving and the changing of leaves. For more on the reason why I am so obsessed, check out Annie’s blog entry from earlier this summer. Let’s just say that ever since London I have been especially appreciative of pumpkin goodness.

Today I made my first batch of the season. If you want some come and listen to this month’s SPJ speaker, Josh Awtry, who is the assistant managing editor of the Salt Lake Tribune and will speaking on the future of journalism and new media. Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Brimhall Atrium on campus (sorry friends not in Utah!). Nice people will be there.

Or I might let you cheat if you stop by my apartment. One batch = 59 glorious cookies. But you better come soon because they will go quick!

Converse and Children's Literature

I am writing this blog post purely to express my undying love for converse. I looked down at my feet today and just felt inspired. This love actually began long, long ago when I read the girl reporter series by Linda Ellerbee when I was in like second or third grade. The main character is a girl reporter (who would have guessed?) who went around stirring things up with her stories while wearing high top converse. I think that this also might be where my desire to be a reporter was cultivated. She was just that cool.

I bought my first pair of converse (red ones) my sophomore year of high school. I'm actually wearing them right now. That's the glorious thing about these converse, they're indestructible. I bought my second pair my junior year (navy blue), and I actually brought them with me to London last fall and quite literally wore them every day. There were actually a ton of people who wore converse around in London. I was surprised, but I guess they just have good taste. I bought my newest pair this summer at Ross (rose), and I still aspire to own every color in the rainbow. I think it would be awesome to open up my closet and have it just filled with converse.

So, the moral of the story is that if you want a sure way to be happy, you should just go out and buy a pair of converse. May I recommend orange? Also, children's literature can be pretty powerful stuff. We should get Linda Ellerbee to come be a guest lecturer for SPJ (she is, after all, a journalist herself). It would only cost us about 25 years of fundraising. Maybe she would make an exception?

Reading one of the girl reporter books with my dog. This has always been one of my all-time favorite pictures of me. Is it bad to peak at age eight?