Thanks to Virginia Tech Professor Robin Reed, Radford University Professor Bill Kovarik and their students, we have videos of most of the programming at the SPJ Region 2 Spring Conference that was held on April 9 at the Holiday Inn Valley View in Roanoke.
‘Freelancing for independence and profit’: Thinking about freelancing? No matter your career stage – student, recent grad, employed or laid-off staffer, or looking at retirement – this session’s for you. Featuring Clayton Gutzmore, a freelancer in South Florida, and Hazel Becker, a retired journalist in Washington, D.C., where she worked in specialty publications for 35 years.
‘Over the Top’ — trends in broadcast journalism: How broadcasters can push out additional news content on other platforms such as streaming, websites and Roku, while staying away from the traditional broadcast signal. Featuring Leanna Scachetti, a reporter, digital anchor and podcast host at WDBJ7, Roanoke.
Podcasting roundtable: How journalists in our region are approaching podcasting. Featuring podcasters Brian Carlton, Aaryan Balu, Charlie Shelton-Ormond, Michael Pope, Paul Bibeau, Mason Adams, Anisa Khalifa and Patrick Fort.
Presentation of the Mark of Excellence Awards honoring the best college journalism in Region 2 (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia). Presented by Stephenie Overman, the Region 2 coordinator, and Robin Reed, an anchor at WDBJ, a professor of professional practice at Virginia Tech and the student-chapter representative on the SPJVA board.
‘Giving voice to the voiceless’: How individual journalists can better find the untold stories in overlooked communities. What are we missing? Why does it matter? Featuring Lovey Cooper, managing editor of Scalawag, and Sundra Hominik is senior editor, partnerships, at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
‘Journalists, audiences and fake news’: Journalists can either help or hurt the information environment for their audiences. Our topics include developing your fake news detection, how and why you should take the extra steps to be sure something is true, how bad actors structure messages to make them spread and how journalists can help their audiences get reliable information. Featuring Amanda Sturgill, an associate professor of journalism at Elon University, and Nerissa Young, an associate professor of instruction in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.
‘Startups in the new media climate’: The founders of three new and growing online news platforms tell how they launched and what they learned while publishing with bits and bytes instead of ink on paper. Featuring Cierra Hinton is executive director-publisher of Scalawag; Brandon Jarvis, founder and primary writer for Virginia Scope; and Luanne Rife, co-founder and executive director of Cardinal News.
Here is a YouTube playlist with the videos listed above.
SPJVA Today 