Summertime, and the livin’ is busier than ever

As the school year winds down, along with it, we seem conditioned to expect our lives also to slow down. But at WORLD, this is the time of year that life starts feeling busier than ever.

This year, four big things and a lot of little things add to the busy-ness: World Journalism Institute (WJI), WORLD’s new website, WORLD Watch, and an all-new podcast.

WJI: This spring, we resume in-person instruction. We are working with 26 students this year during the 16 days we spend at Dordt University. This course is the heart of the entire WJI program, and our students and staff will feel like they’re working 24/6 while they are together.

Lee Pitts, WJI’s associate dean and instructor of journalism/communication at Dordt, tells me we had more applicants to this year’s course than ever before. The students we accepted represent 22 different colleges (half of them Christian colleges).

WNG.org: I mentioned a few weeks ago that the new site would be rolled out in stages, but the first stage, and the one with the most obvious changes, is live now. If you haven’t visited, I hope you will check it out. You may find something you like that you didn’t even know WORLD does, like our 10 “Roundups,” daily news updates on specific topics. And look for ongoing website updates for the next several months. Good things are on the way.

WORLD Watch: We’ve just passed our one-year anniversary for the initial WORLD Watch offering, called News in 3. Heading into the summer months, we will continue the daily program, and we’ll be testing some new ideas in preparation for a new school year starting in August. No slowdown there.

Lawless podcast: This is a big deal. Lawless is our new “true crime” podcast (the tagline: “Not every crime is against the law”). The podcast launches in late summer, and Season 1 will tell the story of Terri Schiavo, whose life a court order ended in 2005. WORLD Magazine told Schiavo’s story in real time in the months leading up to her death, but we never have put the whole story together for our readers and listeners. Lynn Vincent, who did a good bit of WORLD’s reporting on the story back then, is writing and hosting Lawless, with a lot of help from Paul Butler’s WORLD Radio team.

Those are the big things that, along with a bunch of smaller projects and the heavy reporting load our staff carries every day, will be keeping us busy in the next few months.