FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

20 January 2006                                                                           

 

Contact: Mandy Boyle

E-mail: arboyle@iastate.edu

Telephone: (608) 469-1339

 

Former ISU students visit SPJ-Ad Club meeting

 

The members of ISU's Society of Professional Journalists and the Ad Club met on Jan. 17 with former Greenlee School students who are currently making their way in the world at the Des Moines Register's weekly magazine Juice.

 

Tim Paluch, Cavan Reagan and Justin Shadel joined 40 students to discuss their experiences in the real world, pass on advice and answer questions. Paluch is a reporter, Reagan a designer and Shadel an advertising executive for the weekly magazine.

 

Juice, which started last spring, targets 25- to 34-year-old readers and already is the most profitable of nine niche weeklies started by Gannett, the parent company of the Register.

 

Paluch was an editorial columnist for the Iowa State Daily before he started at the Register as a police reporter. Then he moved to Juice.

 

The ISU alum said he found life in the Register newsroom to be quite a challenge.

 

“You don't realize how much different it is at a real paper like the Des Moines Register until you spend two hours writing that 15-inch story, with that perfect lead, and then you wake up the next day and see it chopped down to four inches long,” he said.

 

With members of the Ad Club in heavy attendance, Shadel found many questions directed at him.  One of the most important things that he learned from working at the Daily was the importance of seeing his clients as human beings, not means to business ends.

 

“When you're working with a client you need to realize that their product is what they have to support their families, that puts everything in a whole different perspective,” he said.

 

All three men agreed that their time at the Daily was important to helping them gain experience and encouraged everyone present to give it a try.

 

Working for Juice was a different experience for Reagan and Paluch.  After being used to daily deadlines and hard news, a weekly deadline for a features-oriented publication is much easier to deal with.  They were unsure if they would want to go back to the Register newsroom after their time with Juice.

 

Paluch and Reagan also informed the crowd that Juice publishes freelance articles and offered to look at submissions from Iowa State students. Paluch can be reached at tim@dmJuice.com and Reagan at cavan@dmJuice.com.

 

The trio spoke for an hour and then answered students' questions on a one-on-one basis for 30 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

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