Yesterday, I hopped off a plane at LAX with my dream and a cardigan, along with a fistful of business cards and a brain overloaded with ideas from my first-ever AEJMC annual conference. 

I was so overwhelmed by the volume of outstanding content and professionals that I wasn’t sure the best way to bring you everything, so here are some context-free highlights from my first conference experience:

• The median salary for business reporters is about $75,000.

• Ask before giving feedback: “Do you want it black, or with cream and sugar?”

• Accredited schools that don’t enter the Hearst Awards are essentially leaving more than $3,000 on the table. (Book me for 30 minutes and I’ll show you how to capitalize.)

• If you want to do more in-depth reporting, consider grabbing multiple audio recordings or YouTube feeds from all kinds of gatherings, from government entities to sports post-gamers, then use AI tools to transcribe and analyze them.

• Check out the National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s course designed to “support peers, colleagues and loved ones” — and presumably students — with Mental Health First Aid.

• Consider making repeated yearly records requests to create a growing database for future student use.

• Are you using NotebookLM for its analytical research powers? Here’s a primer.

• Have a course where you’re spending too much class time explaining processes, procedures and nuance? Launch a one-hour, semester-long prerequisite so when it’s time to get to work, your students already know the lay of the land.

• The Student Press Law Center provides a free advice hotline and prepublication review.

• When stumping for grant money, the worst thing you can possibly say is, “Please give me money or this project will die.” Instead, explain how a gift will lead to journalism that makes an impact that will improve a specific community. 

Headlines

I’m curious how many of your students know about Katie Feeney, who The Washington Post calls “the future of sports media.” Simon Owens wrote in his media newsletter (presciently, I believe), “Probably in the next five years or so, nearly every legacy media company will be operating as a kind of talent spotter that's consistently recruiting independent creators and either partnering with them or hiring them inhouse. It used to be that the best way to get a job at a national broadcast or print outlet was to start at a local one and then work your way up. Now, college grads are better off just launching their own independent media channels.” 

The Stanford Daily is suing the Trump administration’s Marco Rubio with the help of FIRE over First Amendment and immigration policies.

Related: Here’s an earlier Nieman Reports story about how student newsrooms are shifting their standards on immigration sources, takedowns and bylines. It might be handy for staff training or updating syllabi.

Well this is interesting. Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice, was once a student journalist at Dartmouth.

I get a little thrill when I see a working journalist reference their student journalism days, as this writer for Monterey County Now did in comparing her (very personal) immigration reporting now and then. 

Rabbit hole warning: This deep dive by Rolling Stone into the authorship of one of photojournalism’s most famous images offers a fascinating forensic analysis. It (and a related documentary by the writer) disputes an earlier investigative report from the Associated Press about the photo’s actual taker. The data scientists even get involved. Nerd out with me, won’t you?

Student: “Journalism is boring.” Professor: “A Giant Tub of Mayonnaise Married My Friends.”

Resources

Heads up for those student papers thinking about dropping print, or re-examining their digital product. Here’s a great tool from The Lenfest Institute that walks you through all the considerations of ceasing print publication. An incredible value at the cost of absolutely free!

Local Media Association published a guide for using AI to assist in fundraising. I feel like this is the kind of thing you could put in front of a couple of newsroom students and have them really run with it.

Classroom ideas

This New York Times investigation used unsealed court records to determine that Uber’s rates of sexual assault or sexual misconduct were much higher than one would imagine — to the tune of one every eight minutes. I would be curious how many of your (especially female) students have had precarious Uber experiences, and what some campus reporting around this issue might look like. 

Check out this analysis of a recent New York Times photo of federal agents arresting an asylum-seeker inside an immigration courthouse. I thought it was particularly interesting that photographers roam the halls trying to capture these moments. Ask your students if they would be willing to do that.

The national media annihilated Jim Acosta for interviewing an AI avatar of a school shooting victim. I’d love to know what your students think about it.

This month marked the 80th anniversary of the United States dropping nuclear bombs on two cities in Japan. PBS has a new documentary about the aging survivors: “Atomic People.” 

Feedback

Here’s a shout-out to the new people I met, the old friends I reconnected with and the folks I can’t wait to help after this year’s AEJMC!

Think about me when you:

• Realize you need help navigating your relationship with student media.

• Want to learn more about what others are doing across the country but don’t have time to do the research yourself.

• Need someone to help you conceptualize a fundraising strategy.

Have a great week, happy back to school and hang in there! Your best students are still out there waiting to be enlightened!