Colin Bridge

View outside the Poynter Institute and Poynter Park

So, i totally misjudged how bust we were going to be at Poynter over these last two weeks. I was averaging about 4 hours of sleep each night. I unfortunately did not have time to post each day. I will be recapping the trip though as soon as get a chance to get back home and unwind a bit.

Just like it reads

Well today was amazing and I am so glad that I was able to come to Poynter, its a great blessing. I feel I learned more about being a journalist today then I have over the last three years at school. Al Tompkins and Sara Quinn are amazing people and I can jut tell we are going to learn a lot from them in the next two weeks. Meeting everyone today was another fun adventure. Forty students from across the country and Canada gathered here for the fellowship and it feels like we all know each other pretty well. Everyone is super nice and super fun.

First day at Poynter.

We got a tour of the building and all I can say is that it is amazing. It in no way, shape or form looks like the journalism places I’ve ever seen, it is absolutely gorgeous. My favorite thing I’ve seen so far is an awesome sculpture that Poynter had commissioned. It is a sphere created out of woodblock type and it has 165 different journalism words and phrases. Something about those type blocks just makes me smile.

Ball o'type

As far as what we learned, today we did some very exciting interviewing exercises meant to show us how to get past the obvious questions and truly dig deep. Being that I am not a writer by trade, this really helped me out a lot, I mean a lot. I feel much more confident now in going out and finding stories for our projects that we will learn all about tomorrow. Overall I think it’s safe to say that Poynter is going to be a life changing experience and I am going to have some great friends for a long time.

Vanessa, Bridget and Dianne on there way to dinner

So today finally came. I’ve been looking forward to coming to St. Petersburg for the Poynter Institute Fellowships since September. The day started at 5 a.m., that was ridiculous hard for me btw, and I took off at 6 a.m. from Albuquerque en route to Florida. When I arrived it was hot, muggy and crazy humid! I met up with Bridget O’Donnell at the airport since we arrived within 30 min. of each other. We arrived at the hotel and settled in, after that we talked to a few of the Poynter fellows and made plans for dinner.

Enjoying my first beer on the beach in St. Petersburg

I’ve been a little worried about coming to Poynter for quite a while, but now that I’ve met a handful of the Fellows I am stoked for the next two weeks.

I have a feeling that this will be one of those life changing experiences, and if not I’m sure I’ll leave here with quite a few new awesomely talented friends.

So far the kids i have met are amazing, we didn’t talk about much work yet, which is nice, but what we  did talk about was fun. We went to an awesome little place called Gatsby’s and a very nice man bought all seven of us drinks.

We happen to run into quite a heavy rainstorm during

Here’s to new friends, new skills and the next chapter!
Much more to come over the next two weeks.

Well I finally entered the sports designer competition over at the Sports Designer blog this year. I have always wanted to go into sports design and i love when I get the Chance to do so. I haven’t had the oppertunity to do as much sports design this year due to weird circumstances at the paper, but I still manageed to crank out a few good designs on deadline this year.

I’ll report back with the news in the next few weeks as they unroll the winners. (Hopefully with good news)

Election coverge

I have finally decided to be more active at my paper with photography, I forgot how much I truly love it and how it always makes me feel after doing so. It also probably helps that I finally got a D300, but over the past few weeks i have shot more pics for the paper than i think I did all last year. Its mostly been sports so far (which I love) but i cant wait to really dive into more news and feature work again. It feels like I’ve lost my eye a little bit but It’s all coming back.

It’s a little delayed but i am pleased to say that i was one of the winners of the third installment of “The Intern” competition and received a year mentorship at the Poynter Institute. There was a lot of very talented student designers who showed up for the competition and we all got along very well. SND Vegas has been one of the best experiences of my life and I am honored to walk away from there with such a great opportunity. I am talking with Sara Quinn from Poynter next week about the details and I will post more about the mentorship as I find out.

Well its the student session day at the SND Vegas conference. We have had tons of great speakers and have met a bunch of awesome fellow student designers. We are all getting a little nervous about the design competition coming up this evening. We’ll keep you updated on the progress.

I leave to Vegas tomorrow for an exciting adventure. I am attending the Society for News Design’s annual conference, SNDVegas, for the first time. On Sunday I will be a part of a competition with a bunch of very talented student designers, competing for an internship at a major daily newspaper. I must admit I have been a bit worried about it but now I’m more anxious than worried. I have been planning and getting ready for the last few weeks and now that its here I am so psyched to be going. I will hanging out with a few students from all over tomorrow and Saturday and then Sunday is the competition, followed by two exciting days of conferences. Wish me luck. I’ll be blogging, twittering and flickring from Vegas.