about this sitesee Meranda's resumesee clips and work sampleskeep in touch
home

Archive for the 'College' Category

Hello Franklin Hall, future of student media

Monday, August 27th, 2007

When I was home last week, Stater adviser Carl Schierhorn gave me a personal tour of Franklin Hall. (In hindsight, as in right now that I’m finally penning this post, I should have taken photos and video and given you all a bird’s eye view. I’ll chock it up to stupidity and the fact that I was officially “on vacation” and instead just send you over to the JMC Franklin Hall slide show about move-in progress and the archived stories about the building at the site.)

Tomorrow (er, it’s midnight, so Today), is the first day of classes in the new journalism building. The Stater is continuing production from it’s Taylor Hall hub for at least the next few weeks, while the converged newsroom is being finished. Meanwhile, TV2 has set up shop in the former Student Media business office next door to the Stater newsroom. Not a perfect situation, but a much closer relationship than was even a pipe dream a decade ago.

This is the beginning. No more StaterOnline. No more tv2.kent.edu. Welcome to the future of student media, Kent State students: Kent News Net. One product, always on, always improving.

Though the layout looks a bit rough right now and hiccups pop up throughout the site, the content of which is mostly the annual orientation issue, you get the idea.

There’s Black Squirrel Radio podcasting and TV2 newscasts right alongside the Stater’s stories. Even prominent linkage to the Burr (student magazine). Add to it helpful links to other key KSU sites — like Flashline (the all-important hub of Student resources online) — and Stater.you action on the sidebar, and it’s definitely a winner.

As I walked the dusty halls of Franklin with t-minus a week to classes in the building, I was more than a bit jealous. I want the big collaborative classrooms and shiny new computer labs. I want the converged newsroom, with its conference rooms and single assignment desk. I want windows in the journalism classrooms (there were NONE in Taylor Hall, the faculty and Stater hogged all the windows on the first floor of the building). Amazing things are going to come out of those rooms. And though I’m excited about the opportunities for future KSU grads, I’m a bit sad I wasn’t able to partake. (And no, as I told every single person who saw and subsequently asked me during my tour of Franklin Hall, grad school is not on my horizon for a very, very, very, very long time, if ever.)

Though the new building is amazing, there are some things that will be missed:

  • Taylor Hall is central to campus. Franklin’s out in BFE comparatively, at the very corner of campus. (But, it’s a heck of a lot closer to Starbucks and Chipotle, and even the bars for those after-a-long-night-of-production celebrations.)

  • The faculty are in what Carl called “pods,” and though they might like their bigger offices off the main drag, I think the relationship with their students will change as a result. How many great conversations did I have from the hallway door of my professor’s offices while I was on my way in or out of the Stater? How much great advice did I happen upon because I stopped in to ask a non-pressing question or simply say, “What’s new?” as I meandered past. Professor hallway is no more. Now, students will have to deliberately go out of their way, to another floor even, to talk to the professors. Likewise, it will be harder for the profs to track down students who won’t be hanging down the hall in the Stater office or in the JMC office reading room area (which is now in an entirely separate area). How many mentor relationships won’t be sparked? I don’t know. But this seems like probably the biggest loss to me. Then again, the professors will probably be more productive with fewer student interruptions, so who knows.
  • The Stater loses its window to campus. Not only is it in BFE, it doesn’t have a window overlooking the commons. I never realized how important that wall of windows was until I worked in an office without a single window to the outside. Now, granted, this isn’t the case for the new newsroom, but there will be some loss in identity to student media when thousands of kids on their tours of campus aren’t marched past the Stater newsroom on their way to the May 4 memorial. There’s something to be said of walking past the newsroom. Even for non-readers, you couldn’t help but notice the Stater existed because you saw it every time you went past.
  • There’ll also probably be fewer pick-up games of football, frisbee, four square or kickball — and when the weather was ripe, lunch tray sledding down Blanket Hill — than there were when I was there. This was an amazing de-stresser, not to mention a good way to get to know each other beyond the confines of class and work.
  • And finally, there will be no 100 Taylor Hall. I know it’s silly to be sad about that, but I am. The next time I’m on campus, the room where I spent more time during college than anywhere else combined won’t exist. At least not in the way I know and love it. It was hard for me to be there last week and think about that. All the amazing fun times and friends I made, all the great stories we produced, all the days I was proud and the conversations I wish never had to happen, but which made me stronger. All I’ll have the next time I walk past those windows is my memories.

I realize that list seems longer than the benefits. I assure you it’s not. I’m just a bit nostalgic, that’s all.

And on that note, I’m out.

Good luck to all the Stater staffers, who probably haven’t even sent tomorrow’s paper and as is tradition missed deadline by a long shot tonight, the first night of daily production. And Godspeed to the next generation of student media at Kent State.

What j-school really is good for

Monday, August 27th, 2007

Tomorrow is my friend Trent’s first day at my paper.

I’m so excited. He’s one of my favorite people from Kent, and the idea that he’ll be working with me is awesome for two reasons. First, it’s nice to have someone around who I’ve known longer than seven months and with whom I can totally be myself because he’s seen me in just about every state I could possibly find myself in — and vice versa. Second, he’s a talented designer, and I look forward to the creativity he’ll bring to the job.

Abbey also starts her job this week, on Tuesday. She interned in Lafayette this summer, and she and I definitely spent quality time together. I was so sad for her to go but so happy for her to land a job (even though I’d rather she had taken one closer to me). She’s going to cover night cops in Newark — Ohio, not New Jersey, as we have learned it is necessary to qualify. I do think it would be awesome to cover cops in Newark, NJ. You’d never be bored. :/

Moving on to my original point, I’m just as excited about the futures of both these friends (OK, and all the rest of you’ns who have recently started your jobs or will do so soon — I want updates!). And also for one of my best friends at the J&C, who also is stepping into a new role soon.

Something about having other friends who are professionals makes me feel older, more mature. In a good way.

I’m not just a college-aged person masquerading as a real reporter, which is secretly how I felt the first six months. I was proving myself, to myself. But know what? I am a real journalist. And now, so are many of my friends.

Aside from beat contacts who know my name and contact me with ideas (something that takes some time to develop), I have connections beyond my beat and paper. Not just ties to a university, but ties to real people at other real papers doing their real jobs. I can use my connections here and elsewhere to help others get jobs, as I’ve done twice so far for un-posted jobs (to my own “networking is pointless, talent wins any day” surprise). Who knows, eventually, to help me get a job or do my job better. I can trade story ideas and horror stories with friends who are covering the same beat as me in different communities. I can talk to them about awesome multimedia they’ve done or seen that I want to try. I can follow their blogs (look at the side of this page, the DKS throwback list keeps growing!) or their lives through Facebook.

It’s funny because, as I alluded to earlier, I used to think networking was stupid. If you were talented and driven, that would be enough. But I’ve learned talent and hunger isn’t so rare. If my job search and the subsequent job searches of my friends has taught me anything it’s this: The value of my j-school education had nothing to do with what I learned in media writing or copy editing. I could have and would have learned that anyway. Even in key classes like beat reporting and RPA, I learned more through my work at the Stater. The real value of a j-school education is the other talented and passionate people you meet. I feel fortunate that tomorrow there will be another Kent Stater sharing my newsroom again and for good this time. Who knows whether I’ll luck into more jobs with more of my talented friends later on?

Embarassingly bad work… and what it’s taught me

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

So, I probably shouldn’t perpetuate links to stories from my past that are less than stellar, but oh well. I will do so for the sake of showing those just starting out that everybody starts somewhere. And for myself, to remind me how far I actually have come.

Someone hit this blog by searching for “Meranda Watling” on Google. (I am still always curious about why random people search for me, but it’s one of those things I’ve come to accept.)

I’ve mentioned before what comes up on this search, but it’s been awhile since I Googled myself, so I clicked on the link in my counter to see if anything new or cool popped up. No such luck.

After the expected top hits — MerandaWrites, my LinkedIn profile, my ClaimID — comes the Stater stuff. Mainly, a list of my articles (though, not all of them as we switched hosts and systems half-way through my sophomore year and never moved the archives).

Now, let me start by saying, seven months into my first real job I have grown a lot, but I still have much, much, much more growing to do as a person and a reporter. I realize that, and anyone at this level of the game who doesn’t think they have much to learn is delusional.

I think, actually, that’s what makes reading my old Stater stories so humbling.

Even as I wince at my blunders in these, some of my first stories ever, the practical experience I now have keeps my brain thinking, “If I did this story today, I would …” And I think that’s great. It’s a sign I’m learning. I wonder what I’ll think three years from now of the way I covered the budgets this fall, my first time covering them, or next fall how I’ll feel about the round of first day of school stories I just did as I search desperately for more new angles.

Some of these stories are pretty horrible. Allow me to introduce the lead/first-five-graphs (the holy grail of whether a story flies or flops at the J&C) of one of the articles I wrote during RPA about the fire chief being a finalist for another job:

Kent Fire Chief Jim Williams has been named one of 10 finalists for the fire chief position in Delaware.

Delaware, located in Central Ohio north of Columbus, is among the fastest growing communities not only in Ohio, but in the nation. According to the U.S. Census, Delaware County was listed as the 12th-fastest growing county in the country between April 2000 and July 2005.

In the 2000 U.S. Census, the city of Delaware’s population increased 24.7 percent. In the same period, Kent’s population declined 3.3 percent.

The growing nature of the area is exactly what attracted Williams to apply for the position, he said.

“It’s an opportunity in a growing community,” Williams said. “The department’s a little larger than ours … but it’s a pretty similar department.”

The fact that it was in Ohio also impacted his decision to apply because he said he’d like to stay in the pension system here.

I mean what?! It reads like a Wikipedia entry. I don’t get into the context — that the chief’s been in the job a decade and at the department for another 17 years beyond that — or anything else until I’ve already lost my readers to boredom and confusion (Delaware? They only have on chief for the whole state? huh? Oh, it’s a city in Ohio. Now I get you.) from which they never recover.

To be sure, not all of those stories were horrible. Although this one about a bridge being closed (as far as I know this bridge is STILL closed a year and a half later) and the impact it’s had on the area citizens could stand to be cut, I do like the lead:

Jim Wyle was excited recently when he saw railroad workers on the tracks near the Middlebury Road bridge. Thinking they were there to work on the bridge, he started a conversation.

But the workers were only working on the tracks. In fact, they complained to Wyle, who has lived near the bridge for 15 years, that they had to go all the way around because the bridge was closed.

Wyle’s response?

“How would you like to live here and do that every day?” he asked.

Nearly 80 Kent residents met yesterday afternoon at the Kent American Legion to discuss the problems and delays with the Middlebury bridge and the possible legal action they could take.

The Middlebury bridge, which links the residents to Cuyahoga Falls, Akron and the other side of the city, has been closed because of safety concerns since March 2003, said Gene Roberts, service director for the city of Kent.

OK, so I cheated, that was six graphs. But they weren’t as long and it flowed much smoother. The anecdote really got to the point of the story.

Ironically, I wrote both those stories within a week of each other. I guess that shows, it was hit or miss. In a lot of ways, it still is.

Even now, I have days where I really like the stories I write or interviews that go particularly well. Then, I have others where I feel that nothing I do is any good and I should just scrap it and start over or give up. Sometimes, I even feel that way about different stories running in the same issue. But ah las, I can’t do that.

The beauty of newspaper reporting is that every day you are essentially handed a blank canvas. It’s up to you to figure out how you’re going to paint and fill it that day. And sometimes, when you’re done, you are really happy with the outcome. And other times, when you’re done, you can’t wait for the next day to end so you can forget all about that canvas and start again fresh.

Not everything I produce is going to be great. Although it kills me, I have come to accept that sometimes I’ll miss the mark. Those are the days I hustle to leave before my story’s edited and when I hesitate to open the daily readme memo from our editors to see just how far off I was and whether they noticed.

But you know what? Those are the stories that teach me the most. They’re the ones I come back to as I grow and say, “OK, knowing what I know now, how would I approach this differently?” Then, the next time sometime like that comes along, I know better and my work is better. Give me a few years to get a few “could have been better” stories out of the way. I’ll be a more humble and effective reporter for it.

I feel old

Monday, July 30th, 2007

I feel old. And it has nothing to do with my birthday yesterday.

Though, I will admit I feel sad not to be 21 anymore. I know everyone will think I’m crazy, especially since I’ve already lamented being treated young. But 21 is just a youthful age. It’s like, you have your whole life ahead of you. You can do ANYTHING. And it was a really good year for me. A lot of positive (and a few negative) things happened in my life.

But now, I’m officially 22. The next real birthday that counts for anything is 25. Then my car insurance goes down and I can run for U.S. Representative. Woo hoo. But seriously, I do realize that 22 is still really young, especially for where I am in life.

But why I really feel old has nothing to do with my age.

It has to do with my j-school peers. Over the past several months/weeks I have watched them landing jobs and several, many more than I would expect so soon, moving on to second jobs. Yes, second jobs. While I’m still worrying about my best pals who graduated in May and are still on the prowl, I’m watching Facebook statuses light up with excitement by peers I quit worrying about ages ago because they had a job. And now, they’re moving on. They’ve given their year and a half and they’re trading up.

It’s scary to me, to be honest. They’re all moving on so quickly, some it seems for the sake of moving on, because isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

My mom came to visit me in Lafayette this weekend. It was the first time she spent any time here. I had fun taking her around, showing her downtown, going to all the must-see and must-eat places. She had fun, and I realized, perhaps for the first time, how much this place has grown on me in just six months. I’ve finally figured out the one way streets and how to pronounce and spell all the Indian names.

I’m already sad at the prospect of leaving it someday. And as I watch my peers galloping toward their futures, I’m scared about how soon that someday might approach. I guess that’s the nature of the beast, right? Most people do move on from their first job within a few years, and those who don’t adopt a new home or get stuck not being able to move up. I’m not ready for either just yet. As I told one of my friends here, I’ll stay as long as I’m still learning new things, as long as there are new things for me to learn. How long that will be, I don’t know. I guess I should just feel lucky that I landed somewhere that I’m not just biding my time waiting for the next best thing to come along (as some people were and have jumped ship as soon as it did come). I really like it here, even the things I hate I can handle. I’m OK with that.

On the hunt…

Saturday, July 14th, 2007

If I ever doubted I did the right thing by graduating early, I don’t any more.

Maybe the job market didn’t suck as bad six months ago. (Though if you’d have asked me then, I’d have told you it was pretty impossible to find a journalism job and I may as well polish my burger-flipping skills.)

Maybe there was less competition. (This was actually, beyond the $8,000 I saved, my main motivation for a December graduation rather than June or August. I reasoned, fewer kids would be on the same schedule, so there wouldn’t be the same glut of unemployed entry-level reporters on the market.)

Maybe I just got lucky. (I think everything happens for a reason. No matter how much it sucks or how horrible it makes you feel, everything has a purpose in your life, even if it’s just to teach you how to cope with disappointment or failure.)

It could have been any of those things and it probably was that and much more. But I wouldn’t trade places with my peers on the prowl for a job now. Not for anything. In fact, their disappointments and struggles are actually depressing me a bit.

Most of the kids I know who graduated with me or when I should have this spring are in internships without job prospects lined up for next month or beyond. They’re mailing out packets and combing journalismjobs.com for any glimmer of the perfect job, or even a job they’re mostly qualified for in a place they wouldn’t mind living.

The kids I don’t talk to regularly keep me updated of their job hunting luck through facebook statuses range from “f* the newspaper industry” to “moving to XXX next month!”

I talked to one friend the other day who has gone on a few interviews and been so close, who got his hopes up only to have them crash down a few weeks later: We don’t have the budget right now. And he’s one of the most talented people I know! I mean seriously guys. If you need a designer, this kids got talent, ambition and intelligence beyond almost anyone else I know.

I’ve also seen some borderline cut-throat tactics going on. I mean, all’s fair in love and war … and job hunting, apparently. There’s been at least one thing I’ve watched and gone, “I could never do that to someone.”

But then, I’ve also talked to people who’ve just heard back from “the first editor who actually took an interest,” and even though they downplay it — who wants to get her hopes up and then have them dashed? — you can see they walk a little taller and have that twinkle in their eye that says, “I don’t suck after all. Someone wants to hire me.”

Then, I remember that feeling. I remember the first conversation I had where I felt like maybe it wasn’t me against the world. I’m pretty sure I rushed my professor’s office for help dissecting the conversation after I hung up. I remember the first editor who contacted me. I remember the first voicemail I got from an editor asking me to come for an in-person interview, and how I played it over and over and over again to be sure I hadn’t missed any details or clues. I remember how much fun it was to read the job ads and imagine myself in cities I’d never heard of, let alone been.

I was telling one of my friends, a May grad with a post-grad summer internship that ends next month, that I kind of miss the excitement that comes with looking for that first job. I mean, you can literally do anything. You can go anywhere. You have no roots, no history holding you back. You have nothing but a few clips from your college newspaper and summer internship, a cover letter you likely wrote at 3 a.m. and a resume you’ve scrutinized so many times that it seems foreign rather than familiar. All you have to go on is your wit and your passion, your charm and your references. All you have is your future ahead of you.

As for me, my future is underway. Tomorrow is the exact six month mark since I started here at the J&C. It’s pretty insane how quickly it passed.

Cleaning up your online reputation?

Friday, July 6th, 2007

I caught this post by Andy Dickinson about journalism students trying to clean up past indiscretions and have articles they wrote removed from their college paper sites. Apparently, as Bryan noted at Innovation in College Media, “more and more former students are attempting to get college media outlets to remove news items from their online archives.”

I’ve said before how thankful I am my high school newspaper wasn’t online when I was there. It is now, which makes sense but sucks for the students who in five years are going to wish they hadn’t been archived in Google. I had Web sites through middle and high school. But if a recruiter today stumbled upon the crap I wrote about back then, I’d surely never be considered. OK, they’d be able to tell the difference between an article in my newspaper today and one from high school. But the thing is, Google can’t.

I’m still annoyed by certain articles that pop up high in the Google search for my name today. One of the top hits is a list of articles from the Daily Kent Stater. (Fortunately, these are only from when we changed over platforms, so they’re the tailend of my collegiate journalism career, not my first forays into it. They’re also not from a period where I was on a regular beat, so it’s really scattered, but nothing I’d be entirely embarassed for someone to read.) There are articles I hate pop up when you search for me, the ones about May 4, Darfur, black squirrels, a hospital groundbreaking that I covered last summer, etc. I guess — I hope — the more articles I get under my belt, the quicker those will get nudged out.

But I’m not going to hire a company to make that happen. For one thing, I like to be able to look back at old stories and see how much I’ve grown and think how I would handle that story knowing what I know today. Often times even a few months can make a big difference in how I’d go about it. And the great thing about newspapers, and even more now with online, is that I can start over on a fresh story or topic tomorrow even if I didn’t nail the story today. Or I can come back from a different angle another time.

Bryan notes that the most common reason to want to clean up the record from college media outlets was to clean up blotter items of youthful indiscretions. I made a conscientious decision as editor of the Stater not to publish the blotter online for this reason. I was never in the blotter and could not have foreseen myself ever being in a situation where I would be (and in fact we had a discussion when a USS senator was arrested for a DUI that boiled down to the fact that were I to be arrested for a similar offense, as a campus leader I’d be held to the same standard, which would include a front-page article about the arrest). But kids will be kids, and I hated the idea that some underage drinking arrest would bar them from a job someday.

I’m not sure if they went ahead and ran the blotter online after I left. It would draw a lot of hits, surely. It was one of our most-read items in print. And I wouldn’t judge them for not.

The real question is going to be what happens when my generation gets into positions of power. We grew up being monitored by the Internet, or monitor ourselves and friends through it. But when it comes time for us to make the hiring decisions, will be more forgiving or will we be more diligent in our pursuits because we know the back roads of the net better than our bosses today? It’ll be interesting to see.

The not-so job hunting expert

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

Remember back in middle school and high school when there was still so much you had never done or tried. Remember how your friends who had done those things suddenly became your expert guide as you met each milestone. Dating, driving, etc.

I’m having this weird deja vu the past few weeks. Only this time, it seems, I’m ahead of the curve and everyone wants my advice.

This is the time when all the summer interns are nervously starting to count the weeks remaining not the weeks they’ve been here. As few as two weeks left or as long as a month or two. The ones who are on post-grad internships (as several of my friends are) and even the ones who are looking forward to the next internship (as is the case for others I know) are suddenly wondering where they will find themselves after their summer internship ends.

I’m not an expert on finding a job at all. At all. In fact, I spent much of my final semester of college just freaking out because I just knew I’d never land one in journalism.

Miraculously, I got some nibbles, scored a few interviews and actually did get a job. Because I already went through this ritual and successfully completed it, that suddenly makes me an expert. Or at least, everyone seems to think I know more than they do.

I kind of wish I’d had that “what’s it like” network when I was looking. Though, fortunately, I had the network of professors whose offices I frequented in search of another set of eyes to proof my resume or another opinion on which cover letter to use and where to apply.

I’ve had conversations with four different people over the past week about the best way to go about applying for jobs, finding job postings, copying & sending clips, picking clips, writing cover letters and more. I always start with the disclaimer that I really lucked out in the job search.

In the interest of helping others who want to know what it’s like to find a job, here’s a quick round-up of how my search went. Remember, I was a horrible job hunter, so luck surely played some part in it.

  • I didn’t have time to search for jobs or contact editors or put together beautiful clip packages. I was busy taking a course overload necessary to graduate early, editing my daily student newspaper and trying to maintain a semblance of a social life.
  • The packets that did get sent out (aside from some from the job fair, probably only a half-dozen were mailed out) were put together well after midnight on Sundays after I’d just finished putting the Stater to bed. None of the papers I actually interviewed with received those packets via mail. I think I only actually talked to one of the editors who got the packet on the phone. I got a “we received your application” back from another. The majority of my inquiries went unanswered, though I didn’t follow up on most because by the time I would have I already had some interviews lined up and had decided I would see what happened and if I didn’t have a job by New Years I’d start again with rigor.
  • The others were from an interview at a job fair, an e-mail inquiry or them getting my name and resume/clips online. I also interviewed with a few recruiters who came to Kent, though I didn’t slate myself for all of them though my professors said I should. One of those interviews was with a corporate recruiter whom I’d already been in contact.
  • At least two editors contacted my references before contacting me. (I know because the editors told me or the professors would find me in the Stater office and ask if I heard from X paper.) In a few instances, the editors knew one or more of my references through having worked with them in the past.
  • I kept my options open. I wanted a reporting or online reporting position, but looked at online producing and copy editing jobs in appealing locations as well. My location criteria was I would move anywhere that paid me enough to live. My varied experience was, I think, what made me stand out. The other thing, I’ve been told by the editors who interviewed and hired me, was my passion and excitement for this business and its future.
  • It all happened pretty quickly. One minute I’m taking my news design exam, the next I’m Googling the area code of a phone call to find out where the heck it was coming from to place what paper it could be. One week I’m wondering if the bowling alley would let me come back after graduation, the next I’m touring the Midwest in a suit.
  • I don’t think I was quite prepared enough for the intensity of the job interviews themselves. I think that’s the one thing nobody warned me about. You interview with just about every editor at the paper, and it’s like rapid fire one right after another, from office to office, conference room to conference room. By the third or fourth person, I was always left wondering, wtf just happened? And trying to keep my excitement up as I answered what I would have sworn was word-for-word the same exact question I had just answered for the last three. Luckily, I’m a naturally excited person especially when I’m passionate about something. They all also included lunch or breakfast or both with editors and/or reporters. You get about two bites in, so don’t forget to eat breakfast before you come.
  • Each interview included test stories and written tests on grammar/style/general knowledge. Two of the test stories included mandates to write something for online. One was a bogus crash where I was given the notes/release and had to craft a story. The other was a story about holiday travel that required me to go out and find real people, contact the airport, contact AAA, etc. That story would have been easy, and in fact I had the online update within 15 minutes of getting the assignment, but ran into time trouble after the reporters who took me to lunch took me to a place that took forever to seat and serve us. I had about 15 minutes after that to find the “real people” and get it written, this involved me practically running down main street. I think the editor was actually happy to see the unexpected pressure. When I told her what happened and how I handled it, she laughed and said it would have made a good reality show. As for the general knowledge, I didn’t know who the Indiana senators were and I guessed on the name of the Indianapolis NBA team (correctly, I looked it up immediately after I left). So you never know what random questions could pop up.
  • Since starting my job, I’ve received at least half a dozen e-mails or calls from editors looking for the right candidate for their positions. At least one contacted me again after my 90-day probation to check in.

And there, my friends, in one quick list is everything I know about job hunting based on my own fledgling experience. I hope it’s helpful. If it’s not and somehow you don’t already know, Joe Grimm’s ask the recruiter column is a godsend of awesome advice, as is the journalists community on LiveJournal.

As I have told my friends, there is no right way. The right way is the one that works, for you, for the editor, for the paper that actually has a suitable opening at the right time. Try every way and hope one of them sticks. That was pretty much my method.

Good luck!