Chat Live with a Reporter

Here's a nice little activity for journalism classes or others stuudying current events, food, the arts, polictics or anything covered in the newspaper. After following a topic in the Philadelphia Inquirer via their RSS feeds, you can have your class enter a one hour chat with the reporter. You can find the schedule here and they even publish transcripts of some of the chats. If you are in a computer lab, your students can interact with the reporter in real time. The chat room is a little slow, so I would have the students vote on about five questions to be submitted at the beginning of the hour long session. Then the kids could read and interact to the developing discussion. Here's the transcript of the chat I participated in (I didn't join until about half way through) to give you an idea of what to expect.
The Inquirer also features a number of blogs from writers which provide another means for students to interact with a journalist including the Early Word, a new blog from one of the editors that takes a look at breaking news and what's in the paper. So there's all kinds of ways for budding young journalists to interact with some seasoned veterans.