Rural Press Workshop
Saturday March 25
8am to 1 p.m.
Simpkins Hall (Writing Center, Room 309, Room 220)
Advance registration required
The Journalism program has scheduled a Rural Press Workshop that we hope becomes a regular, if not annual, offering. This first year presents three workshop sessions and a luncheon speaker that should help reporters and editors at the area's smaller newspapers gain some useful professional development. It will be a small gathering, drawing 10 to 15 journalists from places like Galesburg, Quincy, Beardstown, Jacksonville and Canton.
Two faculty members from the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs (Christopher Merrett and Roger Brown) will conduct one session on economic development in small-town and agricultural contexts.
Two members from the journalism faculty, Bill Knight and Mark Butzow, will conduct sessions, one showing the visitors how to do "computer-assisted" research and reporting, and the other designed to improve their understanding of the common grammatical mistakes media writers often include in their work.
The luncheon speech by Jim Pumarlo will describe how small-town newspapers can handle sensitive hard news stories that they might be inclined to gloss over or sweep under the rug rather than "rock the boat."
