Workshops, boot camp on the horizon

The next few months will be busy ones here at KPA with a focus on providing training for your editorial staff members. On tap are some one-day open records and open meeting workshops followed by our one-week journalism boot camp.

The KPA News Editorial Committee has a keen interest in providing training on how to use the state’s open records and open meetings laws. Exact dates and locations have not been chosen yet but late May or early June appears to be a likely time period.

We want to have one session in eastern Kentucky and one in western Kentucky to reduce travel time and expense. And it’s likely the workshops will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time and be on Thursdays for the convenience of weekly newspaper staffers.

We are talking with our friends at the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues about jointly sponsoring and planning the workshops.

Look for more details soon.

In the meantime, KPA will again hold its one-week Journalism Boot Camp. The tentative dates are July 7-11 in Frankfort on the campus of Kentucky State University.

Again this year, the cost of the boot camp will be $100 and the class will be limited to 15 students.

The boot camp is ideal for those staff members you might have hired from the community – people who have natural writing abilities but lack formal journalism training.

The boot camp highlights news story organization, AP style, feature writing and libel, to mention a few.

Yours truly serves as the instructor but we also bring in some newspaper professionals who serve as guest instructors.

Obviously, we won’t turn anyone into an experienced journalist in five days of training but we do cover a lot of ground and past participants have credited the boot camp with building their newspaper skills whether they work full- or part-time for weeklies and small dailies or want to build their free-lance careers.

We will have more information on the boot camp soon. As our broadcast brethren say, “Stay tuned.”