J-School News
| School of Journalism | The University of Montana |
December 2000-January 2001
Archives: October 2000 November 2000, Issues before 10/2000
UM students win Hearst awards in photo, feature writing
Four School of Journalism students were winners in the most recent William Randolph Hearst Foundation's Journalism Awards Program.
Two students were winners
in the college feature writing competition of the 41st annual awards, and two
others won awards in the feature and portrait/personality category of the photojournalism
contest.
In feature writing, Nate
Schweber, a senior, won seventh place and a $500 scholarship. Junior Jason Begay
placed thirteenth and received a certificate of merit. In feature and portrait/personality
photography, John Locher won seventh place and Cory Myers won eighth.
After this first round
of contests, the University of Montana ranked third in Hearst's Intercollegiate
Writing Competition and fourth in the Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition.
There were 104 students
from 60 universities and colleges participating in the program's first reporting/writing
competition of the academic year. Forty-three students entered the photojournalism
contest.
The Hearst Journalism Awards
Program consists of six monthly writing contests, three photojournalism competitions
and four broadcast news competitions, with championship finals in all divisions.
Both Schweber and Begay
won for feature stories they wrote for the Native News Honors Project. Each
student working for Native News reports on one of the seven Indian reservations
in Montana and focuses on a particular theme. The class compiles a tabloid style
paper each spring that is distributed statewide. Urban Indians was the theme
for spring 2000.
Following are excerpts
from the winning stories and samples of the winning photography.
From "Homeward"
by Jason Begay
And yet, perhaps now more than ever, Annita Wolf Black has a rekindled desire to go home. She now believes she has a social need to go back, a purpose. But for now, Wolf Black fulfills that purpose by working with – and for – people like her in the city.
In November of 1998, Wolf Black became a Title IX tutor at Billings' Lewis and Clark Middle School. At first it was merely a second job, something to help pay the bills. But now it has moved from a job to a commitment.
As a tutor in the equal education program, Wolf Black works exclusively with America Indian students who might have a difficult time in a public school. She has an open door policy, in which students come for help, educationally and emotionally. And while Wolf Black is not necessarily trained in education – she had to take some time to skim through her students' algebra book before helping them with homework – she has the experience that is perfect for the job.
It took a while for the students to warm up to her. In fact, Wolf Black recalls one student who kept her distance the whole year because she doubted Wolf Black's sincerity.
"I learned how important education is. Not just telling it, or being told that it's important, but living it," she says. "You have to show an interest." So Wolf Black attends basketball games, track meets, and recitals to show her students how much she cares.
Nowadays, Wolf Black says almost every transfer student from the reservation winds up in her office with a problem that sounds a little too familiar: loneliness. "I just tell them what I learned. The reservation is not going anywhere," she says.
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Photo by Cory Myers |
From "Brothers"
by Nate Schweber:
It wasn't long after William saved 15-year-old Matt from hanging himself that (Matt) began to ask if he could move to the Indian reservation.
Matt and his brother Barry, 14, have lived with their foster father William since they were a year and 6 months old respectively. They haven't lived on the reservation since before they knew William. Matt says he strung the rope across his bedroom – from the closet to his neck – then kicked over the couch he was standing on, because he was feeling alone. He says he thinks some of his aloneness comes from living off the reservation.
Matt thinks about the incident a little more and adds, "I wish I knew more about my culture, knew the language, the traditions, went to more powwows."
He says these are the reasons he wants to move back to the reservation. That and he's got extended family there. Things that would make him feel less alone.
"Sometimes it's hard being an Indian in [the city]," Matt, a freshman in high school, says. "I don't know where I come from, and there aren't people to teach me like on the rez."
Matt and Barry are young Indians growing up in an urban setting. Because of the sensitive nature of their circumstances we've chosen not to reveal their identities. For the two youths it is defining their own identities that has left them feeling caught between two cultures, between the white culture in which they were brought up but are not native to, and the reservation culture they belong to but are only just discovering.
The conflict between the two has caused the boys, especially Matt, stress and threatened to jeopardize their family life.
On a table in Matt's room, over a photograph of his cousin in an army uniform and underneath a wall hanging of wool and feathers that his father gave him, is a wood burning he make during his two-week stay in an alcoholism treatment center following his suicide attempt.
The white slice of wood has a large feather intertwined with the initial M.M. etched into it. In the bottom right corner, Matt wrote the words "Native Pride."
"I'm proud of my heritage," Matt says as he holds the block. "Sometimes I just wish I knew more about it. You know, all I meant by this was that I'm trying to be a native."
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Photo by John Locher |
"Nothing's stronger than an eyewitness account," investigative reporter tells grad students
In the early 1980s when he was a general assignments reporter at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Ray Ring posed as a convicted murderer to get inside the Arizona State Prison and write an in-depth report on that he said would have been impossible to get otherwise.
He also went thousands
of feet underground into Magma Copper Co.'s mine near Tucson, posing as one
of 1,500 miners and pulling readers inside the hot, wet earth with his words.
"There's nothing stronger
than an eyewitness account," he said.
Now assistant managing editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Ring discussed investigative and
undercover
journalism with graduate students from the School of Journalism. Ring, who has
worked as a columnist and general assignment writer and has published three
novels ("Telluride Smile," "Peregrine Dream" and "Arizona
Kiss") came to UM in November thanks to the Hearst Fund for Visiting Professionals.
Fewer newspapers practice
investigative journalism than when he was going undercover, Ring told the students.
There are many reasons for the lack of interest, he said.
"It's risky, unpleasant,
confrontational and takes time and money," he said.
Working anywhere from two
weeks to six months on a single story and investing thousands of dollars in
something that may not yield any copy are other reasons editors avoid supporting
investigative work, Ring said. Also, there has been a trend over the last few
years that encourages reporters to work in cooperation with the community, he
said, and those attitudes make investigating and uncovering corruption more
difficult.
"In investigative
journalism there is a villain – you are proving someone is a villain,"
he said. But, he said, exposing a villain often puts a reporter at odds with
the community.
The risky nature of undercover
reporting hit home for Ring during his stint in the Arizona State Prison in
1982.
While working on his award-winning
report for the Arizona Daily Star titled " 'This ain't that kind of prison,'
" Ring spent his first six days in the Arizona prison system at the Alhambra
intake facility in Phoenix. With the permission of the head of the state Department
of Corrections, he used an assumed name and the "jacket," or record,
of a convicted murderer. No one inside the prison, not even the warden, knew
that he was a reporter.
After six days he was transferred
to the Arizona State Prison at Florence and assigned to maximum security. While
there, Ring was cornered and beaten in a stairwell by members of the Aryan Brotherhood
gang four days short of his expected two-week prison stay. The men broke six
of Ring's teeth, and he suffered a basketball-sized bruise on his hip as well
as other bruises and facial cuts.
He was returned to Tucson
later that night after he and prison officials decided he was no longer guaranteed
safety.
Ring documented his experiences in stunning eyewitness detail. The reader feels every inch of Ring's prison. We are fearful of the inmates. We see the steel and concrete, smell the stale cigarette some, hear the noise and sense the atmosphere of what Ring calls a madhouse.
I'm not getting much sleep.
Every night I stuff rag plugs in my ears, put folded clothes over my head, trying to block out the noise. It's no use.
I can hear car horns honking, rock'n'roll music, gunshots, raging rivers, arguments, thunderstorms, cheering crowds, discos, screams, crashes, crying babies.
The men here have stereo tape decks, TVs, radios. At night they blare through the building, echoing off concrete and steel.
"[Prison is] not a
way to rehabilitate," he told the graduate students. "It's a way to
drive people more crazy."
Ring said he has no ethical
qualms about undercover investigations or lying to people during those investigations.
He said his prison investigation was an indictment of the system, not the individuals.
As long as the investigative reporter doesn't harm or identify anyone who doesn't
deserve it, Ring sees the investigative reporter's job as necessary to finding
and revealing some types of stories.
Ring said journalists have
a responsibility to report on more than just stories such as the President's
sex life for six months. Ring added he is not fond of what he calls "expense
account reporting" or investigating other issues that are relatively insignificant.
"When journalists
nitpick we lose the respect of the public," he said. "The power we
have is misused."
Big public issues are the
ones worth investigating, Ring said. Pollution, illegal toxic dumps, health
and safety violations in the workplace, corruption that has a societal impact,
and topics that include real human victims of suffering are some of the issues
that need to be championed, he said.
Ring offered words of advice that he lives by in his own reporting.
"Be accurate and don't hurt anyone who doesn't deserve to be hurt," he said. "And be interesting."
Student's fight against subpoena of film continues
A Missoula judge will set a hearing as early as this month to hear evidence as to whether a UM journalism student ought to be considered a journalist protected by Montana's shield law from turning film over to police.
Last July, Linda Tracy
filmed clashes between Missoula police and citizens. The clashes occurred in
July and were connected with the visit to Missoula by the Hells Angels motorcycle
gang. Over the course of a weekend, police and protesters battled three times,
with police using pepper spray and clubs to disperse protesters while arresting
dozens.
Tracy, a senior in radio-television,
used film of the clashes to make a 20-minute documentary called "Missoula,
Montana" that was broadcast on Missoula Community Television. But in October,
the city of Missoula subpoenaed Tracy's unedited footage to be used by police
who want it as evidence to prosecute people involved in the confrontations.
Tracy has refused to turn
over the film citing as her defense Montana's Media Confidentiality Act, a shield
law protecting journalists' notes and film.
District Judge Douglas
Harkin has asked lawyers representing Tracy and the city of Missoula to prepare
a list of witnesses for a hearing that he has yet to schedule.
Harkin has divided the
issue into two questions. The first question is whether Tracy is a journalist
as defined by Montana law and therefore protected by the shield law. The second
issue involves Tracy's First Amendment rights.
Harkin told both attorneys
in a court order that if he finds Tracy is not a journalist under Montana law,
he will "issue a further order regarding the First Amendment issues raised
by the parties."
Gary Henricks, an assistant
city attorney, has argued in briefs that the city has a right to Tracy's unedited
footage because she is a student and therefore not a real journalist. He also
suggested that her footage should not be protected because she failed to present
both sides of the riots in her documentary, thereby engaging in "irresponsible
journalism."
He wrote that Tracy's documentary
only showed officers beating protesters and spraying them with tear gas. The
documentary did not show any of the protesters shouting abusive things at the
police, Henricks wrote.
"Review of the videotape
by the court will indicate plaintiff (Tracy) was not conducting the editing
of the videotape in accordance with accepted journalistic standards concerning
bias," Henricks wrote.
But Rick Sherwood, the
lawyer defending Tracy, replied that the only requirement for being a journalist
is "gathering the news for dissemination to the public."
"Not being content
with its argument that journalists must possess diplomas and press passes, or
otherwise be licensed by the government," Sherwood wrote, "the City
now breaches the most crucial barrier between a free press and the government,
in its assertion that the protection of a journalists' work must be dependent
on its content."
He continued, "it is a very small step from (the city's) position to Big Brother deciding what opinions are 'ungood' and deserving of punishment."
Sherwood also pointed out
that Tracy is affiliated with journalistic organizations including the School
of Journalism.
Tracy's fight has drawn
attention and support from local and national organizations. She has received
$1,000 for her defense from the Society of Professional Journalists and $500
each from the Montana Freedom of Information Hotline and Montana Newspaper Association.
The Freedom Forum has mentioned the case on its web site.
Those people interested in helping Tracy's legal defense can send tax-deductable donations in care of the Montana Freedom of Information Hotline, P.O. Box 5810, Helena, 59604. Checks should be made out to the hotline. John Kuglin, chairman of the board of the hotline, has said that any leftover money will be returned to donors, so donors should be sure to identify themselves.
Mel Ruder, Pulitzer Prize winner, dies at age 85
UM Professor
Carol Van Valkenburg first met Mel Ruder in 1973 when she was a reporter at
the Missoulian. Ruder called and asked to print one of her stories in his paper,
The Hungry Horse News.
Van Valkenburg was amazed
that Ruder asked permission when many may had just reprinted or rewritten the
story for their papers without asking, she said. She was further amazed when
he offered to pay her $25, well above the $2 the Associated Press paid for solicited
stories, she said.
"That said a lot about
the kind of person Mel was," she said.
Ruder, the man who created
Montana's most successful weekly newspaper and who was the first Pulitzer Prize
winner for journalism in the state, died Nov. 19. He was 85.
Ruder died at the Montana
Veterans Home in Columbia Falls where he had lived for nearly a year. He had
been ill since he suffered a massive stroke in April 1999.
He founded the Hungry Horse
News in Columbia Falls in 1946, and served as its publisher, editor and photographer
for 32 years.
Ruder won the Pulitzer
Prize for distinguished general local reporting for his coverage of the1964
floods that devastated property around Glacier Park and the Flathead Valley.
Though he is best known
for his photography, Ruder also wrote thousands of stories, columns and editorials.
He was a past president of the Montana Newspaper Association, and he also helped
establish the Montana Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Ruder sold the Hungry Horse
News to a group of Wyoming journalists in 1978 but continued to write, take
photos and advise the paper for 20 years. In 1999, Lee Enterprises, owner of
the Missoulian and several other Montana newspapers, purchased the paper.
Ruder received an honorary
doctorate from UM in May 1997. Van Valkenburg said she corresponded with him
during her tenure as acting dean of the journalism school from 1997 to 1998.
It was during that time
Ruder gave the UM journalism school $200,000 in discretionary money, Van Valkenburg
said. Part of the money helped establish the Joe Durso Professional Projects
Fund, which disburses money for student projects and was named for the faculty
member and dean who died in 1998.
"Ruder was not interested
in getting things named after him," Van Valkenburg said. "He wanted
us to use the money however we needed it."
Ruder was a good journalist
who didn't shy away from tough issues, Van Valkenburg said. But, she said, he
still found time to photograph Brownie Girl Scout troops. "Mel was a documentarian,"
she said.
A coffee table photo book
published in October celebrates Ruder's work. Titled "Pictures,
a Park, and a Pulitzer," the book gives a feel for what Columbia Falls
was like over the past 40 years, Van Valkenburg said.
"The important thing about Mel is he really understood his community," she said. "And while he covered issues of controversy he [also] knew what was important in a small town."
School of Journalism enrollment is in the third year of a steep climb. Students in journalism number 499 for the 2000-2001 academic year, up 22 percent from the previous year's 410. Enrollment in 1998-99 was 360. In the current class, 318 students are pre-journalism; 153 students are in the professional program. . . . R-TV assistant professor Ray Ekness was one of 19 television faculty selected to attend the 13th Annual Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) Faculty Seminar over four days in Los Angeles. The November seminar allowed Ekness to learn about the entertainment side of television production. As part of the seminar, Ekness sat in on the production meeting at Viacom, which produces "Ed," "Diagnosis: Murder" and "Sabrina, The Teenage Witch." Programming chiefs from ABC, NBC, Fox, UPN, WB and HBO spoke, and the delegates met writers and producers of shows like "Star Trek: Voyager," "Will & Grace" and "Third Watch." The faculty also went behind the scenes of two CBS soap operas. "They're making these studio programs pretty much the same way we're teaching our students to." But the highlight? "I got to have breakfast with the director of Get Smart, one of my favorite shows growing up," Ekness said. ... Come teach Photojournalism in Big Sky Country: The University of Montana School of Journalism seeks a tenure track photojournalism professor starting in August 2001. Duties will include teaching some or all of the following courses: beginning, intermediate, advanced and documentary photojournalism, design, new media and our Native News Honors Project. We prefer applicants with at least ten years of full-time professional experience as a journalist. Experience teaching journalism at the college level is preferred. A master’s degree is required. Deadline for applications is December 15. Review of applications will begin December 15 and continue until position is filled. Send letter of interest, resume, three references and portfolio to Keith Graham, School of Journalism, The University of Montana, 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, MT 59812-0648. For further information call 406-243-2238. The University of Montana is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and encourages applications from women, minorities, Vietnam era veterans and persons with disabilities. This position announcement can be made available in alternative formats upon request.
J-School News
| School of Journalism | The University of Montana |
November 2000
Editor: Michael Downs, visiting assistant professor
Reporter: Tracy K. Whitehair
Ray Ring photograph by Ron Medvescek
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