Reporters who cover education believe overwhelmingly that the beat requires specialized knowledge. Yet 39 percent of education reporters surveyed in February 2008 by the Hechinger Institute say they’ve received no such training …

When I arrived at the SVH in September 2007, I had no idea what SIP, AYP, ELL or IEP stood for, let alone what they really meant. But I learned (School Improvement Plan, Adequate Yearly Progress, English Language Learners and Individualized Education Program).  My training consisted of meeting with people and using Google. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Hey, I’m a resourceful person, I can find things out.

Education is an important beat. While other newspapers have different staff compositions, every paper has an education reporter. But news is changing. Responsibilities are changing, and veteran reporters are either leaving the business or changing their focus.

The most common concern Stephens hears expressed by school leaders is turnover on the education beat. “They really value a reporter with expertise,” Stephens said.

I can see why. With no formal training, other than a list of acronyms passed down by my predecessor, I feel it took me about six months to really understand what education is about. Guess who is doing the training? The superintendents, principals and financial officers of these districts (no wonder they’re frustrated).

I’ll cap off with a quote of how I hope to feel someday wherever I am (or whatever beat I cover):

For veteran education reporter Marilyn Brown of The Tampa Tribune, the education beat, despite its politics, demands and complexities, remains vitally important and in need of perspective and context. In her case, that means continuing to do what she’s done for the last 10 years: “trying to keep up with the main issues and trends, and not being frustrated that I can’t do all the great stories I find every day.”

The story I wrote about the upcoming Anacortes School Bond stands at about 67 inches. Initially the story was in the 90+ inch category, but my two editors brought it within reason. And while the story is not filled with emotion and drama as the other two are, the story serves one of the most important roles of a journalist: the government watchdog.

The theory goes that since normal people can’t afford, or don’t have time, to look at issues in-depth, it is the reporter’s duty to do so on the citizens’ behalf. It’s our job to ask the tough questions and to get answers.

Sounds silly right? You just write stuff down, tell everyone what you think and post something insubstantial every day right?

No, not at all. Geoff Baker, who writes the Mariners Blog for the Seattle Times, and David Postman, who writes Postman on Politics for the Times, said blogging actually takes up a large part of their day.

Postman, the paper’s chief political reporter, said he almost exclusively writes for the blog and occasionally editors will pull something from the blog and put it in the paper with a header of “Exerpts from the blog.” Blogs are not opinion, at least blogs from newspapers should not be, he said.

“I bring the standards of the paper to the blog, not lower my standard to what is out there,” (I cannot remember which one of them said this, my notes are unclear, but I think either one of them could have said it because they had the same message).

The whole time I was there I couldn’t help remember my previous reporting job and how I tried to get a political blog there. Editors quickly refused, saying it would compromise my integrity. I admit I didn’t fight very hard for it. I didn’t know how to counter them, but now I do.

One of my editors used to constantly remind me “why should anyone care?” or say “this is just inside baseball.” The fact is, while much of the newspaper audience won’t care about the inside baseball stuff, some people do care. There are die hards for anything out there and they go Online to find their fix. Instead of writing a 50-inch political piece on why the local Republican Party is arguing, for instance, you could write daily updates of what you hear from local officials. Audio clips, pictures of the people that readers would not otherwise see. They want analysis and information, both Postman and Baker said.

Oh and another thing. You can’t just write once in a while. You have to write every day, said Baker. “You have to have a passion,” he said. He said he also breaks everything on the blog first, and writes for the paper later: “The chances of us scooping someone on the story the next day is remote.” Postman added “I can’t remember the last time we said ‘let’s wait.’ ” (Baker later added “unless it’s some investigative scoop that only we can get”)

Baker said he can write up to four blog posts a day when he’s covering a Mariner’s game: once in the morning, once before the game, during the game and after the game. He said he can take up to four hours per day blogging, because that’s what it takes to gain a large audience on a baseball blog.

Also, when Baker introduced himself and said that the newspapers of today will depend on Internet technology and multimedia. He even posited that many newspapers within 10 years will likely ax the printing presses and the ink and go completely online only (something I’ve thought for a long time, although I am not sure about the 10-year mark. I think it will depend on when newspapers figure out a solid revenue stream from advertising).

But what can a small-town reporter do? Postman mentioned that some newspapers, including the Washington Post, have tried models of having unpaid bloggers, or asking reporters to blog in their free time. He was adamantly against it. Baker, on the other hand, said he posted a blog after he got up, because that’s when most people read the blog. He said he did a lot of blogging off the clock. They had a back-and-forth at that point, with Postman saying you shouldn’t cave in, and Baker saying it was necessary. I understand where they are coming from. On the one hand, you have to build an online audience, but on the other hand, journalists get paid little enough as it is. Baker said “You can’t do a blog half-assed.”

Long story short, you have to give up some of your newspaper duties to do a blog properly, which means at the least, a post every weekday.

Other random points that they made:

• “People want information, they don’t want to wait for a story (in the newspaper)” — Postman
• People visit your blog to see and read some of the inside scoop that won’t get into the paper. Use audio (a 4-minute rant of an official, for instance), post pictures (it doesn’t have to be professional quality, just use a point-and-shoot), and post video (sparingly and only when appropriate). The Times hosts video on YouTube.
• Blogs can drive the news of the day. For instance, Baker posted an audio rant by Jose Guillen on his blog which ended up being talked about on the radio shows and the blogs for two days.
• You must enable comments to bring people back to the site. While Baker said there’s a lot of freaks on his blog, Postman seems to have managed to encourage civil discourse (about politics no less!). The community polices itself, he said: “You want it to be a welcoming environment. You want people to feel they can join in on the conversation.”
• They post blogs without any editors looking at it because the information needs to go up quickly. After the fact, editors might have a look. Readers also post corrections to the blogs (and with major errors, Postman lines out the original text and then writes the correction right into the post).
• Most readers of the blog will be familiar with the back story. But in case they are not, you can link to a previous post/story you wrote to give them background.
• You can post silly stuff, like this post by Postman: Working hard on a Friday. This gives the reader a view into a world they otherwise wouldn’t see, even if it is the wacky stuff that’s on his desk (antique car gauges??).

So how do I think I can use this every day? For one thing, if I have a major meeting to go to, I write a blog post before the meeting (preferably in the morning). I can blog from the meeting (just like Baker blogs from games). And after the meeting, I can use some of what I blogged about during the meeting as a basis for my pulp-version story. After the meeting I can post another blog. Much of this, I would think, wouldn’t take too much extra time, especially blogging during the meeting. I am taking notes anyway, and there is quite a bit of dead time during the meetings (say, during an executive session).

Ideally I would have learned about multimedia sooner, but I don’t think any of the papers online were even doing it in 1995, when I started college. I am certain that nobody at the college level was even thinking of multimedia as a force to tell stories.

But knowing what I know today, I would have taken the following classes:

• Television broadcasting
• Radio broadcasting
• Web development

I would have done what I could to learn about Flash development. The program was created in 1996, a year after I started at Colorado State University.

But technology has changed a lot since I was in college. Here is what students of today need to learn to be reputable — and hireable — journalists.

Mindy McAdams yet again comes forth with a great post right as I was writing this.

Journalists who expect to get a job will “walk in the door with”:

• A proficiency in Photoshop, HTML and blogging software.
• An understanding of Web publishing systems (content management systems).
• Experience in the production of multimedia — including the use of audio and video editing tools.

Of course, you cannot ignore the basic journalism classes. Everyone has to learn the inverted pyramid. You cannot tell a story without some structure. Everyone has to understand the SPJ code of ethics.

Unfortunately, many journalism schools do not have these classes as part of a journalism curriculum. I would even bet that you cannot take these classes without the appropriate major, such as broadcast media for the video classes, or computer science for Web development. McAdams points this out in her post, the slow crawl of journalism education. I can confirm this from personal experience. There is pitifully little out there in the way of formal classes, even at the graduate level.

Conclusion: You have to learn this stuff on your own for the most part. You cannot wait for someone to hand it to you, and if you have a passion to tell stories you’ll gravitate to learning the Web stuff anyway. Buy the programs. Take the tutorials. Develop your own Web site. Write a blog. Take online classes at places like NewsU. Also, don’t ignore the value of networking and meeting people in person. Find an SPJ chapter near you and start going to meetings.

Of course, children are notoriously hard to interview. Younger children tend to clam up or just answer “yes,” “no” or shrug their shoulders to questions. But the hard part, for me, is who I don’t interview. Whenever I go on assignment many of the kids are excited that a reporter is in their midst. Some of them are shy (which is the hard to interview part) but a few come up to me and ask to be interviewed. Or, worse yet, I have a teacher or official who asks me to interview 10 students individually.

And that’s when the hammer comes down. I have to explain how a newspaper works, and even if I got to interview them all, I wouldn’t be able to fit it all in the paper. They seem to understand, but I can tell they’re disappointed. When their face goes from a big, bright smile to a downcast, sad look, you can tell.

I’m sure it doesn’t scar them for life. Children and teens live in the moment and I’m sure the next day they’ll have forgotten all about it. Ah, the resiliency of youth.

On Election Day, results were tabulated across the state, and it appeared that 4204 was going down (roughly 48 percent to 52 percent). But a last-minute get-out-the-vote surge, continuing at this moment, seems to bring the election into the “too close to call” range (see the Secretary of State’s Web page for 4204). As you can see, only 2,620 votes separate the schools from a win here.

With more than 178,000 votes left to count, 58,000 of them in King County (where there’s a 50-percent approval rating) it doesn’t take a statistician to see where this is going.

Yes, Election Day is like the Super Bowl for journalists (well, except sports journalists). I’ve always loved the excitement of it. But here in Washington the results can trickle in until several days after Election Day, because you’re only required to have your ballot postmarked by then.