August Executive Report

Sept. 3, 2008

Workshops, seminars in Sept.

Take note of several no-cost or low-cost training opportunities for Florida reporters and editors in coming weeks in Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale. Planning is also underway for FSNE multimedia skills workshops in Miami in late fall and Tampa in the spring of 2009.

Please read Sam Morley’s update in this week’s FPA e-bulletin on new federal requirements that journalists wear fluorescent vests when covering traffic accidents or other stories on public highways.

On Tuesday, Sept. 16, the Orlando Sentinel will host a regional seminar about reporting on health care and health insurance. Presented by the journalism-backgrounding group FACS in cooperation with the Society for Professional Journalists, it will focus on issues such as the runaway cost of health care, the rising number of uninsured and the extreme shortage of trained medical personnel.

This timely program, which will be in the Sentinel’s Conference Center, will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will include breakfast and lunch. The faculty includes health researchers and policy experts from the University of Florida and the University of Arkansas. There’s no cost to attend, but you need to register through FACS. For more details about the program or to register, go to this link and scroll down to the second item: www.facsnet.org. Dana Eagles of The Sentinel provides this information.

The Sun-Sentinel and Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism will be hosting a free, one day workshop on Friday, September 12. According to Gail Bulfin, this workshop is great for municipal reporters, business reporters and frankly anyone covering private companies.

The “Private Companies: Reporting, Research and Multimedia Coverage” program will cover critical areas such as private company financials and writing effective private company stories during the morning sessions. A national research report on Private and Minority Business Coverage will be presented over the lunch hour. Multimedia storytelling is the focus of the afternoon, including an exercise in reporting effectively online about private companies. Presenters will be Chris Roush, associate business journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former BusinessWeek reporter, and Anita Malik, managing Web editor of BusinessJournalism.org and multimedia expert.

Registration for the workshop is available here. Registration will close at noon Sept. 5.

Gail also touts the National Writers Workshop, Sept. 20 & 21 in Fort Lauderdale. “Great speakers. Cheap!”

Register at www.sun-sentinel.com/writers. Gail says they have many great sponsors including AP, University of Florida, Lexis/Nexis, FAU, Southwest Airlines and the Poynter Institute. “It’s a fun-filled, educational weekend. We need participation,” she says.

Gil Thelen
Executive Director
FSNE