How do you spend the weekend before classes start? If you’re a BG Falcon Media executive, you spend all day Saturday and Sunday at our annual boot camp, squaring things away for the semester. Here are a few glimpses…
After some introductions, re-introductions and hitting some of last year’s highlights, we dove right into some real-world training.
We were happy to welcome alum, former Sentinel-Tribune editor and the journalism powerhouse BG Independent Media Jan McLaughlin to start things off with a deep dive into important issues in and around the city, as well as reporting and news writing tips. Incredibly valuable.
After lunch, we went even deeper into journalism thanks to a visit from Jonathan Stoltman from Reporting On Addition. Jonathan dove into misconceptions about alcohol use and how they can both influence stories on the subjection and drive public opinion. We talked a lot about ways to approach content concerning alcohol use and ways we can be constructive in our work. A practical and useful session.
We finished our afternoon with refreshers on both our website content management system and our social media scheduling platform – the tools of the trade.
Speaking of tools, we kicked of Sunday with a brief review of Saturday, then a look at all of the new equipment we added – a shout out to all of you One Day donors for making it possible.
Falcon Radio operations manager Nate Hinners then gave the executive team a crash course on basic rescue for when the radio station has dead air.
Then alum Carrie Blackmore, now a freelance writer in Cincinnati, took time to help use better plan stories and be more effective story tellers – a trait that cuts across pretty much all of what we do.
After lunch, our partners from Athletics came by to talk all things sports and student-athletes. Top of mind was new head football coach Eddie George and how he’s changed a lot things for them. Most of all, though, they talked about how much they wanted to help our students do more and better content, then draw more attention to that content. In fact, they said head men’s basketball coach Todd Simon specifically mentioned Falcon Media Sports Network’s work and that he wants more for his team. It’s going to be a great year for sports.
After we talked through key stories and issues we wanted to address this Fall, it was time to greet incoming freshmen as well as some of our returning volunteers and interns. And what a turnout – by the time we wrapped up, we had about 100 students talking about opportunities with student media.
Here’s to a great year!