A gaggle of journalists

Last Friday, I was among dozens of professionals who took time out of their day to speak at a national convention of high school journalists that drew some 3,000 students and their advisers to the Oregon Convention Center.

It was a nice respite from the office routine, being able to meet with earnest students who are there by choice and have some interest and experience in the subject versus trying to gain and keep the attention of indifferent kids sitting through an obligatory Career Day program.

I spoke twice in back-to-back roundtable sessions, joined by Jacques Von Lunen, a former Oregonian intern who now writes a column on pets for the newspaper. Our first group included a boy from Lowell High School in San Francisco (that city's version of Lincoln High School here in Portland -- brainy kids who usually wind up going to UC Berkeley) and girls from suburban Dallas, Texas, and Fargo, North Dakota. The second group: girls from Huntington Beach, California, and Missoula, Montana, and a boy from Lewiston, Idaho, who, true to form, wore a baseball cap bearing a largemouth bass emblem.

They were nice kids and we had a good discussion, though Jacques and I were horrified to learn about two newspaper advisers from hell. The one from Texas said their adviser inserts her own opinions into student editorials; the one from North Dakota said last year's adviser was removed by the administration because he resisted censorship efforts and now the students, cowed by what they've seen, censor themselves. Wow. Whatever happened to the concept of freedom of expression on high school campuses?

That evening, I joined another colleague, reporter Yuxing Zheng, at dinner with two representatives from the Quill and Scroll Society, an honorary scholastic journalism organization based at the University of Iowa. Julie Dodd (above left) teaches journalism at the University of Florida and, like me, is a member of the Q&S board of trustees. Vanessa Shelton (above right) is executive director of the society.

Vanessa and Yuxing (left), a former national high school journalist of the year, did videotaped interviews with students who visited the Quill and Scroll booth at the convention center. The plan is to edit them and put them up on the society's web site as a promotional tool. Though the society is nearly 80 years old (I was a member in high school), it still flies below the radar in a lot of places across the country.

The four of us had a great time -- wonderful conversation and delicious food -- at Southpark restaurant. I wish I'd had more time to be a better host while Julie and Vanessa were in town, but I had to work all day Friday and Saturday. I'll see them again in the fall at the annual board meeting in Iowa City.

And if my wish comes true, Yuxing will join or replace me on the board at some point. She's a remarkable young lady and I've enjoyed seeing her grow up from a precocious sophomore attending The Oregonian's summer journalism camp for minority high school journalists to a student at Northwestern University to newsroom intern and then staff reporter at The Oregonian and, now, coordinator of that same summer journalism camp. All at age 25.