If you submit something that doesn’t run, we’ll always explain why.įor students who are unhappy with our coverage on certain issues, I’d invite you to come write for us. As a rule, we will edit for AP style and concision - not content - but we might not run columns that don’t have a clear tie to Miami or Oxford. If you’re a student, alumnus, Miami employee or Oxford resident, you’re also more than welcome to submit an op-ed to our opinion editor, Devin Ankeney. You can reach me directly at or or you can reach out to a section editor. If multiple people suggest the same ideas to us or offer similar feedback on our existing coverage, that’s a strong indication to us that we should start pursuing or continue to pursue similar topics in the future.Īnd if you are unhappy with our coverage, let us know. It’s never an easy decision to say no to covering something important, but there’s only so much our staff can do. Keep in mind that we don’t have the bandwidth to write every story we want to write. You can find contact information for each section editor on our about us page online, or you can submit a tip through our story tips page. If there’s something you want to see covered, ask. Well to start, we don’t know what we don’t know. So, where does that leave you, our readers? The less people want to talk to us about something, the more important it is for us to cover, and the longer it’s going to take. What can feel like silence from us is often a sign that we’re hard at work on a difficult story. Sometimes, an issue is important enough that we need a team of writers and a period of months to do it justice. We aim for a minimum of three sources in most reported stories, and our intent is to take a wide range of perspectives into account for both individual stories and as a publication. Some have a quicker turnaround - think breaking news or events - but if it’s an in-depth report or a feature, it’s going to take time. Most stories take about two weeks to fully report. Unless it’s event coverage, the published article never meshes exactly with our budget lines, because our understanding of stories changes as we speak to sources and gather information. These act as a starting point and explain a bare-bones version of what the story is and who they should reach out to. Writers can’t interview their own current professors or friends, or cover stories with any relation to them.Ī day or two after the meeting, our writers get budget lines. Often, writers will pick up stories that they themselves pitched, but we have restrictions. With that in mind, our editors then prioritize, picking the most important and timely stories we need to cover based on a news judgment they’ve cultivated from years of experience at The Student, in classes and at internships.Īfter that, they pitch back out a pared-down list of ideas to the writers. No matter how good each individual idea is, it would be impossible for us to cover them all. Once everyone has shared their ideas and talked about it, the editors are left with a list - sometimes 30 or more stories long. ![]() These can come from anywhere: event calendars, questions our writers have about how things work at Miami University, Oxford City Council agendas, conversations with friends, story tips, Oxford Talk on Facebook and more. Each section has its own process, but here’s how it works in Campus & Community, our largest section which focuses on news and culture.įirst, writers and editors attend a weekly meeting, and everyone comes prepared with two to three story ideas. Regardless of the section, every story begins with an idea. Taking a story from inception to completion ![]() Here’s how we decide what to cover - and what you as our readers can do to help or offer feedback. No matter how ambitious we are, stories will slip through the cracks. ![]() ![]() And like every other student, we have full course loads, social lives (sometimes), family obligations and hobbies beyond the newsroom. Like its name suggests, The Student is a team of student journalists, ranging from journalism majors all the way to environmental scientists. It’s easy to forget as consumers that someone on the other end has to produce that. When long-lasting stories like the presidential election or higher education legislation in Ohio break, we’ve been trained to read follow-up after follow-up, constantly exposing ourselves to new angles and in-depth analyses. In our generation’s 24-hour news cycle, it’s easy to expect coverage the moment an event happens.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |