SPJ Students Put to Work on Convention Newspaper

LAS VEGAS --- You might think the Society of Professional Journalists means just PROFESSIONAL journalists show up for a meeting like this. Actually students make up large portion of the delegates.

While the conference started on Sunday, one group of students has been here working since Saturday to cover the conference in daily newspaper, The Working Press.

Joshua Rinaldi, senior at the University of Cincinnati, is one of the student journalists covering the three-day convention. His very early arrival gave him a chance to have the lead story in the Monday edition of The Working Press.

The convention publication, which is published today, tomorrow and Wednesday,
doubles as both an educational opportunity for college students and a historical record of one of the largest annual gatherings of journalists.

“I happened to be the first one in Las Vegas. I went to this meeting, which lasted about five hours,” said Rinaldi. “I was working Sunday from 9 in the morning until 8 at night.”

Unlike the daily newspaper newsroom where most copy editing is done on computers, all stories students write for the Working Press are printed in hard copy and marked up for students to see what changes copy editors suggest making..

“It’s kind of nice to see more of the editing process. After the third story, I knew what not to do in a lot of circumstances. So that’s helpful.”

Even though he’s missing four days of school, Rinaldi says the chance to rub shoulders with so many professional journalists and get feedback on his reporting and writing is worth it.