The most important issues within my beat for Pullman residents and WSU staff and students are industry cutbacks and progress and technological and educational advancements and changes.
Locally, written formats are important to the city of Pullman in three main ways. Information regarding education and academia - innovations, news, standards and requirements - both at the high school and college levels are important to WSU students and faculties as well as Pullman families. Also, as a small town, Pullman relies on local, national and international news to keep up with the rest of Washington and the World. Changes made to the mediums through which society receives the news could impact many residents. Finally, students majoring in Communication, English, or English teaching need to know developments within the community and world to stay educated about the industry and prepared for future employment.
There are a multitude of resources for stories representing different aspects of my beat. For example, Crag Hill teaches English courses at WSU focusing on young adult literature and knows what's popular, new, controversial and banned. Karen Weathermon is involved with the freshman reading program and should be able to talk about the positives and downfalls of the program, it's history and what might be expected for the future. Alan Cornish and Sarah French would be good contacts for statistics and trends for WSU libraries (who mostly serve WSU students and staff), and Geraldine de Rooy would be the go-to contact for facts for the Pullman public library (which likely serves more Pullman residents). Cheryl-Anne Millsap is very knowledgeable about our industry's climate in Eastern Washington, Spokane magazine forecasting and has experience with the Spokesman Review. Professor Demers would be a good source for publication and textbook facts.
The Essentials:
It's clear that literary culture is important to the Pullman and Eastern Washington communities because of the press received in The Spokesman Review, The Pacific Northwest Inlander, The Daily Evergreen and through other news aggregates. Recent popular topics include: graduation requirements and academic standards, social trends, textbooks, small magazine companies and technological advancements, to name a few. I personally would like to cover any issue involving students and the written word and education standards and expectations most often.
Three proposed story ideas:
-- Future of required freshman reading
-- Textbook prices and sales over time
-- Magazine subscription rates and advertising rates over time
-- Circulation and funding for local and national public libraries
Three relevant articles from local and national publications:
"At Metro's End" by Daniel Walters for the Pacific Northwest Inlander
published 8-13-09
http://www.inlander.com/content/newscommentary_spokane_metro_out_business
"'Tintin' Deemed Racist, Removed From Shelves" by Will Alden for New York Press
published 8-21-09
http://www.nypress.com/blog-4906-tintin-deemed-racist-removed-from-shelves.html
"Freshmen read about food industry" by Taras Zhulev for the Daily Evergreen
published 09-01-09
http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/29213
Sources for future stories:
-- Crag Hill, cahill@wsu.edu, 509.335.2581
WSU English professor
-- Linda Russo, lrusso@wsu.edu, 509.335.2581
WSU English professor
-- Karen Weathermon, kweathermon@wsu.edu, 509.335.5488
Director of Learning Communities for Office of Undergraduate Education
-- Alan Cornish, cornish@wsu.edu, 509.335.1895
Head of library system, Pullman
-- Sarah French, frenchsw@wsu.edu, 509.335.2694
Head of education library
-- Geraldine de Rooy, 509.338.3269
Director of Neill public library
-- Cheryl-Anne Millsap, catmilsap@gmail.com
Freelance writer and writer for the Spokesman Review
-- David Demers, ddemers@wsu.edu
WSU professor, wife in the publication business
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