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Meeting the high (school) standards of journalism

11/19/09 4:30 PM

By Bradley Wilson Coordinator, Student Media Advising North Carolina State University bradleywilson08@gmail.com One of the fun things about working with college students is that, often, they’re not inside the box. They often are creative thinkers that aren’t jaded by the ills of the modern mass media. But for every bit of innovation and creativity that college students have, sometimes high-school students have even more. Sometimes they lack the technical skills to implement their ideas, and sometimes they don’t know what their options are, but a good adviser is there to help out. Just like at the college level, the adviser is there to guide the students, to get them outside the box, and to realize the possibilities. When the students challenge the system, work as a...

Blogging about Blogging

11/18/09 8:39 PM

Vince Filak, Ph.D. Advance-Titan Adviser University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh I know a lot of us are looking at blogs as a good way to use the Web to reach out to the readership. However, I’ve also noticed that we all seem to have the same problems when it comes to blogs. Here are a few phenomena I’ve seen in the college scene: THE ‘I AM IMPORTANT. I HAVE A BLOG’ PHENOMENON: This is a direct offshoot of the old media “I have a column” phenomenon. This is where someone feels they’ve “matured” beyond the strictures of reporting, writing and editing. They suddenly have ascended to a position of greatness in their own mind and thus feel the need to share that greatness with others....

Dude, you got this

11/12/09 11:58 AM

Vince Filak, Ph.D. Advance-Titan Adviser University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh A few months ago, I lived my dream/mid-life crisis by buying a classic, 1968 Mustang. Since I was about 10 years old, I’ve wanted one of these things and I finally found a good one that needed some TLC, but was solid all around. As a kid, I spent a good amount of time working in a garage. In fact, I thought about apprenticing as a mechanic instead of going on to school, so I’ve had this interest in putzing with cars for quite some time. In any case, the car needed some minor repairs here and there, most of which I was comfortable with, but then came the valve covers. Over the top of the engine valves were rusted, crudded up valve covers...

Reenergize

11/4/09 7:46 PM

Vince Filak, Ph.D. Advance-Titan Adviser University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Few things can make me happy about being in Texas. Sorry, hate to be that way, but any place in which guys wear belt buckles that could be used for a tea service isn’t my kind of place. Couple that with a week of rain, below-grade temperatures and the knowledge that I could have been home working on my Mustang, well, Texas isn’t exactly nirvana. However, regardless of the venue, the CMA/ACP/CBI convention always puts a smile on my face. (OK, that’s not entirely true. The time we went to Nashville had me reading Dante’s Inferno to feel spiritually uplifted.) The convention is often viewed as a string of sessions coupled with a myriad of...

Dare to be stupid

10/22/09 7:35 PM

Vince Filak, Ph.D. Advance-Titan Adviser University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Much has been made of the decision to host the CMA/ACP conference along Halloween weekend. While I’m just as perturbed as many of the folks who are upset they won’t be seeing their children off to trick or treating, I do consider the timing to be a fortuitous blessing nonetheless.   Halloween is one of two times each year that the Advance-Titan puts out a spoof issue. (The other, obviously, is April Fool’s.) The benefit of being in Austin this coming week is that I will have plausible deniability when it comes to whatever infantile ideas drop out of their heads. The downside is that I’ll likely be up at 3 a.m., hitting the refresh...