Cindy Von Quednow couldn’t believe it: yet another round of editing awaited her.

Von Quednow, 23, a senior at California State University in Northridge, had just handed her editor, Derrick Henry, a newly revised draft of her article. His response? “‘All right,’” she recalled him saying. “‘After this we’re going to get into the nitty-gritty and really edit this.’” It wasn’t the first time she had heard that, nor would it be the last.

For Von Quednow, having Henry as her backfielder meant several rounds of reviewing notes and rewriting. He also showed her how to write more visually by giving her examples of other writing.

All the reporters at the Institute are assigned backfielders to edit their articles. In all, the newsroom has about eight backfielders, who act not just as editors, but as guides and mentors — maybe even slave drivers.

No two backfielders are alike, at least when it comes to tackling stories. Some prefer editing on paper, while others prefer using the “track changes” option on the computer. Some give reporters space to work, while others check on their progress seemingly every 20 minutes.

Elvia Malagon, a junior at Indiana University in Bloomington, said she was nervous before her big edit with her backfielder, Diego Ribadeneira, a Metro editor at The Times. Trying to prepare herself, Malagon sent a friend the first few paragraphs of her story, looking for advice.

“Expectations were high,” Malagon said. “On a daily basis he works with New York Times editors and reporters.”

Ribadeneira warned Malagon not to go to sleep one night until she had e-mailed her story to him. She did what he said, filing her article at 11:33 p.m.

“It was line by line,” Malagon said of sitting next to Ribadeneira as he went through her story. “We went through each word. It’s definitely a little more intensive than I’m used to. That was like a two-hour edit, including a bathroom and enchilada break.”

Then the copy editors got their hands on her story.

Jamie Klein

Journalism is all about interacting with people. When you’re at a journalism workshop (like this Institute, for example), you’d better expect to chat — a lot. Either conducting interviews or trying to hunt down data, the art of conversation always comes into play.

Armando Montano, a sophomore at Grinnell College, said patience is one of the most important things to remember when interviewing, especially if your source has a different cultural background. The best way to handle that type of situation is to respect those differences.

Montano, 20, also suggested asking sources to relay your contact information to anyone else they think might be able to help.

But keep in mind, he said, that “sources will talk to each other. If one person likes you, then they’ll like you. But it can work the other way, too.”

When it comes to finding sources, the Web has become an indispensable resource. “Google it” is an oft-heard phrase in the newsroom. So are social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter.

Salvador Rodriguez, 19, a sophomore at Arizona State University, has spent a few days researching Tucson’s transgender community. He’d had the idea for a while, and the Institute gave him the opportunity to pursue the story.

By searching Facebook, he found out about a group conducting research about transgender youth. That never made into his story, but it led to helpful sources.

Jamie Klein

“Please check on this with your backfielder.”

“This story has been backfielded?”

Apparently “backfield” can be both a noun and a verb. From Day One at the Institute we’ve heard this word thrown around the newsroom. “Say what?” seemed to be a common reaction among students.

You won’t hear the term “backfield” used to describe anything having to do with journalism outside The Times’ newsroom, said Don Hecker, the Institute’s director. The use of the word, to refer to the editors who first tackle a story, became part of Times lingo decades ago after a visitor went on a casual tour of the newsroom.

A Times employee, Hecker said, was showing a friend around the newsroom and explaining the different sections of the paper. The copy desk, where stories are checked for accuracy and grammar (among many other things), was of particular interest.

The desks were set up in the shape of a horseshoe, with copy editors sitting along the outside. The copy chief would sit inside the apex of the horseshoe so he (it was always a he in those days) could easily hand stories to the copy editors, Hecker said.

Behind the copy chief sat two editors who were the first to edit articles filed by reporters. After editing for content, they would hand the story to the copy chief.

The friend on the tour didn’t know anything about newspapers or journalism, Hecker said, but declared, “They’re like the backfielders in a football team.”

The nickname stuck.

Not only are we learning a lot about reporting, writing and editing, but we are also picking up Times lingo. Should come in handy when we’re all hired, right?

Jamie Klein

It was my first time on the beat. Ever.

When I think of a “beat,” I picture a young fedora-sporting reporter flashing her press badge and venturing into dens of mobsters and murderers. Or spitting out machine-gun banter a la Rosalind Russell playing Hildy Johnson in “His Girl Friday.”

I went down the list of numbers, calling and seeking news, to no avail. Nothing exciting to report — a few fender benders and some false alarms — until the Northwest Fire Department answered the phone.

The public information officer, Adam, enthusiastically told me about a new burn trailer the department had just received. The firefighters essentially created controlled fires in the trailer for real-life practice.

Fire is always exciting, so I headed to the location with my photographer, Diego James Robles.

The moment we got there and figured out how to turn off the rental Prius, Adam was at my door. In a matter of minutes, Diego and I were herded into the control room in the trailer, which was already occupied by the fire controller, Sean. The minuscule box, inside of which the temperature was over 100 degrees, reeked of smoke and was clearly not made to fit three people. I peered out the fireproof window past Sean, who was raining sweat, and we watched as a firefighter went up in flames in the next room.

Whoa.

The fire obscured the window for a moment and I wasn’t sure whether I couldn’t breathe because of fear, awe or the equipment pressing into my ribs. Diego’s camera clicked away, Sean explained the logistics of his job, and I pulled out my reporter’s notebook.

This was legit. The fires were put out and the door opened. It felt good to get out of the heat and into the relatively cooler Tucson air.

Lauri Valerio

I got my first taste of a breaking police story on Tuesday. It wasn’t something I’d ever looked forward to doing.

Our managing editor called the newsroom around 10 p.m. and said he’d seen a brief TV news report that said a 10-year-old boy had been shot. The wire editor, the person in charge of breaking stories, had already left for the night, so the Institute’s director, Don Hecker, needed someone to go to the scene.

“Who’s going to take this?” Hecker asked the newsroom.

Most of us were dead-tired, on deadline, and hoping to catch a few hours of sleep. The room went silent.

“We need volunteers,” Hecker said again. Stephen Ceasar raised his hand to pitch in. At the same time, I had stood up to let Hecker know I could take the story. But when I saw Ceasar raise his hand, I went back to blogging.

I didn’t realize Hecker was also looking for someone to go to the scene and had asked who could drive there. The students looked around. Then Cecilia Perry, one of our diligent copy editors, reminded Hecker that I had also volunteered. (Thanks.)

Hecker asked if I had a car. Yes. Before I knew it, my sweater was on, and with notebook and pen in hand, I raced to my car.

In about seven minutes, I made it to North Columbus Boulevard and East Third Street, where I saw flashing cop lights, TV crews and crime-scene tape.

I interviewed a police sergeant and phoned the information to Ceasar, who wrote the story, but we were missing one piece of critical information: the victim’s last name.

Officers wouldn’t release the name, so I tried neighbors. The first house I walked to had a sign near the door warning that trespassers would be shot dead and that survivors would be shot again. No one answered.

I tried a few more houses with no luck. Then, I tried one last house. A man opened the door but kept the security gate closed. He seemed fine at first when I told him I was a reporter, but when I started asking questions, he became angry.

“No comment! No comment!” the man yelled while closing his door and pushing his barking dogs into the house. “You get off my property!”

I apologized for bothering him, turned around and started toward the sidewalk.

“You get off my property now!” he demanded one more time.

Salvador Rodriguez

Marissa Lang and Jessica Flores had a Mexican adventure on Tuesday. The two packed water bottles, cameras and equipment and drove from Tucson to Nogales, Ariz., around 10 a.m. Lang and Flores were researching “dental tourism,” in which Americans travel to Mexico to seek less expensive dental care.

The pair parked their car and walked across the border into Mexico. Lang, who had never been to the country before, said crossing was an exciting moment and was much easier than she expected.

Lang, 20, and Flores, 25, breezed through the checkpoints, escaped many offers for taxis and walked toward the office of the dentists they were going to interview.

“The second we turn the corner and we can see the street, it was like: dentist, pharmacy, orthodontist, dentist, dentist, pharmacy, orthodontist, like everywhere,” Lang said. “I knew there were lots of dentist places in Nogales because I looked it up online. But to visually see an entire street packed with dentists was really weird and overwhelming.”

At the office, Lang and Flores had a productive shoot (Lang took photos and Flores shot video). The dentist, Jose Saturno, was cooperative and enthusiastic. Lang said the interview was going well, when “in walks the mayor of Nogales, Arizona.”

Turns out the mayor, Octavio Garcia-Von Borstel, gets his teeth checked in Mexico, she said.

While walking around Nogales, Lang and Flores, wearing their New York Times Student Journalism Institute press badges, became “instant celebrities.”

“We have all these people coming up to us saying, ‘Que haces? Que haces?’ What are you doing? What are you doing?” Lang said.

Lang said she explained her participation with the Institute to local residents. One man in particular was really excited when he spotted the press badge.

“Oh, New York Times?” Lang recalled him saying. The man then asked if she was Mexican and she replied that she was actually Ecuadorian.

“Two hours later we were back by the border and this other guy was like, in English, ‘Oh, you’re the Ecuadorian reporter from The New York Times!” she said, surprised at how quickly “good news” spreads in Nogales, Mexico.

Later Tuesday evening, Lang and Flores were stopped at a checkpoint in Arizona not far from the border by law enforcement agents.

“They knock on the window, we roll it down and they go, ‘Are you American citizens?’” Lang said.

She and Flores were exhausted at this point and Flores “didn’t hear them right,” Lang said. “And she goes, ‘No, it’s a rental.’ And I was like, ‘The car, not our citizenship.’”

The officer was not amused. Instead he and a dog, perhaps sniffing for drugs, walked around the car, then returned to the driver-side window and asked if Lang or Flores had illegal narcotics in the vehicle. They said no and he then told them to “go ahead” and “have a nice day,” Lang said.

“I was tempted to be like, ‘No, we only have legal narcotics in this car,” Lang said. “But I thought he wouldn’t like that either, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Salvador Rodriguez and Jamie Klein

My traffic record is clean, and I’ve never been written up on a late night out for anything like a noise violation. In other words, I’ve never broken a law. Thus, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve spoken to a cop.

On Monday, however, I was wire editor for the Institute, a position that required I call nine different law enforcement agencies to find out if any major events had happened the night before. Sunday night was uneventful, but I learned that New Year’s Day hadn’t been. Three homicides took place in the Tucson area on the first day of the year, and I got to report on all of them.

I felt like a rookie when I began writing the story. I was entirely lost in this country’s legal system (read my bio and you’ll understand why) and frankly frightened of getting a fact wrong, misquoting somebody or missing an important detail.

I probably annoyed some of the Institute editors with all my questions about crime, prosecution and police jargon, but with their help and 12 hours of continuous work, I finished the story.

At the end of the day, I felt the same way I did when I saw my first story ever printed in a newspaper: accomplished.

Now I know the next time I have to question a cop that I’ll be more than capable.

Regina García Cano

On Monday, two of our journalists, Matt Lewis and Diego Robles, ventured into Mexico to do some research for articles they are working on for the Institute.

Lewis and Robles parked in Nogales and walked toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Lewis, 21, said he stopped and snapped a photo of the checkpoint station on the United States side as a souvenir.

To his surprise, Lewis said his action angered U.S. Border Patrol agents, who quickly told him to delete the photo. Lewis said he complied and the pair were then escorted to the agent’s supervisor.

After they explained to the agents that the stories they were covering had nothing to do with the checkpoint, the agents let them leave, they said.

Lewis said he’d taken only one photo, and “it was already gone.”

“He said, ‘Oh, no, no. I believe you,’” Lewis said, “and I’m thinking, ‘OK, well if you believe me then why are you making such a big deal out of it?’”

Heading back to the United States was another mini-adventure for them: Robles forgot his passport, but he said it turns out that multiple IDs work, too. So Robles hauled out his California driver’s license, his Ohio University identification card, his brand new CatCard (issued for the University of Arizona and this Institute), his Institute press badge and an old U.S. Army military identification card.

“I had like five IDs on the ground,” he said. “It was interesting.”

Salvador Rodriguez and Jamie Klein