By JACQUELINE LEE
The UNITY News

The days of having a single mentor to guide you throughout your career or trying to get by without one have passed.
Rapidly changing newsrooms mean that young journalists ought to have several numbers on speed dial.
“It might be wise for a person to have a whole coaching staff,” said Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor at the Detroit Free Press.
That staff might include a mentor within the newsroom who can serve as a go-to person during crunch time, or to help navigate newsroom politics and ethical issues. A mentor outside the newsroom and a mentor for personal issues, career advice or to get a grasp on the business side of things.
Any combination works, Grimm said, and there’s even “reverse mentoring,” where the learning is mutual.
Melissa Patterson, a Chicago Tribune intern who is being mentored by a courts reporter this summer, agrees.
“I really don’t think you could have too many mentors. This profession is way too complicated and way too stressful to do on your own,” she said.
In this era of buyouts and layoffs, however, mentor relationships are often disrupted by an increasingly frequent game of newsroom musical chairs.
“Sometimes it’s hard to be a positive mentor when you’ve lost a part of what made you fall in love with this business,” Patterson said. “So it’s harder to find a mentor, especially if students don’t know where to look.”
Patterson advises others to find mentors outside the newsroom, such as the two college professors she refers to as lifetime mentors.
Greg Morago, a pop culture reporter for The Hartford Courant, never had a traditional mentor, but said he always wished he did. With that in mind, Morago has been a mentor for 12 student projects at minority journalist conventions in the past.
“Sometimes relationships can be forged during a couple of short and intense working days, and it doesn’t have to be a constant every day relationship,” Morago said.
This year, Morago was planning to work as a mentor for the UNITY student projects, but had to cancel his trip two weeks before the convention because he took a buyout from his newsroom.
“A lot of these relationships are being disrupted now, but whether they are broken is up to the individual,” said Grimm, who volunteered to take a buyout at the Detroit Free Press this week. “Technology makes it possible to mentor long-distance.”
Sheila R. Solomon, senior editor for recruitment for the Chicago Tribune, first entered the industry in the 1970s. Back then, she said, colleagues did not welcome her race or her gender in their newsroom, so much as mentor her on how to stay in the business.
As her career progressed, Solomon took younger journalists under her wing, helping them to take those first steps and learn to keep walking.
“I think these mentor relationships will always exist because we’re human, and they exist everywhere else,” she said.

By SIERRA JIMINEZ
The UNITY News

In the world of advertisement, teenagers are a coveted demographic. Television, radio and magazines are full of ads that target the younger generation of consumers.

The newspaper industry is also finding ways to reach the younger generation of news consumers.

In September, the Chicago Tribune will launch a new tabloid featuring the latest teen news. The partnership with the Chicago Public Schools was prompted by an interest to find new ways to reach young readers, and improve the reading and writing skills of Chicago teenagers. The Mash will be a weekly student newspaper written and produced by high school students from the public schools.

Initially, The Mash will provide writing opportunities only for students; however, photography and design opportunities may later become available for students.

The Mash will circulate 100,000 copies to area schools and have a Web site.

The Mash is not the Tribune’s first niche-oriented publication. Six years ago, the company launched Red Eye, a commuter tabloid aimed at the urban 20- to 30- year-old audience. The weekday paper circulates 200,000 copies daily, said Brad Moore, general manager of Red Eye.

After its success with Red Eye, the Tribune “saw an opportunity to develop the same type of niche publication for high school students,” said The Mash editor Tran Ha.

The idea for The Mash came from a similar publication called Teen Link, a student newspaper launched by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel three years ago. The prototype for Teen Link, distributed separately from the Sun-Sentinel, began in 2002.

“The goal was to reach more of our target audience with our teen content and to be able to sell to that target audience,” said Jennifer Jhon, youth editor and Sun Sentinel staff member.

Four Tribune staff members will guide the students, assigning, editing and monitoring story content. Ha said overall staff structure is still being worked out. However, the structure could be similar to the Teen Link staff: about 100 student writers, including a few student editors.

By CORINNE Z. LYONS
The UNITY News
About four years ago, Bill Watson was traveling the country as a sound engineer. But he lost his job shortly after his employer became suspicious about his 40-pound weight loss, a result of his heroin addiction.

Watson has been trying to regain his focus.
He is among about 8,000 people who have a StreetWise vendor ID badge.
The newspaper, which covers a variety of topics, uses homeless vendors to help them become gainfully employed – and self-sufficient, said Executive Director Michael Speer.

By JACQUELINE LEE
The UNITY News

The days of having a single mentor to guide you throughout your career or trying to get by without one have passed.

Rapidly changing newsrooms mean that young journalists now need to have several numbers on speed dial.
“It might be wise for a person to have a whole coaching staff,” said Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor at the Detroit Free Press.

That staff might include a mentor within the newsroom who can serve as a go-to person during crunch time, or to help navigate newsroom politics and ethical issues. A mentor outside the newsroom and a mentor for personal issues, career advice or to get a grasp on the business side of things.
Any combination works, Grimm said, and there’s even “reverse mentoring,” where the learning is mutual.

Melissa Patterson, a Chicago Tribune intern who is being mentored by a courts reporter this summer, agrees.

“I really don’t think you could have too many mentors. This profession is way too complicated and way too stressful to do on your own,” she said.

In this era of buyouts and layoffs, however, mentor relationships are often disrupted by an increasingly frequent game of newsroom musical chairs.

“Sometimes it’s hard to be a positive mentor when you’ve lost a part of what made you fall in love with this business,” Patterson said. “So it’s harder to find a mentor, especially if students don’t know where to look.”
Patterson advises others to find mentors outside the newsroom, such as the two college professors she refers to as lifetime mentors.

Greg Morago, a pop culture reporter for The Hartford Courant, never had a traditional mentor, but said he always wished he did. With that in mind, Morago has been a mentor for 12 student projects at minority journalist conventions in the past.

“Sometimes relationships can be forged during a couple of short and intense working days, and it doesn’t have to be a constant every day relationship,” Morago said.

This year, Morago was planning to work as a mentor for the UNITY student projects, but had to cancel his trip two weeks before the convention because he took a buyout from his newsroom.

“A lot of these relationships are being disrupted now, but whether they are broken is up to the individual,” said Grimm, who volunteered to take a buyout at the Detroit Free Press this week. “Technology makes it possible to mentor long-distance.”

Sheila R. Solomon, senior editor for recruitment for the Chicago Tribune, first entered the industry in the 1970s. Back then, she said, colleagues did not welcome her race or her gender in their newsroom, much less mentor her on how to stay in the business.

As her career progressed, Solomon took younger journalists under her wing, helping them to take those first steps and to keep walking.

“I think these mentor relationships will always exist because we’re human, and they exist everywhere else,” she said.

By EUNICE LEE and APRIL YEE
The UNITY News

Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade told a dozen American journalists today that “there are too many papers in Senegal, too many journalists.”

Wade, who was invited to Chicago by the National Association of Black Journalists to address the UNITY convention, brushed off the media blackout in his country on Monday, when most newspapers did not print as a protest of a reported police beating of two journalists at a soccer match in June. Wade said that police were trying to protect soccer players from the reporters who he claimed were physically attacking the players.

“They’re competing to bring out extraordinary headlines. They attack people, they make up things,” Wade told said to journalists at a breakfast.

“Now, I’m not asking for them to praise me or say good things about me.”

Wade, who spoke in French and English, also addressed about his plans to increase Senegal’s food production and fight climate change, the topic of his UNITY speech on Friday afternoon. He was flanked by his minister of information and spokesperson, and elsewhere in the room sat Senegalese politicians and journalists exclusively from Senegal-owned media outlets, though Wade added that a privately–owned African news organization had been invited.

Wade also addressed International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s July 14 indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Since 2003, when violence in Darfur ignited, some 300,000 people have died and 2.2 million have fled their homes, according to the United Nations.

“What is recognized by everybody is that many people were killed there,” Wade said. “I’m not sure it’s a genocide.”

Wade said al-Bashir called him for advice when initially presented with the charges.

“I think he was a bit surprised by the decision,” Wade said. “I was the one who told him it’s not your collaborators, it’s you. What can I do now? I’m thinking about it, I don’t know.”

“I am a friend of President Bashir,” Wade said. “My friendship does not mean that…I’m going to protect him from the law.”