Working with fellow Brighton Editor-in-Chief, Gavin Hoeh contributes to their theme. The pair started off with contrasting views on the theme, but believe meeting with Christina Hammitt helped them better understand leadership. “I like that it’s applicable and interactive. It’s very entertaining, but also fulfilling. It’s worth it to be here,” Hoeh said.
The backbone of the MIPA Summer Journalism Workshop is feedback. The five day camp is catered towards building student journalists’ skillsets and challenging campers to step outside of their perspective. To support this, Workshop Director Sara-Beth Badalemente and Assistant Director Christina Hammitt offer newspaper and yearbook publications the opportunity to sign up for and receive critique.
For student journalists like Grosse Pointe North’s Kenzie Dera, this is one of the most viable options for receiving feedback prior to the start of the next academic year. The Spartan Critiques, MIPA’s evaluation system, is due in mid-February each year and results arrive late November. But for yearbook students developing a theme for their upcoming school year, Badalemente and Hammitt’s feedback is more valuable now.
“I wanted to get a critique because I’ve been wanting to get one for our book, but they don’t come back till like late November. So at that point, we developed a theme and we’ve already gone through like 60 pages. It’s not timely, unfortunately,” Dera said. “[The critiques offered here] was a way I could sit down with somebody and I could be like ‘here’s what I need, tell me what’s wrong with it’. It’s a really useful thing to have.”
Fellow students in the Yearbook: Best Theme Ever course agree. Brighton Editor-in-Chief Gavin Hoeh signed up for a critique on the school’s upcoming book as well. Hoeh found the meeting successful, especially with the focus on management.
“[Hammitt] talked a lot about how to make the book, not just what to make the book,” Hoeh said. “We had that time to go back and look at what we’ve been struggling on. We came [to class after the critique] and we were like ‘let’s get something done’. I feel like it’s very rare that you find a summer camp that delivers on what they say they’re gonna do.”
Fulfilling their promises, MIPA provides students with the tools they need to be successful in their publications. For the Yearbook: Best Theme Ever campers, the hours spent at camp allow them to hit the ground running.
“[With the critique and this class], I’m going to be able to go into the year with my stepping stone,” Dera said. “I’m going to have my opening. I’m going to have my theme. I’m going to have all of that and that’s going to be the stuff that I can teach everybody who’s underway as well and be a guide in my class.”