Davis '84: Extraco Banks executive in Waco

Congratulations! Cyndy Davis ’84 is Vice President, Human Resources Generalist for Extraco Banks, N.A. headquartered in Waco.

Job-seeking or hiring? Get in our next e-mail

I'm thinking I'll put a section in our next e-mail for Ags seeking jobs or hiring. Send me a description like this if you're interested. (Hundreds of folks on the e-mail list)

Seeking:

Name here 'xx, copy editor/reporter/web producer/whatever (can list more than 1), linktoresume or email@address

Hiring:

NewsOrg seeks Jobdescription, linktojoblisting.com or email@address

New journalism is old again; plus, what CQ means

Everybody's fed to the teeth with this discussion of "Is the Internet killing journalism (or has it been slowly dying since the '20s)?!?" and "How will social media/the iPad/global warming save journalism?!?"

So here's two different thoughts. First: The Internet is BECOMING journalism -- a thesis clearly laid out by no less an authority than Gawker, which explains that in the age of people trading links on Facebook and Twitter, your items have to have speed, brevity, clarity and accuracy, or you're going to get your pants beaten off. Oh, and good headlines, too.

This is shockingly similar to the conditions that produced Journalism 1.0. (Read here about how inverted pyramid style came about upon the death of Abraham Lincoln and avoiding bias came from the telegraph and the Civil War.)

Second: Somebody finally found out what CQ stands for. No lie. Read all about it!

Thanks to @scottmladd, whose tweet about the first item led me to the second.

Aggie senior goes from Texas Monthly to rodeo writing

I was chatting recently with Betsy Ellison '10 on Twitter (she's @betsyellison) and asked her to tell me a little more about her internship last summer at Texas Monthly. Below, you can read her description of what sounds like a great experience, and also what TM writer Pamela Colloff has to say about Ellison (hint: It's really good).

Right now, Ellison is interning at the Houston Rodeo. This week, she's the executive office intern, helping everything run smoothly, and last week, she was interviewing rodeo winners as well as stock exhibitors and buyers, plus helping put together a daily newsletter.

She blogs at Betsy's Ramblings and contributes to the Texas Country Music blog. And she'll graduate in May, so please feel free to help her out with any job connections you might know of.

Now, here's Ellison on her TM internship:

I love when people ask about my time at Texas Monthly; I could talk about it for DAYS -- 140 characters Twitter allows won't even scratch the surface.

I was thrilled to move to Austin this past summer and work next to what I personally think are some of the best writers in the state...my journalistic idols! The TM office is very laid back, professional and at times very relaxing (not typically during deadline week though). As interns we were treated just like any other staff member and my favorite part was being greeted by Evan Smith (by name) every morning he would come in! It made me feel noticed and needed when the president of this esteemed magazine knew my name and took the time to talk with me every so often--as well with the rest of the interns.

Every month the interns got to sit in on the editorial meetings and see how stories developed from ideas to the pages; we even got to submit our own ideas each month and shockingly, one of my ideas was talked about! Beyond exciting! I also had the chance to write for the Web site and have two interviews published in the print magazine as well, one of which was just came out in the March issue!

I was the only Aggie intern, and I have to say that this was quite a treat because MAJOR preparation and interviewing was going on for Pam Colloff's oral history of the Bonfire--I was like her personal intern on this story for Aggie terminology, traditions, etc. She and I became very close and still keep in contact quite often!

As you can probably tell from the length of this e-mail, my experience at Texas Monthly was more than exciting...it was a real life dream come true.

And now here's a word from Pamela Colloff, longtime Texas Monthly writer whose piece marking the 10-year anniversary of the deadly A&M Bonfire collapse appeared in November:

I’m a huge fan of Betsy’s. She is one of the most enthusiastic, hard-working people I have ever worked with. She saved my cover story on Bonfire at the very last minute, in fact.

Our fact-checker wasn’t able to confirm the very first sentence of my story, which began with a quote from an old Corps handbook. Betsy had already left the TM internship by then and was back on campus. I made a panicked call to her a few days before my story went to press and told her about the predicament we were in.

She went to the Cushing Memorial Library between classes and tracked down the old Corps handbook I had been quoting—even after the librarians there (mistakenly) insisted there was no 1947 handbook at Cushing—and read it back to our fact-checker on the phone. So she literally saved my story!

J-Studies head Dale Rice part of Southern Food Poll

He can't live without barbecue: Texas A&M's director of Journalism Studies (and the Austin American-Statesman's former dining critic) Dale Rice is part of the Southern Food Poll in Oxford American magazine. Click here to read Rice's contribution. Here's a taste:

From which Southern restaurant would you order your last meal and why?
Royers Round Top Cafe in Round Top, Texas. My last meal would have to be on a Sunday, when Royer's serves a limited amount of the best buttermilk-and-garlic coated fried chicken to be found anywhere, accompanied by home-style bowls of mashed potato casserole and creamed corn, and topped off with a piece of Bud Royer's pie.

Journalism jobs in Dallas, Austin, SA, El Paso and more

A little lunchtime break: Glancing at postings on the JournalismJobs board, I see openings for an assistant metro editor, an education reporter and a night online editor at the Dallas Morning News, a criminal justice editor at the San Antonio Express-News, reporters and a sports copy editor at the El Paso Times, photo editor at the Killeen Daily Herald, a hybrid cops/features/enterprise reporter at the Odessa American, and a copy editor at the Waco Tribune Herald (which is no longer owned by Cox). SMU is looking for a lecturer/digital newsroom manager.

Also, though it's not listed there, there is a position open for a part-time copy editor at the Austin American-Statesman, 16 hours a week, nights. Contact Sandra Kleinsasser, skleinsasser@statesman.com, with a letter of interest and a resume.

And for a peek into what it's like to work at the Statesman, check out these interviews with a copy editor, reporters and others done by the paper's Newspapers in Education program.