8 questions with...John Schreier

Ready for some advice from the professionals?  Look no further!  This edition of "8 Questions" features John Schreier, an IWCC adjunct instructor who specializes in news-ed.  Here's 8 questions with John!

Brief Career synopsis: I went to UNL for college and graduated with a news-editorial degree after internships at the Sutton (Neb.) Clay County News, Denver Post and Omaha World-Herald. From there, I worked part-time at the World-Herald before getting my first full-time job as editor of the Papillion Times weekly newspaper for a few months. I spent five years at the Nonpareil, with just shy of two years as managing editor, before going to the Lincoln Journal Star last April to become opinion editor.

Current title: Opinion editor, Lincoln Journal Star

1) What made you want to do this for a living? I loved to tell stories. I tried writing a bunch of books when I was in elementary school, but I never got past 40 pages or so. (They were all terrible. I can confirm this in hindsight.) In high school, I stumbled onto journalism as a way to have fun while writing and learning about something different every day – and haven’t really looked back.

2) As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a professional baseball player, but my baseball skills killed that dream rather early. I entertained a lot of other notions instead. Writing was high on the list and eventually sold me on journalism, but I’d considered being a history teacher, working in marketing and or going into meteorology at various points in time.

3) What is the biggest challenge facing your industry? The business model isn’t sustainable in its current form. Doing good journalism costs money, but declining subscription and advertising rates have led to layoffs industry-wide. For the good of the community, local newspapers must stay vibrant – but they need a fundamental change in how they make money to fund their operations.

4)  5 WORDS OR LESS - What is the most brutal part of your job? People angry about politics.

5) 5 WORDS OR LESS - What is the best part of your job? Learning something new every day.

6) What is the biggest misconception about your job? It’s all about politics, and it’s gotten worse. Having “fake news” shouted unironically at you just makes you sad. People can read between the lines and invent perceived bias that’s just not there. Unfortunately, that perception, that willful ignorance, becomes their reality. All journalists have opinions, but they don’t appear in our work unless it’s a column or editorial – and both of those are independent of the rest of the news coverage.

7) Fill in the blank ...“The problem with newbies is they don’t know ... grammar and punctuation. I’m a grammar Nazi because it was beaten into me, and too few students are ever taught proper grammar. I show all my students a best-of-the-worst mistakes to demonstrate why this is so vital.

8) What industry related skill/software do you wish you knew more about? I wish I could code better. I have some basic knowledge, back from when I used to manage the Nonpareil’s websites and design what was the coolest MySpace profile of any of my friends. (You now know approximately how old I am.) But as more news than ever before is consumed online, the presentations continue to one-up themselves – and digital is increasingly the future of news.