Instructor: Mitch Eden

The Editorial Leadership classes will reinvent the way you see your digital newsroom and yourself as a leader in it. Students will learn how to run that growing and changing digital newsroom. Plug into this editor/leader development track and gain skills to manage today’s digital newsroom with exposure to new tools that will help infuse the news and information into coverage and workflow. Leave with a knowledge and structure for your own newsroom or section along with at least two practical and applicable digital media elements to implement for the upcoming school year.

Instructor: Jordyn Kiel

Looking to get a strong foundation of journalistic writing? This is the class to take. Learn to write like a journalist. In this class you'll go through everything from how to come up with strong story ideas and planning stories to getting great interviews and writing a strong journalistic story. This class will help you get all the tools you need to be a great reporter on your staff next year.

Instructor: Jack Kennedy

You know how to write a basic story. You know to get the facts right and the names spelled correctly. But now it's time to move to the next level. In the Advanced Writing class, award winning adviser Jack Kennedy will share with you what he has learned through the years about story-telling, including the difference between articles and stories, how to turn a mundane story assignment into something special and how to organize a major narrative project. Come prepared to do some writing and have some fun.

Instructor: Carlos Ayulo

Whether you’re new to designing pages or want to take your skills to the next level, this course is for you. All levels of designers from any print publication type will benefit from learning the concepts and design principles while gaining practice with the premiere desktop publishing program Adobe offers. This course will include both the basics of InDesign as well as more advanced tools to make your job on staff a bit easier. Good design isn’t really about the software, though — as you learn and practice, you’ll be exposed to important concepts to build your skills and take your ideas to the next level across every aspect of your media program.

Here are some additional design topics we’ll cover in this track:

• Principles of design
• Elements of design, including how to create a style guide with color palettes and typography
• Grids, alignment and structure
• Content-driven design
• Trends in graphic design
• Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator tips

Participants will have the opportunity to learn and engage in a variety of ways, including

• Critique sessions of published designs
• One-on-one sessions with the instructor on work in progress

Instructor: Alyssa Moses

Geared toward all types and sizes of yearbook programs, this track will help students take important next steps for successful yearbook production. While moving forward with verbal and visual elements to develop the book’s concept, participants also will plan coverage strategies and activities for building a positive, student-centered staff culture. We also will explore ways your staff can share online content and use social media tools effectively to engage readers and expand the yearbook experience. In a hands-on, interactive environment, this track will help you plan a yearbook your students are excited to buy and your staff is excited to produce. For this class, it’s most beneficial to sign up in groups of 2 or more from your school with a max of 5 from any one school. Seating is limited to the first 10 schools that register. 

*Walsworth Yearbooks is our 2020 sponsor. They will be working with students. You do NOT have to be a Walsworth client to participate.

Instructor: Ted Bryant

Our sports writing course brings together writing, social media and the skills to make you great at both. You'll get guidance on how to conduct interviews, cover live events, write effective briefs, game previews, personal profiles and recaps. Dive into some of the best sports reporting available to uncover what tips and techniques were used that you can apply to your own coverage. You'll also get a chance to practice these new found skills and conduct Q&A sessions with practicing sports reporters.

Instructor: Kelsey Kremer

Whether you’re new to photography completely, looking to take your skills to a more advanced level or eager to understand why some shots turn out better than others, this class will meet your basic photography needs. Participants will get hands-on training with their cameras — whether it's a fancy DSLR, a smartphone camera or anything in between. We'll learn about exposure based on shutter speed, aperture and ISO while turning good photos into great ones. We’ll also learn composition techniques and experiment with angles and distances to practice journalistic storytelling as well as artistic, creative shoots, and at the same time we’ll make sure everyone understands the photo ethics involved when shooting, cropping and publishing photos for your audience. The course includes practice activities for any experience level and camera type, including how to edit those images with free tools online. Photographers will learn best practices for how to share photos on social media, collaborate with others in your media program (in person or remotely) and manage files for maximum efficiency. Participants will receive a free copy of Skylum's Luminar photo editing program as well.

Instructor: Gary Hairlson

Already have a good understanding of shutter speed, aperture and ISO? This class will help take your photography skills to the next level. Participants will work on a variety of skills that go beyond the basics from using light and creating a photo story to advanced compositional techniques and tips for making great photos. Campers will need a DSLR camera to take this course.

Instructor: Chris Snider

If you want to be a successful communicator in 2022 and beyond, you need to develop strong multimedia communication skills. This course will teach you to create audio and video content for your publication. We will explore how to reach your target audience through short-form video, traditional video, live video, audio podcasts and live audio rooms. Students will create content in these formats in class and they will build a plan for how they can use these tools in the upcoming school year. Editing will be done on both phones and computers.

Instructor: Jason Wallestad

This web publishing class for SNO customers will be an opportunity to work directly with members of the SNO team to explore the design options that exist within the SNO FLEX theme and to learn about all the possibilities in SNO’s four-story page templates. We’ll discuss strategies and tools for managing your online workflow, and we’ll take an in-depth look at online publishing standards and discuss how your coverage and content can be shaped by the exciting world of online publishing. This class is for SNO customers. If you are not a current SNO customer, this is a great time to sign on and join them at camp to get the training you need for a great site from day one. You can find more information out about SNO and the services they provide here.

Instructor: Eric Adae

Descriptions Coming Soon.

Instructor: TBD

If you love working with computers, a career in computer science might just be your thing. In this course, you'll learn about how to use technology to solve problems and prepare for the future and you'll even write and program a little software. There are a lot of great careers out there from Data Scientist and Product Manager to Web Developer and Software Tester and we will learn about all of those and more in this hands-on class that should help you explore some of the possibilities in the field and, if you work on your school's journalism program, give you some ideas to take back to help out the team.

Instructor: Aaron Manfull

The class will be led by Aaron Manfull of Francis Howell North in St. Charles, MO, and give advisers an overview of advising publications in 2020. We will discuss everything from editorial policies and staff organization to introductory journalism courses and training editors. Our goal for this class is to send advisers away with a grasp on effectively managing their journalism classroom. This course is meant to be more of a survey course to give advisers a taste of each of the areas they’ll likely be working with in their converged newsroom. If instructors would like a little more focused direction in one specific area (such as videography), they are encouraged to enroll in one of the other Media Now courses.

Instructor: Jennifer Konfrst

Do you watch "Scandal" and find ways Olivia Pope could do a better job? Are you more intrigued by the politics & communication on "House of Cards" than the murders and mayhem? Do you watch "The West Wing" on Netflix and wish you could be C.J. Cregg? If you can picture a life in politics that gives you the chance to use your communication skills, come spend time with us learning about and doing Strategic Political Communication. We'll spend our time talking about how candidates communicate with voters, what tactics and strategies are used to advocate for policy issues, and learning from political experts about how politics and the media can work together. As the 2020 presidential election approaches, we’ll use the Iowa Caucuses as a case study for how grassroots communications works best. We'll also take the time to try our hand at answering questions at a press conference, writing a campaign speech, and comparing strategies of real-world political campaigns.