Journalism boot campers begin training for duty

By DAVID GREER
Member Services Director

They came from five states &endash; Kentucky, Indiana, Virginia, Florida and Oklahoma &endash; to the manicured campus of Georgetown College to endure three weeks of basic training. But there wasn't a single session on gun cleaning or how to scale a wall while wearing a 50-pound backpack or crawling under barbed-wire fence on their backs. Instead, these 24 boot campers learned how to write effective leads, how to organize meeting stories, how to work a news beat and participated in a discussion about journalism ethics.

This year's KPA Journalism Boot Camp class was a diverse group. There was an attorney, two retired state workers, a playwright, a screenwriter, a former librarian with three masters degrees, a recent college graduate, a former political campaign manager, a graphic artist, a retired school superintendent among others who comprised KPA's second annual boot camp.

Again this year, the boot camp was taught by Jim St. Clair, journalism instructor at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Ind. St. Clair is a former newspaperman who's worked in Indiana and Kentucky.

Several professionals also talked with the class during the three-week session from July 15 to Aug. 2. Those included Monica Richardson, reporter and acting community news editor for The Lexington Herald-Leader, Courier-Journal and KPA general counsel Jon Fleischaker, Ninie O'Hara, an award-winning features writer and columnist in Lebanon and Springfield and now for Southeast Christian Church's Southeast Outlook newspaper.

Also speaking to the class were community newspaper journalists Willie Sawyers from The London Sentinel-Echo, Don White from The Anderson News and KPS director of sales Teresa Revlett, the former publisher of The McLean County News. Courier-Journal public editor Pam Platt and this writer also spoke.

The class attended a Scott County Fiscal Court meeting and faced the challenge of writing an interesting story from a routine meeting that featured no controversy or debate.

During the course, each student wrote seven stories. They ranged from hard-news stories to features to personality profiles to meeting stories.

This is the second year for the boot camp. Both have been taught by St. Clair and both held on the Georgetown College campus just a few miles outside of Lexington's northwest side.

The camp's primary purpose is to provide training for the employees of KPA member papers and associate members. Employees of The Flemingsburg Gazette, The Clay City Times, The Citizen Voice & Times and the Farmer's Pride attended.

But the boot camp is also open to members of the public. Nearly all individuals who signed up &endash; including those from out of state &endash; saw classified ads for the boot camp in various Kentucky papers. All want to be journalists or at least know more about reporting and writing for print.

Final dates have not been selected for next year's boot camp but it will probably run from mid-July to early August. In all likelihood, the location and instructor will also be the same. There's already a short waiting list for next year's boot camp.

If you have a staff member you would like to send, watch for registration information in The Press next spring, in addition to mailings to editors and publishers across Kentucky.