Karen Francis is a reporter for the Gallup (N.M.) Independent, her Spring 2009 Chips Quinn internship newspaper. She is also a graduate student in public administration at the University of New Mexico-Gallup, where she earned a journalism and philosophy degree. Since 2007, Francis has been a staff writer for the Gallup Independent, a daily newspaper [...]

Hey Scholars,
This is our penultimate blog post so be sure to answer it (and please go back and contribute to any posts you haven’t answered yet this summer).
Please share some tips for how you stay organized while reporting a longer enterprise piece — one that perhaps has to be fit in among other assignments.
And, [...]

“When you have a dream denied or a dream lost, most often the tendency is to lower your expectations. I took the opposite route.”
“It puzzles me that the industry that was so quick to adapt to technological change has been so slow to adapt to demographic change.”
“A lot of the coverage (of communities of color) [...]

An interview with Félix Gutiérrez, educator, author, advocate

By Paul Gutiérrez, CQS ‘93

He is called “the Padrino” of Latino journalists – the Godfather.

Félix Gutiérrez, known across the nation for paving the way for hundreds of young journalists, has perhaps done more than anyone to bring journalists of color, particularly Latinos, into American newsrooms.

Even so, [...]

Hey Scholars,
Please share an experience you had pitching a story idea to your editor this summer. Did you get the green light? Get shot down? Something in between?
And please tell us if, in retrospect, you would have done anything differently.
For our page designer please tell us about a risk you wanted to take and [...]

By Marjon Rostami

June 30 was my one-year anniversary at The Arizona Republic.

I came to the paper on a Pulliam Fellowship just as the company was offering buyouts, and I felt guilty when I was hired.

A few months later, I was there for the layoffs.

A couple months after that, I witnessed two quarters’ worth of furloughs.

Now, [...]

Hey Scholars,
Here’s what I’d like us to share this week:
1)  How is your internship and what you’re learning and observing at your papers changing your thoughts about daily journalism?
AND
2) What’s something you wish you had known going into your internship?
Thanks — and carry on — Coach Col

Bettina Hansen is a photography intern at The Hartford (Conn.) Courant. She was a Spring 2009 Chips Quinn Scholar at The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La. A journalism graduate at Arizona State University, Hansen was a staff photographer and assistant photo editor at The State Press, her school newspaper, and was a photo [...]

Hey Scholars,
Can we help out a Chipster in our group, who is being handed assignments from several different editors at once and is feeling overwhelmed?
The Scholar writes: “My direct editor gives me stories to work on, which is fine, but then assignments come from the weekend editor, which require some prep time, and then [...]

By Marco Santana, CQS ‘09

It was yet another lesson learned.

My editor at The Associated Press during my internship had given me an assignment.

Unfortunately, the assignment he gave me was not the assignment I heard.

Being in the business of communication, you would think I would know better than to assume I understood the assignment. I should [...]