Read all about them

Hunter students have such amazing stories to tell. Their own.

Though I know this is so, I never fail to be surprised by the odds overcome and the talents displayed.

My advanced reporting class’s biographies prompt this reflection. There you can read about students who overcame dysfunctional families and students who credit their success to strong families.

You can find the classic immigrant success story repeated in tales of migration from Sicily, El Salvador, Belarus and Honduras.

One student discovered her vocation in a comic book; another in her diary. One used Tae Kwon Do to conquer depression and the bullies who plagued him.

They are musicians, actors, athletes and crusaders for social justice. Most are exploring the possibility of a career in news.

Be sure to read all about them on their blogs.

An experiment in teaching and learning

Though no one can predict the future in detail, it is likely that at some point in my students’ lifetime, newspapers, magazines, television, and radio as we now know them will have migrated from the printing press and the airwaves to the World Wide Web.

I’m an old-fashioned newspaperman trying to learn new ways and hoping my students will help me. As I show them the fundamentals of reporting and writing news, together we’ll practice enhancing our story-telling with the tools the Web makes available, incorporating photography, audio, video and interactive features into our work.

I’ll use this blog to share ideas and to keep track of successes and pitfalls.

I’ve stolen some ideas from a former colleague, Cindy Rodriguez, whose students at NYU published their classwork on individual blogs. (To my students: Note that a hyperlink is one of the simplest but most effective interactive devices, allowing the writer to acknowledge the work of others and to offer illustrations and expanded explanations without bogging the text down.)