On Jan. 11 through 12, Bobby Hawthorne, author of “The Radical Write” and journalist, visited the Horseshoe yearbook and Mountain Echo staff members to present his tips and tricks on becoming a better journalist. Hawthorne has been a published journalist for over 40 years.

The workshop was organized through journalism adviser Wanda Vanish and Hawthorne himself. Vanish received a grant from the Altoona Area School District Foundation to cover the expenses of Hawthorne’s stipend, travel fee and hotel accommodations. 

“Any time that I can have contact with Bobby Hawthorne, I walk away a better teacher and writer,” Vanish said. “I first met Bobby more than 10 years ago when he came to Altoona to be the Keynote speaker for the Pennsylvania School Press Association state conference. All of the students and advisers were buzzing with excitement.”  

During the two-day workshop, the young journalists completed different writing exercises guided by Hawthorne. These exercises included feature article formatting, quote generating, choosing the correct wording, literary device training and others. 

“In every article I write, I always have a list of questions,” Hawthorne said. “These questions include: ‘What did you learn from this?’ ‘Where do we go from here?’ ‘What do we do now?’ ‘Is that a better bet?’”

During the first day of the workshop, Hawthorne agreed to a lunch-in with all editors from both the Mountain Echo and Horseshoe yearbook staffs. Hawthorne got to experience what it is like to buy lunch from the Altoona cafeteria with the students. During the lunch, Hawthorne and the journalists discussed techniques on becoming better editors. 

“During our lunch, we wrote down questions about things that potentially could make us all better editors,” Horseshoe yearbook Editor in Chief Danielle Bardelang said. “He made sure to go in-depth with all of our questions, and I really appreciated that. I thought the lunch was a fantastic idea and an even better opportunity.” 

“The more stories you write, the better you’ll get,” Hawthorne said. “It may seem obvious, but some reporters never take the time to look at good, quality writing.”

Due to Hawthorne’s history with journalism, some of the journalists really took what he had to say to heart. One of those students was freshman Melissa Krainer. Krainer wrote on the Livewire staff her eighth grade year, and she has now moved onto the Mountain Echo staff. 

“I thought he had a fresh approach. I learned how I can bend the rules, and I don’t always have to follow the code. He made us think about the readers rather than the rules and how to really tell a story. I learned a lot, and it was nice to get a different perspective of what I am learning in class.”

During the conference, Krainer took notes on what she believed were the most important aspects of his presentation. She took the most notes on how to write a lead. In journalism, a lead is the initial sentence of the story in place to grab the reader’s attention and tell the most important information to the audience. 

“Again, he had a really fresh approach to it,” Krainer said. “I write features [a story show-casing a specific person or event], so I really tried to take notes on how to write a good feature lead.”

Though Krainer took notes on all sections of the convention, what was most influential to her was not what was written on the slideshow presentation. Hawthorne subconsciously taught Krainer the most important aspect of journalism is building courage.

“I learned a lot, but I now truly believe if you don’t have courage, you won’t ask the right questions,” Kariner said. “If you don’t ask the right questions, then you won’t have a story to tell.”

Bron Clouser is the current adviser for the Livewire, the student run newspaper, at the junior high school and has been since the 2020-2021 school year. Clouser attended the workshop along with his students in attempts to better his skills as an adviser. 

“The biggest takeaway would be that columns should open up with a story that people can relate to in life and to make sure that it opens with a punch to hook readers,” Clouser said. “I plan on incorporating what I learned into mini-lessons, bulletin boards and just my lessons in general for the rest of the school year and into next. Every year, I learn something new to incorporate into my class to improve the quality.”