So, bright young college grad, now that you have that spiffy J-school degree, where you gonna' go?

The New York Times? In a heartbeat. The Sacramento Bee or the Austin American-Statesman? Sounds OK. But the weekly New Era in tiny Sweet Home, OR?

No way, I'd rather go to Disneyland.

That, regrettably, is a common logic community newspaper editors encounter when they seek candidates from many of the top universities in the United States. When the best and the brightest at American journalism schools plan their futures, they seldom work community newspapers into the equation. Weeklies, for instance, drew just 12.6 percent of 1998 journalism and communications grads, according to the annual University of Georgia . Many journalism students spend four or more years learning that the metro daily is the norm ÷ in content, format, pay and working conditions. Yet, more than 30 percent of all daily newspaper journalists work on daily papers with circulation less than 50,000 and thousands more work on the nation's 8,193 weeklies.

But getting students to consider a career in community journalism takes far more than explaining the difference between a dance at the Grange and a Grunge rock concert. Even pointing out the realities of the job market is not enough to sway them. To tempt students to check out community newspaper, the industry and the J-schools must cooperate to help students understand the professional culture of community newspapers and the rich writing opportunities offered by their close-to-the-reader format.

This paper explains a project that we at the University of Oregon found allowed students to experience for themselves the often subtle joys of community journalism and to determine ÷ in a low-risk manner ÷ whether the genre holds opportunity for them. The paper also outlines a process of cooperation between a community newspaper and a university that produced a three-way "win" ÷ for the newspaper, the university and the students.

The project actually had its impetus in a discussion of newspaper/academia cooperation at the 1999 Huck Boyd Community Building Seminar in Boston. I listened with interest as Edward Mullins of the University of Alabama discussed his student's "road trips" to rural hamlets to produce sections for weekly newspapers. I jotted notes as Gary Rice of Southwest Texas State University told of assigning his advanced reporting students to stories for hometown papers in the small communities around San Marcos. And I was positively envious of Elizabeth Hansen's report on using a communications research class at Eastern Kentucky University to conduct readership surveys for newspapers in the Bluegrass State.

Fate and/or coincidence blessed me just moments after the session ended, when fellow Oregonian Alex Paul walked into the room. Paul was not only the reigning president of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, but also the publisher of The New Era in Sweet Home (population 7,800) and a friend from my own newspaper days as the general manager of the daily East Oregonian in Pendleton.

During the break before the next seminar, I told Paul of my excitement about what my colleagues in Alabama, Texas and Kentucky were doing. Paul's eyes brightened as he asked rhetorically whether this might be the answer to his dream of a unique "millennium edition" for his small-town paper.

Paul longed to describe his town through fresh eyes ÷ to "look at Sweet Home as though you had just landed here in a rocket ship from another planet.";

I joked that I had no access to little green men, but that I had 16 students in a Reporting I class who might find Sweet Home just as alien as a planet far, far away.

That was it ÷ a dream, a joke and a quick agreement to make it work. In the few minutes between Huck Boyd speakers, we had laid plans to change the way we train future reporters.

The actual logistics of the project turned out to be much thornier than they seemed during that brief conversation. Topping the list was the tyranny of the calendar ÷ the 1999 Symposium took place on the first Friday of the University of Oregon's 10-week winter quarter. That left just nine weeks to train the student reporters, organize the assignments, travel to Sweet Home for interviews and write the stories.

In addition, I had a strong professional commitment to fulfill the curriculum goals I had established in my syllabus. Using the Missouri Group's News Reporting and Writing and supplementary material, I planned to show my students the difference between mere fact recording and news reporting, to teach them how to recognize news, to introduce them to the various types of stories common in newspapers, to help them develop their own writing style and to rough edit their own work and that of fellow journalists. While there was no way I could complete the traditional "textbook" curriculum for Reporting I and complete the millennium edition for The New Era, I realized that I had to structure the class and lab session so that the traditional goals of the course were addressed through the tasks involved in producing a "professional" publication.

The first job at hand, however, was to get the "buy-in" of the students. I did this by first explaining the importance of professional clippings in the journalistic job-hunting process and asking them if they were willing to spend a day or two away from the campus to gain valuable real-world experience. The class ÷ a required element in our core print media curriculum ÷ consisted of a near-even mix of news-editorial, magazine and public relations students. All expressed at least guarded enthusiasm about the project. Their emotions ranged from nervousness to excitement. The comments of public relations major Sally McGregor were telltale:

Out of curiosity, I asked the students to list the three top reasons they would not consider work on a weekly newspaper. I assumed that low wages and primitive working conditions would top the list.

Wrong. The top drawback to working on a small-town weekly was the lack of access to fashionable music and entertainment. Boredom was the second reason. Wages came third.

While I could not address their yen for rock music, I believed that the project would show them that small towns were not boring. I knew that the key to allaying the students' fears while meeting their expectation of success was to organize the section with the same attention to detail and planning that one would expect of a metro daily's special projects team. While the students were progressing through the reportorial version of boot camp ÷ rewriting news releases, crafting obituaries, writing profiles and covering speeches on deadline ÷ Alex Paul and I laid the groundwork for the section.

Paul first assembled a list of 30 story ideas he thought might be relevant to the section. The large number gave my 16 students the flexibility to find stories with which they were most comfortable. The story list included the names and phone numbers of contact persons.

Next Paul published a column that became the first of several "promos" to prepare his readers for the project. Although Sweet Home is only 60 miles from the University of Oregon's liberal arts campus in Eugene, the old timber town is emotionally closer to the more conservative (and UO football rival) Oregon State land grant university in Corvallis. Paul wanted to prepare his readers to give the young reporters an optimum chance at cooperation.

Under the headline "The Ducks are coming ... and they want to write about us," Paul explained the concept of the special section and that, as an active member of the state press association, "it has long been my contention that newspapers must nurture the next generation."

The UO students were invited specifically because few, if any, of the students had ever been to Sweet Home, Paul wrote. He said he felt they "would provide a fresh, honest look at our community through fairly unbiased eyes.";

Paul also gave his readers a taste of what was to come and an opportunity to contribute.

To further facilitate a quick turnaround in the project, the instructors and Paul huddled to determine the required length of stories, the amount of art needed and firm deadlines for submission of first drafts, second drafts and final copies.

In the classroom, meanwhile, I modified assignments from the syllabus to mesh with the Sweet Home Project. For instance, the deadline-research and the sidebar-writing assignments were collapsed into an assignment to write a "locator" sidebar about Sweet Home that would accompany an ersatz disaster story. Students had to use the Web and newsroom library sources to describe the geographic location, demographics and history of Sweet Home ÷ and file the story in one hour.

A face-to-face meeting with Paul allowed the students to choose their assignments, to recommend modifications to the original ideas and to fish for sources and contacts. They were then given an assignment that turned out to be crucial to the success of the project. Each student had to write a tight, but detailed query about their story. The query explained the subject of the story, the angle they intended to take, the people and organizations they would talk to and the potential for artwork. The finished queries became the backbone of the "homework" each student did at the UO campus in preparation to the trip to Sweet Home for actual interviews. They assured that no student showed up 60 miles from home with only a vague idea what to do.

As a secondary emphasis, the class explored American stereotype of small town life. Most of the students were from urban environments and had major concerns about how Sweet Home residents would respond to minorities and outsiders.

"When I heard the name Sweet Home the first thing that popped into my mind was "Duelling Banjos," said Steven Sawada, a magazine student from Hawaii.

Classmate Paul Craig had a similar vision:

Through the Sweet Home project, many of the students found that their creative niche might be in a smaller, rather than a larger publication. Two magazine majors changed to the news-editorial sequence after the class and another is seeking employment in the newspaper industry. Paul Craig explained the impact of the project on his career goals:

Several of the students said they were nervous about leaving the safe cocoon of the campus, but that they were relieved to find that their classroom training had actually prepared them to perform in the real world. Sally McGregor credited the experience with changing her career path.

The editing process also allowed the reporters to hone their style, spelling and grammar skills. Each story was peer-edited at least twice by two different students. As instructor, I did the final editing ÷ and grading. Publisher Paul also checked the stories for accuracy of local names and spellings.

The final versions of the story were turned over to the design team in the ninth week of the 10-week term, leaving time for one last "special" assignment. That "final exam" came in the form of an ersatz employment ad from a daily newspaper near Sweet Home that was looking for staff reporters, feature writers and an editor for the company newsletter. The ad had appeal to all three sequences represented in the class. The assignment required the students to submit a well-crafted letter of application, plus a portfolio of their in-class and extra-curricular work that supported the application.

The letters and portfolios demonstrated that the 16 young people had quickly grown from students to budding professionals. This was re-emphasized a few weeks later when the finshed product ÷ "Still Sweet, Still Home ÷ Impressions of a small Oregon town at the dawn of the New Millennium." The 28-page tab drew rave reviews in Sweet Home and on campus. The UO School of Journalism and Communication mailed copies of the sections to newspapers and supporters throughout the state.

Several of the students have since served successful internships at newspapers and are preparing to enter the industry. Although all 16 had shown disdain for community newspapers before the project, most now said the community press is a valid option in their career plans.

The critical lesson in the Sweet Home Project is that community newspapers have much more to offer to journalism students than their publishers give themselves credit for. The stereotype of the small town and its weekly paper is strong: Dull church picnics, pompous town officials and under educated and uncaring residents. The reality is that small towns offer journalists everything that cities do ÷ just in smaller and often more palatable bites. One students had this insight while driving through a Sweet Home neighborhood:

"Gee, it looks just like a suburb."

With good reason. Fast freeways, cable television and WalMart-style merchandizing have erased much of the cultural differences between Metropolis and Podunk. Like fast-food chains, stories on critical social issues and interesting personalities have flooded into every corner of America. Given the guidance of a good editor, young journalists can find some of their finest creative fodder in the hinterlands.

The less-than-daily deadline regimen and the potential for feature writing also gives the weekly newspaper appeal to students who new avoid the news-editorial sequence as "too harsh and impersonal. Weekly newspapers may be the most popular "magazines" in the nation.

The downside is that the less-attractive stereotypes of newspapers are so powerful that few students will believe the above information if it is merely delivered in a lecture. Instead, they must experience it for themselves. This in turn requires "out of the box" thinking by academics and a commitment to cooperation by publishers.

There is little reason that projects such as the UO-Sweet Home edition should not proliferate and snuff the effect of those unkind stereotypes. However, publishers and professors must keep six steps in mind:

Work on a deadline schedule, but plan the procedures carefully.
Don't burden the students with tasks normally assigned to experience journalists. Gather story ideas in advance, arrange for photo coverage and handle phone and transportation arrangements.
Firmly require the students to frame their stories before they go into the field. Require them to make pre-visit telephone calls and to have confirmed appointments before they leave campus.
Integrate the teaching goals of the course into the story assignments.
Encourage peer editing. The tradition of reporters reading over the work of their coworkers before it goes to the desk is long and hallowed. Develop an alternative method of grading to the "all or nothing" system of handing the story to the instructor for both editing and grading.
Debrief, debrief, debrief. The experiences students will have in the field may be old hat to journalists and professors, but they will be eye-openers to the students. Let them tell you what it meant to them and how it was different than they expected. Help them explore what they think they should make of their observations.