Seth Prince JMC 3023

JMC 3023: Schedule

Instructor: Seth Prince
Class: 11:15 a.m.-1:05 p.m. Monday, Wednesday in Gaylord 1030 unless otherwise specified
Office hours: By appointment, Copeland 168A (inside The OU Daily)
Contact: sethprince@ou.edu | @seth_prince | 405.325.6334

COURSE SCHEDULE

WEEK 1: BASICS

Monday, Aug 24: Intro, syllabus, jumping off: What’s the most important element of a good story? Overview of story forms we’ll cover. Discussion of writing/editing process. Discussion of universal themes. Introduction of working in on our class platforms — Google Drive and WordPress. Set Story Behind the Story groups.

Wednesday, Aug. 26: Guest speaker: George Stoia. We’ll discuss dreaming up big ideas, initial reporting strategies, finding people and getting them to talk and how to consider story structure.

WEEK 2: ESSAY, TRANSFORMATIONAL MOMENTS

Monday, Aug. 31: Launch essay assignment. Discussion of transformational moments. Be familiar with essay reading list selections.

Wednesday, Sept. 2: Individual story conferences by appointment. Meetings available during/after class as needed since our size limits how long we can meet individually within our allotted time. Sign up: Doodle poll, Essay writing conference. Meeting times available in 20-minute increments between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. 

WEEK 3: ESSAY

Monday, Sept. 7: Labor Day, no class.

Wednesday, Sept. 9: Peer review. Full draft of essay shared by start of class with class on Google Drive or letter-grade deduction. Small-group constructive comments and suggestions provided on Google docs during class. Note, part of your participation grade will account for how engaged you are in providing genuine feedback to help your peers succeed.

WEEK 4: ESSAY, STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Monday, Sept. 14: Story behind the story, round 1. First group of students will be responsible for having contacted and interviewed and recorded a podcast with an author of one of their favorite feature pieces of any sort we complete throughout the semester.

Wednesday, Sept. 16: No class. Final version of essay posted to WordPress by noon or letter-grade deduction.

WEEK 5: PROFILE

Monday, Sept. 21: Launch profile assignment. Discussion on where great stories come from. Strong angles, focused ideas, originality. How to choose. Be familiar with the profile reading list selections.

Wednesday, Sept. 23: Individual profile story conferences (1 of 2) by appointment. Meetings available during/after class as needed since our size limits how long we can meet individually within our allotted time. Sign up: Doodle poll, Profile writing conference 1. Meeting times available in 20-minute increments between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. 

WEEK 6: PROFILE, Q&A

Monday, Sept. 28: Launch Q&A assignment. Be familiar with Q&A reading list selections. Discussion on interviewing preparation, execution, adaptation. Classmate interview.

Wednesday, Sept. 30: Guest speaker: Lindsay Schnell, USA Today.

WEEK 7: PROFILE, Q&A

Monday, Oct. 5: Final draft of Q&A due (no peer revision) posted on WordPress by start of class or letter-grade deduction. Peer review on profile. Full draft of profile shared by start of class with class on Google Drive or letter-grade deduction. Small-group constructive comments and suggestions provided on Google docs during class. Note, part of your participation grade will account for how engaged you are in providing genuine feedback to help your peers succeed.

Wednesday, Oct. 7: Individual profile story conferences (2 of 2) by appointment. Meetings available during/after class as needed since our size limits how long we can meet individually within our allotted time. Sign up: Doodle poll, Profile writing conference 2. Meeting times available in 20-minute increments between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. 

WEEK 8: PROFILE, STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Monday, Oct 12: Story behind the story, round 2. Second group of students will be responsible for having contacted and interviewed and recorded a podcast with an author of one of their favorite feature pieces of any sort we complete throughout the semester.

Wednesday, Oct. 14: No class. Final version of profile posted to WordPress by noon or letter-grade deduction.

WEEK 9: HUMAN INTEREST

Monday, Oct. 19: Launch human interest assignment. Discussion on the power of anecdotes. Be familiar with the human interest reading list selections.

Wednesday, Oct. 21: Individual human interest story conferences (1 of 2) by appointment. Meetings available during/after class as needed since our size limits how long we can meet individually within our allotted time. Sign up: Doodle poll, Human interest writing conference 1. Meeting times available in 20-minute increments between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. 

WEEK 10: HUMAN INTEREST, PITCHES/RÉSUMÉ

Monday, Oct. 26: Launch pitch letter/résumé. How different digital platforms affect messages, audiences. Discussion on the necessity of the new forms storytelling, and the necessity to utilize them? Data, video, sound in addition to photo. Discussion on reader engagement and what success looks like in a metrics sense with feature stories.

Wednesday, Oct. 28: Guest speaker: Hannah Allam, National Public Radio. 

WEEK 11: HUMAN INTEREST

Monday, Nov. 2: Peer review. Full draft of human interest shared by start of class with class on Google Drive or letter-grade deduction. Small-group constructive comments and suggestions provided on Google docs during class. Note, part of your participation grade will account for how engaged you are in providing genuine feedback to help your peers succeed.

Wednesday, Nov. 4: Individual human interest story conferences (2 of 2) by appointment. Meetings available during/after class as needed since our size limits how long we can meet individually within our allotted time. Sign up: Doodle poll, Human interest writing conference 2. Meeting times available in 20-minute increments between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

WEEK 12: HUMAN INTEREST, STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Monday, Nov. 9: Story behind the story, round 3. Third group of students will be responsible for having contacted and interviewed and recorded a podcast with an author of one of their favorite feature pieces of any sort we complete throughout the semester.

Wednesday, Nov. 11: No class. Final version of human interest posted to WordPress by noon or letter-grade deduction.

WEEK 13: TREND, PITCHES/RÉSUMÉ

Monday, Nov. 16: Launch trend assignment. Draft of pitch letter/résumé via email. Discussion on how, where and when to pitch your work to get a foothold. How much persistence is too much? How not to oversell? Payment? Pitch vs. whole story? When to give up? Discussion on handling trend, issues and controversies. Be familiar with the trend reading list selections.

Wednesday, Nov. 18: Individual trend story conferences (1 of 2) by appointment. Meetings available during/after class as needed since our size limits how long we can meet individually within our allotted time. Sign up: Doodle poll, Trend writing conference. Meeting times available in 20-minute increments between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

WEEK 14: TREND, PITCHES/RÉSUMÉ

Monday, Nov. 23: No class meeting. Trend work day.

Wednesday, Nov. 25: No class. Thanksgiving break.

WEEK 15: TREND

Monday, Nov. 30: Pitch letter/résumés due via email. No class meeting. Trend work day.

Wednesday, Dec. 2: Guest speaker: Anna Bauman, Hearst Fellow at San Francisco Chronicle/Houston Chronicle.

WEEK 16: TREND, STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Monday, Dec. 7: Story behind the story, round 4. Fourth group of students will be responsible for having contacted and interviewed and recorded a podcast with an author of one of their favorite feature pieces of any sort we complete throughout the semester.

Wednesday, Dec. 9: Peer review. Full draft of trend shared by start of class with class on Google Drive or letter-grade deduction. Small-group constructive comments and suggestions provided on Google docs during class. Note, part of your participation grade will account for how engaged you are in providing genuine feedback to help your peers succeed.

WEEK 17: FINALS WEEK (NO FINAL)

Wednesday, Dec. 16: No class Monday. Final draft of trend posted to WordPress by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday or letter-grade deduction.

Seth Prince Bio

Résumé

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I AM: An editor and educator who bridges the gap between journalism’s past and future. In an era of change, I bring clarity of mission to a newsroom and classroom with steady, innovation-driven leadership rooted in time-tested tenets of the craft. I cultivate relationships that deliver valuable results in a cost- and time-efficient manner for audiences and the journalists who serve them, as well as for students and a campus that exists to better them.

EXPERIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Student Media assistant director
October 2021-present
Help lead the department, composed of four professional staffers and approximately 100 students, that is the steward of the OU Daily multimedia student news organization, which is among the most celebrated university student publications in the United States.

Student Media newsroom adviser
January 2019-present
Coach and mentor independent student journalists at The OU Daily. Helped students create an integrated, platform-agnostic, approximately 75-person newsroom that works across digital, magazines and newspapers with a wage budget of $160,000. Provide ongoing training and feedback on all aspects of newsroom’s operations from creation to consumption. Helped coach 12 placements in the Hearst Journalism Awards in two years and 15 overall, as well as three consecutive Associated Press Sports Editors student contest winners. 

Student Media adviser for digital, design and yearbook
August 2014-December 2018
Daily grew unique visitors 195%, page views 175%, social following 360% and football game day page views 4,500% in my first four years while winning College Media Outlet of the Year, a Gold Crown and a print Pacemaker, a digital Pacemaker runner up and placing four in APSE’s top 10 student contest. Helped send students on to more than 75 internships or jobs. Helped stabilize, elevate Crimson Quarterly magazine as a successor to Sooner yearbook.    

Adjunct instructor, Gaylord College
August 2014-present
JMC 3023 Feature Writing, JMC 2033 Writing for Mass Media

THE OREGONIAN

Sports Editor
March 2012-August 2014
Created an authoritative, aggressively growing digital brand that owned the sports media space in the state and nation for our core subjects. Managed 28-member staff and $1 million-plus budget.

Assistant Sports Editor
January 2008-February 2012
Responsible for daily operations. Drove 77% and 61% three-year increases in page views on core college beats, respectively, while supervising six staffers. On-site editor at 2011 BCS title game.

Assistant Bureau Chief
January-December 2007
Reconfigured weekly magazine-style community news sections in Portland suburbs.

Reporter
August-December 2006

News and Sports Copy Editor and Slot
June 2000-December 2006
Edited six-day INS project that led winning entry for 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Wrote newsroom’s Native American style guide, and led initiative to expand policy of not running Native mascot names. 

EDUCATION

University of Oklahoma
Bachelor’s of Arts in Journalism | 2000

Poynter Institute Leadership Academy
January 2007
Career-development program for high-potential, mid-level newsroom managers

Maynard Institute Media Academy at Harvard University
January-April 2008
Entrepreneurial leadership immersion partnership with Nieman Foundation

Newspaper Association of America PowerMind Fellowship
January-August 2012
Program designed to further careers of 12 executive-track minorities

SELECT HONORS & PRESENTATIONS

Advising
• College Media Association Distinguished 4-year Newspaper Adviser, 2020
• Published “How The OU Daily transformed into a digital-first newsroom” in MediaShift, 2018 
• College Media Association Honor Roll 4-year Newspaper Adviser, 2017
• Presented “Quit talking about going digital first. Learn how to do it” at CMA17
 • Presented “Making Metrics matter” session via webcam at CMA15
Editing
• National Headliners Awards’ 2nd place for journalistic innovation, 2015
Writing
• Northwest SPJ’s 2nd place minority coverage, 2004; NAJA’s 1st place features, 2004

Seth Prince Essays

Trust in journalism: The challenge of this era

Remarks I delivered at OUDaily’s spring staff training today.

Let’s start with a single word: Trust.

Its significance is, in a way, the unmentioned foundation holding up all of Ben Smith’s memo, which serves as one of the most revealing glimpses of the broader ethical challenges in media today.

So take a second and think about how you define trust.

What it means to you as an individual. How it might differ among friends and family. In personal and professional relationships. With institutions and authority figures.

Consider how it evolves as it moves through that spectrum of people and places and periods in your life.

Now, bring it into this space and what brings us here together today.

What does trust mean in journalism?

Here’s Merriam-Webster’s fifth definition, which I like best:

a charge or duty imposed in faith or confidence or as a condition of some relationship (emphasis mine)

As we start this semester, I’d suggest nothing is more important than trust. In our families and with our friends. In our society at large and in the work we all do as individuals.

But particularly in this work we do as journalists.

Especially now.

●●●

I walked out of The Daily for the last time as a student in May 2000. A few weeks later I walked into The Oregonian. I was 22, not much older than many of you today.

I had never lived anywhere more than three hours from Norman. I had never worked in a newsroom of that size or stature. And on Day One, I was terrified the editors would realize the terrible mistake they’d made by selecting me. As some of you might once have felt, or perhaps still do here today, I was convinced I had no place being there.

I’m serious when I say that feeling persisted in some way every day I worked in Portland.

For what was originally to be 12 weeks of an internship but which turned into 14 years of employment. From the best of days — copy-editing a Pulitzer-winning project at 23, becoming an assistant bureau chief at 29, becoming a department head at 34 — to the worst of days.

Through it all, this thought was somewhere in my mind: Earn their trust.

But I couldn’t just ask for it; I had to demonstrate, to show — through my work and actions — that I was worthy of it.

●●●

Now, pivot. Drop your journalist perspectives; play the role of media consumers. Readers, viewers, audience, whatever you call them. The communities we serve.

How much do they trust us? Why should they trust us? What good is media if not trusted? And how is trust earned?

The polling group Gallup has been examining Americans’ trust in the media since 1972, the same year as the Watergate break-in. In 1976, two years after President Nixon resigned in large part as a result of fearless and tireless investigative journalism, 72 percent of Americans said they trusted the work we do.

I know that seems like the dark ages to you as college students in 2017 — it was before even I was born.

But also know this: Trust in media has been steadily declining since, and in recent years the challenge has grown only more stark with the polarization of cable news, the fracturing of legacy media’s business model and the rise of a deafening social media echo-chamber. The most recent numbers were the worst yet: 32 percent.

And that figure, which Gallup describes as “a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public,” came from a survey completed before November’s election. …

Before the media misjudged the biggest surprise in modern American political history…

Before an earnest conversation began about importance of media literacy…

Before the editor of Buzzfeed wrote this week, “Publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017.”

●●●

Media has never been more in flux, but some foundational elements remain unchanged. Trust but verify, of course. But also the reality that individually and as institutions, trust is gained in small measures and lost in large chunks. And today, that trust is much harder earned and much easier lost.

Not too long after starting this job I watched a previous Daily editor-in-chief struggle to keep the faith in the face of frequent reader criticism even though her team was inching forward our public reputation. They were doing good, occasionally great, work but they were digging out of a deep hole.

In August 2012, The Daily had published a graphic unredacted autopsy report on a student who had fallen to her death from Evans Hall. Editors faced a swift and harsh response from the community and quickly took down the autopsy document. Although the unnecessary details were online for only a short time, the trust the community placed in The Daily was damaged in a lasting way.

We’ve had other missteps, large and small, since. We will continue to. The Daily, by definition, is a place to learn and explore how to be journalists, and at times that means learning what not to do. But that brings us back to today, to you, this semester and this question.

How will we keep building trust with one another in our newsroom and with the OU community we serve?

My suggestion to you would be to approach it like I did as that confidence-lacking 22-year-old at the beginning of my career. Like I’ve see you all do more and more with coverage, particularly of our activist community, last semester.

Don’t get out in the community and show up at events just when you have a story to do. Don’t reach out to sources only when you need them to comment on the crisis of the moment. This work, done right, is not as just a series of simple one-off transactions, exchanges of no ongoing consequence.

Rather, in matters small or large, whether with one another or with sources, whether on individual stories or broad arcs of coverage, I challenge you be more authentically engaged, to commit, to care — and care deeply about each other, this work we do and the impact we can have together on and for our community.

View this work as a series of small steps forward in a long-term relationship. A relationship bigger than you, your particular role and this semester.

Thank you. I’m excited to see were you all take us this semester and into years to come.

Post-script: Here’s the video not planned in my original remarks but which I referenced on the fly regarding our editors’ visit with OU women’s basketball coach Sherri Coale on Thursday, and her stating in another (much more eloquent and compelling) way that the process, the collective work we undertake, is so much more important than the outcome. None of that happens absent a deep and abiding trust.