Below is list of common excuses you might hear from yearbook reporters, after they’ve had a bad interview and they return with bad information. Fortunately, good interviewing skills can be taught to help counter each of these excuses and help every student on yearbook staff – even the shy, quiet ones – become more confident interviewers.
An interview that lasts less than an hour can still lead to a ton of useful information and quotes. That is, if the reporter takes proper notes and gets the right details down.
To Susan Asher, the idea was simple.
Every day, she saw dozens of students walking around the halls of Inza R. Wood Middle School carrying iPods and MP3 players, the small, portable digital music players that have become popular and commonplace among kids today.
Asher, the yearbook adviser at the school in Wilsonville, Ore., figured that the trendy devices could be put to productive use by her staff.
Text is the most important aspect of the yearbook. While pictures will be admired first, it is the body copy and the cutlines that accomplish the book’s final goal by capturing the tone of the year. Time and time again, I have had to deal with poorly written copy, whether it is riddled with grammatical mistakes or lacks the interest that draws in the reader. Cleaning up the text is an easy process, with a few basic tips.
Interviewing is a skill gained by following practical procedures. Good reporters, from local newspapers to national magazines, follow these procedures to get great stories. For yearbook writers looking for stories and details to capture the year, the same techniques will work for you.
There are as many ways to teach interviewing as there are advisers. Here are two advisers and their methods for teaching interviewing and reporting skills to beginning reporters.
No doubt about it, developing questions is the reason most journalists put off interviewing – they cannot think of what to ask. Here are five tips to help your staff get past “question block.”
Sami A. Slaquer
8:30 a.m., somewhere on the West Coast – Sami is assigned the hottest story of the year – an investigative piece on the new speed bumps that are causing damage to cars in the school’s parking lot.
