Our latest reporting projects

Our News team is working on a couple of reporting projects. While I was intending to have our series about the six initiatives of Drake’s $225 million funding campaign, “The Ones,” done before the end of the semester, I may end up delaying articles on two of the initiatives. So far, we’ve reported on two of the campaign’s six main initiatives: “Every Bulldog a Changemaker” and “University for All,” and we’re planning to publish articles on the Digital Proficiency Platform and the Jay N. Darling Institute for our next edition on Dec. 1.

A couple of our writers are also working on a piece about the Sustaining Our Iowa Land Conference, which took place at Drake on Nov. 17. This conference addressed a burgeoning problem in Iowa that could become a crisis: the state of the waterways that we get our drinking water from. We think this is going to be a particularly salient article for Drake students who aren’t from Iowa but may end up living here.

Looking for a breaking news editor

One staff position at The Times-Delphic has remained unfilled throughout this semester is the Breaking News Editor. This editor is paid to work 5 hours a week for $7.25 an hour to coordinate our breaking news reporting and lead our breaking news team. I’ve included the description of the position below. Adding a Breaking News Editor to our team would make us better at catching breaking news stories as they happen and getting social media posts and articles out shortly afterward.

• Stay up to date on campus news, as well as local and national news. 
• Oversee the Breaking News Team, which will consist of: you, the EIC, the News Editor, the Social Media Manager, the Digital Editor, and a small team of writers (3-5)
  • You will be added to the Breaking News Team slack channel and expected to help occasionally cover and coordinate breaking news stories
  • You will send out a schedule/when2meet at the beginning of each semester so we have a sense of when each Breaking News Team member is available. This way, if we know someone has a whole day free, we know who to ask for breaking news coverage
    • Ex: Emma has nothing to do on Fridays. Godzilla attacks campus on Friday. You text Emma because she is most likely to be available.  
• In charge of writing up a quick update when breaking news occurs and working with the digital editor and social media manager to put them on the website and social, or do it yourself depending on how urgent. 
• Responsible for long-form follow up on breaking news. After the initial quick updates, you’ll either have to ensure that someone covers it (editorial staff, managing or EIC, or staff writer) or cover it yourself. 

Resources for writers

The TD editorial staff has sent out a few new resources for our writers to draw from when they’re working on a story.

• Our style guide, which is somewhat different than the AP Style Guide

• A list of tips, tricks, and policies about every stage of writing for The Times-Delphic that our Editor-in-Chief, Emma Brustkern, put together.
• A source listing with contact information to help writers get in touch with the sources they need.

Let me know if you have any suggestions about items to add to these lists.

Thanks for reading this update. If you have feedback, story ideas or other comments to share, you can reach me at Andrew.kennard@drake.edu.