Each year for four years, emeritus professor Bud Pagel has taken a handful of talented beginning reporting students to Nebraska newspapers to report and write a series of stories for the papers. The three-day experience gives students the opportunity for bylines and a chance to work in a real newsroom under the direction of expert editors like Pagel.
In the past, newspapers in nine towns have hosted the Pagel project. Towns include Norfolk (twice), Grand Island, Kearney, Hastings, Fremont, Aurora, Geneva (twice), Blair and Elkhorn.
In the fall of 2009, six students accompanied Pagel to the Norfolk Daily News and six others to the Douglas County Post-Gazette in Elkhorn. Those traveling to Norfolk rote about adjustment problems of returning Iraq war veterans. The Elkhorn team interviewed local citizens who had lived through the Great Depression. The college pays for travel and lodging expenses, and the newspapers pay for the students’ food.
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Student gets reporting bug after Norfolk Daily News assignment
By ANNA RIPA
J Alumni News staff
Teachers always say to broaden your horizon. Norfolk’s horizon was beautiful at 8 a.m. when I arrived at the Norfolk Daily News, but it was gone by the time I took my eyes away from the computer and my stylebook.
Expanding my horizons in a visit to Norfolk gave me an opportunity to go outside my comfort level: to interview someone I didn’t know, to have my work edited by an experienced journalist and to get hiring advice from an editor.
I was grateful to be given the opportunity by the university and Bud Pagel (associate professor emeritus) to write stories about soldiers for the Norfolk Daily News. I experienced what it is like to go to work, get an assignment, find the news and report it. I took what I have been learning in my beginning reporting class and tried to apply it to a real job experience.
I was nervous showing up at my first interview at Norfolk’s Veteran Home, but all those nerves went away after I found myself being more curious about World War II and Korean War veteran James Kelley. I thought like a reporter, asking tough questions about his experience and the true meaning of patriotism. I found myself repeating the same questions in different ways to get more detailed answers, while I made sure my facts were correct about his being sent to the South Pacific in 1942 and being in the 6th Marine Division. I even asked him to spell Chosin Reservoir, where he fought in a battle.
It was not hard for me to find the news. The news was his pride in his country; I saw that with his Marine Corps flag and the Purple Hearts hanging on his wall.
My second interview was with National Guard member Justin Olson. Olson had been in charge of training 400 Iraq soldiers near Baghdad. Olson showed patriotism for his county and love for his job. I quoted him saying, “I am going to be part of this place until they kick me out.”
Since I was engaged in my interviews, writing a story wasn’t a problem. The problem was condensing the information. Understanding what needs to be in the story and what doesn’t is an art. When Pagel edited my articles, I was amazed how much more meaningful and newsworthy my story was after he explained what needed to be cut.
It is important for students to know what skills bosses are looking for. I asked Kent Warneke, editor of Norfolk Daily News, what he looks for when he is hiring.
“Someone who knows how to write, fits well with the current staff, can represent us properly and someone who is curious and willing to ask those tough questions,” Warneke said.
It was important for me to speak with Warneke about my future as a journalist and what he thought I needed to be successful. Applying for internships is important. They give a student an opportunity to see what life would be like working in a newsroom or as a reporter.
When I first came to the college of journalism, I was unsure about whether I wanted to be part of the news side of broadcast or the production side. But spending a weekend in Norfolk made me want to focus on news reporting. I will use this experience to grow as a reporter and find more opportunities to broaden my horizon.
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Frantic start leads to stellar finish at Norfolk
By ABRAM LUEDERS
J Alumni News staff
I was looking forward to going to Norfolk for a reporting trip on the last weekend in October. But I had overlooked one tiny detail: The trip was scheduled for the first weekend in October.
At least I got the month right.
I realized my mistake the day before the trip and frantically called Bud Pagel, otherwise known as “Uncle Buddy,” to tell him I wouldn’t be able to make it. In language I will not repeat, Uncle Buddy told me I would be coming on the trip. The next day, I packed up and left.
Soon, things started to look up. My first assignment on Friday morning was going to be a breeze. Three members of the Norfolk American Legion were coming to the Norfolk Daily News office. I would interview one of them and a write a short profile story. No problem.
After our group arrived at the Daily News office, we gathered in a room to meet with editor Kent Warneke. Warneke lost full use of his legs after a childhood bout with polio. But that morning, as soon as he bounded into the room sporting crutches and a Cheshire-cat grin, it was obvious that Warneke wasn’t the kind of guy who’d let a little thing like that get in his way. Rapid-fire introductions traveled around the room. Then Warneke and Pagel worked out the details of our upcoming assignments and left us to wait for the guys from the American Legion.
Soon enough, they arrived, and I was assigned to interview Jerry Landkamer — a quiet, middle-aged man with a mustache and large glasses.
Landkamer was the commander of Norfolk’s American Legion post. As I began the interview, I could tell he was patriotic enough to put a flag-waving bald eagle to shame. But dealing with the press wasn’t his strong suit. Landkamer deflected question after question with constant references to the stack of American Legion pamphlets he had brought with him. To top it off, he made it clear that he believed journalists were a threat to the men and women in the armed forces. Ice-breakers were useless here: The man was all ice.
It was not a successful interview. My mind was racing. What was I going to write?
But then, Landkamer started to talk about his experience returning from the Vietnam War. On his way home, protesters in San Francisco had harassed Landkamer’s ship. And as he told the story, a bit of emotion broke through Landkamer’s voice. It wasn’t much, but I found I had a story after all.
Several hours later, our group headed out to interview members of the National Guard’s 189th Transportation Co. I interviewed Dale Alexander, a National Guardsman who had recently become a National Guard recruiter. And despite Alexander’s less-than-subtle attempts to recruit me, the interview went well. But compared to my awkward encounter that morning, it was hardly memorable.
That night, our group had dinner with Warneke at a local Mexican restaurant. The topic of the American Legion interviews popped up, and Warneke asked who had interviewed Jerry Landkamer.
I looked up from my chimichanga and told him I had.
Warneke smiled and explained that Landkamer was a great guy, but at times he could be a bit zealous in his pursuit of patriotism.
As a journalist, I know this won’t be the last time I’ll have to deal with a slightly uncomfortable interview — or an unexpected change in my schedule. But if I wanted a predictable career, I could have majored in accounting. I signed up for the Norfolk reporting trip to learn something. And I did.
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J student survives her first interview in Elkhorn visit
By LACEY MASON
J Alumni News staff
When my alarm clock went off at 5:30 that morning, I immediately regretted agreeing to go to Elkhorn to write a story for the Post-Gazette.
Originally, we were going to go up the night before, stay in a hotel for a couple of nights and have a fun weekend. At the last minute the plans were changed, so we drove there and back and there again to save on the cost of hotels. We had to be at the Elkhorn Post-Gazette by 8 a.m., on a Friday morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
When we arrived at the Post-Gazette, we were greeted by a sweet woman named Mary Lou. The office was small and she scrambled to find places for all of us to set up our laptops. Three other girls and I shared a desk that was stuck in an editor’s office and took turns plugging our laptops in.
We would be assigned to write feature stories on some older members of the community who had lived through the Great Depression and drought. I wasn’t looking forward to this.
When I arrived at Allan Neu’s home, I was nervous. And that was an understatement. If I had known my way around Elkhorn better, I may have turned and run.
My assignment was to interview Allan, who was just shy of 84 years old and had spent his childhood on a farm during the Great Depression. I didn’t have much interviewing experience, and I didn’t have much experience with the elderly. I began to feel self-conscious about my nose-piercing and wondered if I should have worn long sleeves. I was a basket case. I didn’t know what to do.
So I knocked.
Allan and his wife, Violet, answered the door. With a smile, I went in.
During the interview Allan Neu was stoic, while his wife across the table smiled proudly. He was the perfect interview. He spoke slowly, and didn’t speak unless I asked a question. He didn’t go off on tangents, and when he was done answering a question he simply stopped speaking. Every once in awhile, Violet would throw in funny quips about paying bills with chicken and how much her husband liked doughnuts.
An hour and a half later, my interview was over. I thanked the couple for their time, sipped on a glass of water and talked with them about the stained-glass wind chimes hanging on the ceiling. I wasn’t any less nervous than when I had come, but I knew, at this point, that the nerves were all in my head.
Violet gave me a ride when it became apparent my ride couldn’t come pick me up. I was happy to be returning to the Post-Gazette.
I settled into a chair that I’d tracked down from another room and squeezed in at my crowded desk. Now it was time to write.
Hours later, after arguments with tired classmates and way too much Godfather’s pizza, I had my story.
We managed to talk Bud Pagel, an adjunct professor and our boss for our reality-check weekend, into not making us drive back to Elkhorn for edits the next morning.
So we arrived at the J school at 9 a.m., tired and anxious to get back in our beds. Uncle Buddy, as Pagel likes to call himself, told us he was proud of us. He said we had the best group of stories he had seen in his five years of taking students on trips to small-town newspapers. In our pride, we all sat up a little straighter in our chairs.
The high was short-lived.
As Uncle Buddy handed our papers back to us, we gawked at the corrections. Not a single lined was unmarked.
That’s always the hard part: having to accept criticism. In the computer lab, my classmates and I grumbled about his edits. We complained about words he wanted us to cut out and words he wanted us to change. We knew he was right, though.
Two additional drafts later, I was free to go. Pagel praised my story and told me he thought it was one of the best. I thanked him and wondered how many of us he had said the same thing to.
I can’t say the experience was eye-opening or miraculous. I can’t say that, overall, I had a blast. It was a good experience. I had my first real interview with a stranger, and I survived. Perhaps that’s the best lesson I learned from all of this: A situation scared me, I confronted it, and I didn’t die.
Everything was OK, and everything is going to be OK.
NOTE: The stories that Lacey Mason and other beginning reporters wrote for the Elkhorn Post-Gazette were published in a package in December 2009 and January 2010.
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