Points and Clicks is the administrator’s newsletter for the Intercollegiate Online News Network. The Points are things you should consider to improve your news website. The Clicks are good things that are happening with members of the network.
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Points
Pay attention to excerpts
The excerpt is WordPress’ word for summaries. Every post should have one. Summaries show up as text under the headline on the home page and section pages. A well-written excerpt is an excellent supplement to the headline and can give readers lots of information — and a good reason to click on the link to the story.
Need help writing summaries? Take a look at this JPROF page on writing summaries.
Multimedia editing
We’ve put together a list of items that our ICONN NewsStream editors should consider when they pick up a story from a member website and enhance it for the news stream. It’s actually a pretty good list of things for your students to do if you are trying to teach multimedia editing. You might want to take a look. This is a work in progress, so if you have any suggestions, let us know.
Workshops: One down and three to go
We just completed our first online mini-workshop this week. Lisa Gary did an excellent job in leading the participants through a good session on Feature Writing. We still have three more to go, and there are spaces remaining in each:
- Managing Your News Website, Oct. 23-27
- Basics of Photojournalism, Nov. 6-9
- Teaching Sports Reporting, Nov. 13-17
You can find out more — and find a link to the registration page — here on the JN-21.com website.
Questions about JeffersonNet
We now have a community forum where you can post questions about JeffersonNet and many other topics that we deal with at ICONN. Just register (all we ask for is a username and password) and join the discussion.
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Clicks
Welcome to the network
Two new sites have joined the network this week: — TheVentureOnline at the University of Houston and DatelineAlabama at the University of Alabama.
The Venture, according to the About page, is ”the only multi-university collegiate newspaper for Latinos, has a circulation of 4,000 and publishes monthly during the academic year. The newspaper dates back to 2009 when it began as a news website under the name uhelgato.com. Months after it was launched, the website was nominated by the Associated Collegiate Press for Online Newspaper of the Year. . . .” The administrator of the site is Ray Ruiz.
DatelineAlabama is the news website of the Department of Journalism at the University of Alabama. It dates back to the year 2000, making it one of the oldest collegiate news websites around. Its administrators are Chip Brantley and George Daniels.
Welcome to both sites.
ICONN NewsStream
The ICONN NewsStream has been launched with Chris Thomas leading a set of editors at the University of Tennessee. The hope is that they will be joined by editors from other campuses soon.
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