Back to the Newsroom

After a couple of days of doing hands-on exercises, the group steered us back toward a more classroom experience. We skyped five alumni from the institute who are now notable professionals in the industry, including Cameron Wolfe of The Denver Post, Zolan Kano-Young of The Wall Street Journal, Rhiannon Walker, Associate Editor at ESPN's The Undefeated; and Candace Buckner, Indiana Pacers beat writer for The Indianapolis Star; and Diamond Leung and Marcus Thompson, who write for the Bay Area for News Group. They all had different nuggets of wisdom to give us, my favorites coming from Leung and Thompson warned us to stay resilient against the “keyboard gangsters” who like to challenge journalists on Twitter, and Leung told us never to limit our performance to the level of our coverage level. “You want to think ‘Work hard. Game 7. You got to file more stories.’” Leung said. “No, work hard in whatever you do. I don’t think that ever happens if you play not as hard and never prepare yourself for the situation.” We ended the day covering Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals (under a tight deadline, of course). Covering basketball was a good change-up, but a no-show from Riley Curry after the game left Mr. Carter feeling some type of way. -- Chris Yangas