The Lookout Staff further their connections at MCCPA conference

Nicole Yelland giving her speech on AI and its impacts for reporters. Photo by Emmett Roman.

The opening keynote was presented by Nicole Yelland. Yelland is a communications strategist whose work has been covered by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes, The Today Show and Good Morning America.

Yelland’s presentation focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and how to navigate journalism with AI on the rise. At first, I was interested about what approach she was going to take. Maybe it was due to her being in public relations, but Yelland focused on how AI can turn into “slop,” which people will recognize when they see it. However, it is also the future for the journalism field, and getting used to working with it is going to further your career.

The need to adapt to the world of AI is what I mainly took from the presentation. Yelland encouraged us to not let AI take away our creativity. One specific thing I remember Yelland saying is that AI can be used to make the hard parts of writing easier.

This had me question if using AI would take away journalistic integrity. Sure, AI can be useful for generating ideas, but, does using AI for that and other writing skills take away the credibility that journalism needs?

I chose to attend the sports session, “The Perfect Game Story,” as I wanted to improve upon my sports writing. It’s ironic, because I actually am not a fan of sports but I love to write about them. Terry Foster was the speaker for this session. He had previously written for the Detroit Pistons, who were notorious at that time for being “moody” with reporters. He gained their trust by being more than “someone holding a pen and paper.”

That’s where he opened the session. He warned us about how he was going to “rant” about what he hates about sports writers nowadays. His first piece of advice to reporters is to, “Be a sports reporter, not a sports writer.” This means that instead of just writing a story to cover sports, become one with the story. Delve into the game by examining the players emotions leading up to a shot. Another tip that the speaker gave was to focus on writing one specific highlight or game winning moment, rather than covering the entire game itself. Games are important, but a reporter must remember that we are writing for the population, not the coaches or players.

The last thing I learned from this session was that sports reporters need to become versed in the sport being covered. Foster used the analogy of being a doctor who needs to diagnose a patient. In order to do that, a doctor must know what they are looking for and looking at. So, reporters need to know what they are writing about and why.

Terry Foster stands in front of reporters speaking about his pet peeves in sports writing. Photo by Emmett Roman.

Rose White explains FOIA to reporters and some tips when filling out a FOIA request. Photo by Emmett Roman.

The next session I attended alongside Carson Lemon. This session was given by Rose White, and she discussed what The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was and the importance of FOIA. Before attending the session, I had a rough idea of what FOIA was. I knew it was something that many reporters use in order to get information, but I did not know the lengthy process that goes into acquiring that information.

FOIA establishes any person can put in a request and acquire information from governmental agency records. Some tips that were given during the session were:

1. When making a FOIA request, make sure to be clear about what information is needed, as there are many federal records that can be given.
2. Sometimes, you can be charged to receive a record. It is rare, but it may still happen. It’s most common among state governments, as they have less funding.
3. Governments can deny a FOIA request if the information is determined to be not subject to FOIA disclosure. However, those denials can be appealed.

Hartley attended May’s second breakout. In this session, May discussed how to create videos that matter when it comes to social media and beyond. Hartley said that the speaker showed his own videos and social media posts to explain some basic formulas for how to create videos that create engagement and have consistent branding.  

Next was the awards ceremony. Before that event began, though, we were able to swap newspapers with the other community colleges attending the conference. It was really interesting to see what other student newspaper were reporting and how they designed their publications.

Newspapers from the attending colleges. Photo by Emmett Roman.