Getting From “Good” to “Great”

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

By Rochelle Riley
The UNITY News Online

The room looks familiar. I’ve been here before.

Skilled technicians and hard-working journalists have turned a McCormick Convention Center into a newsroom with white-clothed tables weighed with dozens of computers and the hopes of students who want to do what I do, what my colleagues do, for a living: report the news.

Yesterday, I sat with one student and discussed effective writing. We read a paragraph in her story out loud. The only thing missing was the interviewee’s voice discussing how hard it was to get a job. I explained to the student that we can tell people things or we can let people tell things through us. Or we can do both.

“You want me to go call him?”

Sure, I told her.

It took her fewer than five minutes. She returned with a page full of notes, a smile and hope.

We inserted a single quote that took a story from good to great, and Virginia Torres is on her way. Look for her in a few years. She will know what she is doing.

That is what the student news projects are about. And that is why, every summer, my colleagues who attend our annual conventions - whether they are at NABJ or UNITY - know where to find me.

In a room of hope.

Rochelle Riley is a metro columnist for the Detroit Free Press.

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topic: UNITY Convention

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