NIU will host the annual spring meeting of the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association for the second consecutive year on April 9.

“The meeting will be held at NIU again for convenience. More and more NIU students are starting to work in the (journalism) area, and this will be an opportunity to meet with other alumni and take a look at how the journalism department works now,” said Cheryl Kroll, journalism graduate assistant.

This meeting will bring together newspaper executives and staffers from throughout Northern Illinois to elect officers for NINA, said Irvan Kummerfeldt, associate professor and journalism department chairman.

The current NINA officers are: president—Bob Watson, editor and publisher of the Mt. Carroll Review; first vice president—Carter Newton, publisher of the Galena Gazette; Second vice president—Ruth Hein of the Hammond Times; treasurer—Jane Phelps of North Central Associated Publishers at Durand.

Kummerfeldt said NINA members will attend reporting classes, editing classes and public relations classes. “They will be drawing on their experiences as professionals in their field. They will address topics such as feature writing, resume writing, job interviews, how to handle crisis stories and what to do when a story causes community uproar,” he said.

“I am hoping to set up opportunities for the students to have informational interviews where the student can meet one-on-one with a newspaper representative to talk about what kinds of jobs are available, what the employers are looking for in an employee and what expectations employers have of people just starting out,” Kummerfeldt said.

This event is being held during NIU’s Journalism Week, which culminates with an address by the 1987 Illinois Journalist of the Year Award recipient. Kummerfeldt said the meeting was held on a Friday last year so that members could attend a banquet. It has been changed to Thursday, when more students are in class. “We want more student participation this year,” he said.

Newspapers represented by members of NINA include the St. Charles Chronicle, Elgin Courier News, Star Publications in Chicago Heights and the Hammond Times. Jackie Hooper, associate editor of Doings in Hinsdale said, “Our paper won’t be represented this year. We attended last year and didn’t find it beneficial.”