Adviser Update Fall 2016 | Page 3

3 L E T TER FROM EDITOR By Adrienne L. Forgette, MJE W ith the presidential election only weeks away, I am sure most of us are looking for ways to go beyond the polarizing presidential candidates to make the issues of the election meaningful to our students and our schools. My online news staff is exploring how to adapt The New York Times’ #HereIsMyAmerica project to have a conversation about race relations at our school as a way to localize the national issues the election brings up. On page 12, Gary Clites shares five election coverage ideas publication staffs can use to provide local angles to cover the national election. If the candidates happen to be coming to your town, consider obtaining press credentials for your students to cover the event. Have your publication staffs decide now how to capture students’ reactions to the outcome on Wednesday, Nov. 9 so this historical race is captured in the pages of your yearbooks, newspapers or broadcasts. Send me copies of your coverage to be featured in our next issue. For a historical perspective on presidential election coverage and the impact it can have on a budding journalist, read Richard J. Levine’s recollection of his days as a reporter at Cornell covering the KennedyNixon election on page 6. Maggie Gottlieb, broadcast reporter for Maryland Newsline: CNS-TV and our collegiate contributor for this month’s “What I Wish I Had Known” column, shares tips she learned from covering the Democratic National Convention and gives us an inside look on what it’s like to be in a college broadcast program on page 17. If you have a former student who is currently actively involved in a college media program to nominate for our next issue’s column, please email me. ~ Adrienne Forgette Editor-in-Chief Adrienne Forgette is the Media Arts Director at the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia, where she advises the Jabberwokk yearbook, Darlingtonian online newspaper and Inkslinger literary magazine. Forgette was recently named a 2016 Lindblad Expedition and National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow. She holds a B.A. from Colgate University and an M.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park. E-mail: [email protected]