Opportunities abound for first-year students at the E. W. Scripps School to get involved in co-curricular and extra-curricular journalistic activities in all media about all subjects.

This year, it is certainly true of students who are interested in sports journalism. I can personally tell you about three first-year students who have excelled during their first two academic quarters.

Caleb Troop traveled to us from St. Louis. While in high school, he had his own sports Web site and reported on sports for various high schools around his home area.

Before coming to campus this past fall, Caleb laid groundwork to launch his professional career in the Athens area. He secured a once-a-week sports column position for the twice-a-week newspaper, The Athens News. He started his column during his first week on campus.

I came to college with a strong amount of experience, in high school, so I felt that the sky was the limit if I worked hard. That said, not once did I think I would be involved to the extent that I am currently. While I have been fortunate with the connections I have made, without a doubt the school and the city that surrounds it allows for boundless opportunities. -- Caleb Troop [read full interview]

He also started a sports blog (troopsports.com), quickly building the reputation of breaking big sports stories before other local media. He became an authority on football recruits and is often quoted in various media outlets for his accurate and breaking stories.

During his first academic quarter, Troop also began doing play-by-play of high school football games on 970 WATH radio, a local commercial station (also available at 970wath.com). This continued throughout basketball season as Troop became the play-by-play voice of Athens High School sports.

Additionally, Troop and a fourth-year student Jimmy Smith began to do pre-game shows on WATH and WXTQ radio for all Ohio University home football games and all Ohio University Mid-American Conference home basketball games.

In January, Troop and Smith began a one-hour five-night-a-week telephone sports call-in show on WATH radio called The Sportsfan. (also available at thesportsfan.mypodcast.com). They’ve interviewed top local, regional and national sports figures and broadcasters, broken several top university sports stories and lead the way in high quality local sports reporting.

Troop was not yet finished. During Winter Quarter at Ohio University, he produced about 30 three-minute audio interview packages for the pre-game shows for Ohio University Women’s Basketball. He did color analysis for two women’s games and as a first-year student, he actually called the play-by-play of Division I women’s basketball," doing the Ohio v. Bowling Green game in February for the Ohio Bobcats Sports Network.

This Spring Quarter Troop will be sharing the broadcast booth with Smith to call Ohio University Division I baseball games. Remember, Troop has been at Ohio University all of two academic quarters.

Brian Boesch, a journalism major and an Honors Tutorial College student from Medina, Ohio, also is making a name for himself in sports journalism. As a first-year student, he emerged as the chief color analyst for Ohio University Women’s basketball during Winter Quarter. He also is blogging for Bobcatblogs.net, a new sports blog he helped found to cover Ohio University sports.

Before coming to Ohio University and to Scripps, I had very little journalism experience. I had been the sports editor of my school newspaper and had covered my high school’s football team, but these jobs did not offer much preparation. Despite my lack of experience, I jumped right in at WOUB. By the end of fall quarter, I was covering a few games around the Athens area. Once winter quarter began, I was cleared for morning radio, and I was continuing to report some games. -- Brian Boesch [read full interview]

Boesch also is traveling with the Ohio University baseball team this Spring Quarter and is broadcasting the team’s away league games in the Mid-American Conference. That's right. A first-year student is doing play-by-play broadcasting of Division I college baseball.

This diligent work also has landed Boesch an internship this summer as media coordinator for the Southern Ohio Copperheads baseball team. This team is part of the wooden-bat Great Lake Summer League sponsored by Major League Baseball.

Boesch will be in charge of the team's entire media operations and he also will be broadcasting all of the team’s away games via the Internet.

Boesch has accomplished all of this plus he has worked for WOUB Sports on radio and he maintains a stellar academic record.

Finally, Allie LaForce, from Vermillion, Ohio, has lived both sports and sports broadcasting during her first-year. LaForce is a journalism major recently admitted to the Honors Tutorial College based upon her outstanding academic performance while in the Scripps School.

LaForce, the 2005 Miss Teenage America, has spent time in front of the camera because of her former crown and also has earned her way as a sports reporter and correspondent for Sports Zone, a student broadcast vehicle on campus. LaForce also has trained as a reporter for WOUB and had the early morning sports shift at the radio station during winter break.

On a ten point scale, ten being the best, I would rate my opportunities as a ten. Professors, students, and alumni have done a wonderful job informing me of all of the opportunities that Scripps has to offer. On top of that, I have been embraced by each local media organization to become an active participant. -- Allie LaForce [read full interview]

LaForce not only reported about sports during her first-year but has participated as well. During Fall Quarter, she was informed that she made the Ohio University women’s basketball team as a walk-on. She practiced all season with the Bobcats and was with the team for all 33 games from November through the first part of March.

Now that the season is over, LaForce will head back to the broadcast booth in earnest to hone her broadcasting skills.

Although we have highlighted these three students as examples of what can be done by first-year students, they are not the only students who are producing top-flight journalistic products. There are many first-year students working at The Post, WOUB Radio and Television, speakeasymag.com, poisefashion.com, and Backdrop Magazine.

We invite all potential students to explore the journalistic experiences that can be garnered quickly here at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism. The results will amaze you.

That constant ethical introspection is one of the major distinctions separating us from the myriad of bloggers and self-appointed journalists who flood our information highways.

I'm not saying that citizen journalists by definition are unethical -- some are and some are not. I'm also not saying that all mainstream journalists are ethical, because we know that's not always true, either.

But mostly, outside of our established newsrooms, there are no ethical checks and balances -- no ethical safety nets -- to protect the news consumer or targets of unethical practices.

In these shifting sands of ethics in mainstream and alternative media, we believe that the journalism school has an expansive role that we take seriously.

Our mission is three-fold. First, we educate our students about ethics. Second, we conduct scholarly research in the field of ethics. And, third, we talk about ethics to the professions, to citizen journalists, and to bloggers.

Obviously, we have an obligation to teach students the sound ethical principles that will serve them well throughout their careers. Each student receives multiple doses of ethics while at Scripps. Ethics, for us, is a separate course from Media Law and it is a core course taken by all of our students, regardless of sequence. Additionally, ethics discussions are woven into many of our courses in all of our sequences.

That is exactly the kind of ethics education that Jerry Ceppos, former vice president for news at Knight Ridder and former president of the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, called for in an interview published on March 26 on Poynter's Web site.

"I'd require that every journalism graduate take a significant ethics course. I might even offer a separate class on fairness and accuracy that is distinct from the ethics offering," Ceppos said.

Beyond our required ethics course, Assoc. Prof. Bernhard Debatin has created two new courses: One is a graduate seminar about ethics and the Internet and a second is an undergraduate course about ethical issues confronting the media in regard to race and gender.

Journalism ethics at the Scripps School is not just a classroom exercise. A number of our professors are conducting research in ethics, from the coverage of terrorism to the challenges of online journalism, from ethical issues relating to letters to the editor to the ethics of covering the private lives of public officials.

Our focus on ethics, however, has not been limited to just the mainstream media. As a school, we are trying to reach out to alternative media to help instill ethical standards there as well. For example, in April, we co-sponsored a national symposium on ethical issues of online journalism from the perspective of traditional news media, citizen journalists, and bloggers. This summer, we started a project to train citizens in a nearby rural community to create their own news media with a focus on professional ethics.

It is our unwavering belief that the foundation of good journalism is a solid understanding of and adherence to strong ethical standards. We are in the vanguard of journalism ethics education, but there is much more to do. We need to constantly explore and study ethical dilemmas while we educate our students, professionals, and citizens. That is a core mission of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism.