The Chanticleer is embarking on a new era with a recruitment and training program for first-time reporters called the Candidate Program. Editor-in-Chief Brooke Bromberg is excited to invite a new group of reporters “to forge an historic path” for the newspaper.
The program, brought to Coastal Carolina University (CCU) by Student Media Coordinator John Harvey, provides a structural path for students to become successful editors and reporters. It includes one-hour sessions – once a week for eight weeks – on topics such as newsroom orientation, news-gathering/interviewing, news writing, feature writing, editing, ethics/sensitivity, libel/privacy laws and digital journalism.
In addition to these sessions, reporters will also be assigned to staff editors, veteran student journalists, who will guide them in writing stories about people and events on campus and will handle first edits of their copy.
“I like to think of the Candidate Program as a journalistic biosphere whose sustenance is due to the vocational training partnership between the students and their adviser,” Harvey said.
After a lengthy career as an editor for papers in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, Harvey was hired in 1998 as news adviser at The Daily Collegian, the student newspaper at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). There, he discovered a long-dormant program, called the Candidate School, and, after some tweaking, he resurrected it at Penn State.
During his 12 years there, the program graduated hundreds of reporters who have or are still working at such prestigious news organizations as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC, Politico, The Hill, Vogue and Cosmopolitan.
Harvey took his program from Penn State to Georgia Southern in 2010, where within only a few years one of that program’s graduates went on to win a Pulitzer of his own. Finally, Harvey moved to East Carolina University in 2013 and instituted the program there.
Harvey retired in 2019 and moved to North Myrtle Beach, but after a four-year hiatus, he came to Coastal Carolina last November to start the program here as well.
“I liked the University, my division, Dr. (Emily) Gaspar, the newspaper and, mostly, the students,” Harvey said. “I was ready to get back at it, and I just thought this is a perfect place to build another program.”
To become a part of this historic first class at CCU, students will need to come to one of the tryouts on Wednesday, Aug. 28, or Thursday, Aug. 29. Tryout times will be from 3-4:30 p.m. and 6-7:30 p.m. on either day. Applicants will need to bring a pen and a Green Book, which can be purchased from the University Bookstore.
The tryout test will be in two parts: the first to include questions about the applicant and the second to require the applicant to write a story based on information given.
Those selected from the tryouts will be briefly interviewed by staff members at The Chanticleer. The list of students asked to be in this historic first class will be posted Sept. 4; Orientation will take place Tuesday, Sept. 10.
Meanwhile, for hopeful designers and photographers, the program will include individualized training from the managing editor/design and some of the same sessions being taught to reporters, including ethics, libel law and digital journalism.
Anyone interested in becoming a designer or photographer should send an email to Brooke Bromberg, Frances Ludwig or John Harvey.
