My mother made me a better writer by doing nothing

My mom is an amazing individual (even if most people can say that about their own mothers.) Honestly my mom is Martha Stewart and June Cleaver and Oprah all rolled into one. And it is to her, on this Mother's Day, that I owe a good portion of my love for and ability to write.

When I was in grade school I began to love the concept of putting pen to paper to come up with something unique and interesting to read by another person. I don't have any of my early writings, but I believe it is safe to say... they were horrible. At some point, I don't remember what year, I had to take one of those standardized tests. You know, the kind that mean nothing but are required and the results arrive in the mail. When the kids in my class started talking about their test results I was surprised that I'd yet to see mine. When I asked my mom where the scores were she told me it wasn't important as long as I was doing my best in school.

Fast forward a year or two. I took the same test and when I asked about the results I got the same response. It doesn't matter because my parents knew I was trying. It wasn't until I was in high school, excelling at the English writing courses and starting the school paper that my mom told me the ulterior motive behind not showing me the scores.

I had scored the lowest on the writing portion of the test, lower even than science - the class I despised. My mom (and dad) knew how much writing meant to me and they didn't want me to become discouraged by the score. They knew me so well! So, they kept the results a secret from me and were justly rewarded when I took the test again a few years later and received my highest score on the writing portion.

Thank God my mom kept the results from me. Who knows where I would be today if I had become disheartened with writing all the way back in grade school.

What Journalism School Should Offer

I read an article today written by Mark Coughlan, a fellow freelance journalist based our of Dublin, Ireland, entitled ‘Giving Journalism Education a Kick in the Arse.’ And I have to say I laughed and then felt the need to give my own two sense. The gist of his post was that there are some things Journalism schools should keep when training the next generation, and there are somethings that need to be revised. As my earlier post would suggest, I concur.

What to add:

Intro to Web Writing. No journalism student should leave a four-year university and not know how to write for the web. And no, it is not the same as writing for a print publication, sorry.

Advanced Web Writing. Once the basics are learned in an advanced course should be at least offered, if not required, to help students understand how to pen timely stories for the web. News breaks and a site needs the story up that same day - again unlike the print side.

Intro to Social Media. This should walk the students through the biggest social media sites. They should learn how to use the sites both to cultivate sources as well as to build a recognizable ‘brand’ around his/her name. Also teach what not to do (like no drunken half-clothed party shots from the weekend), what to do (yes have your clips accessible on LinkedIn) and what’s optional (website - semi-optional, blog - a must.)

Basic Web Design. Students shouldn’t just graduate with the knowledge of how to lay a page out in InDesign. They need to be able to create pages, make their own website, and sorry but it’s got to look better than the sites from the 90s.

Integration 101. As a journalism major, there is something lacking from the education if you don’t know how to take and mildly edit a picture, film and edit video, etc... Even without any desire to go into TV or photography, more and more writers are being asked to cross over.

New Media Ethics. Now that the content sharing lines tend to blur thanks to blogs, home-made sites and social media, what’s ethical when it come to using pictures, video, art, etc... It’s not as black and white as print.