University of Montana School of Journalism

News and Events

• Pollner Fellow tells of life in the dot-com fast lane

• RTV students win big in competitions

IMPORTANT DATES:
• APRIL 22
Life in the dot-com fast lane:
Pollner Fellow to tell all

Who: Pollner Fellow Jonathan Weber
What: The first T. Anthony Pollner Lecture: "The Late, Great Internet Gold Rush: An insider's take on the biggest speculative frenzy in U.S. business history, and what it means for the future."
Where: University Center Theater
When: 7:00 p.m. April 22
Why: The Pollner Fellowship is named for T. Anthony Pollner, a 1999 J-school graduate, Kaimin reporter and Web designer, who died in a motorcycle accident last year. His family established an endowment in his honor to bring a prominent journalist to the J-school one semester every year.

As co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Industry Standard, Jonathan Weber was at the center of the Internet boom and the ensuing bust. The Standard was in the business of providing thorough, hard-nosed reporting about every aspect of the technology revolution, and it rode the wave to become one of the most successful new magazines ever — before crashing and burning along with the dot-coms it covered. Weber will tell what it was like behind the scenes at the Standard, and what Internet mania and its aftermath are likely to mean for business and society.

In addition to his editing duties at The Industry Standard, Weber served as executive vice president of the magazine's parent company, Standard Media International. Prior to that, he spent eight years as an editor and reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and he has also worked as a European correspondent for Fairchild Publications and as a senior editor for the World Economic Forum's magazine, World Link. Weber has won numerous awards and has been recognized as one of the most influential business journalists in the country by several publications. He holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wesleyan University.AWARDS

R-TV students win big in SPJ, BEA competitions

Journalism students in the R-TV Department brought home a passel of awards earlier this month in regional and national competitions.

At the Region 10 conference of the Society for Professional Journalists in Seattle on the weekend of April 6, the following UM students won regional SPJ Regional Mark of Excellence Awards:

• 1st place in Radio Feature: Johanna Feaster for "Skateboarding Damage"
• 2nd place in Radio Feature: Lindsey Lear for "The Common Cold"
• 1st place in TV Spots News Reporting: Danielle Dellerson and Natalya McLees for "Florence Murders"
• 1st Place in TV General News Reporting: Jennifer Gibson and Alison Perkins for "Montana Rides for America"
• 2nd Place (tie) in TV General News Reporting: Ben Kaplan and Jasper Hiatt for "Muslim in Montana"
• 2nd Place (tie) for TV General News Reporting: Carol Wolfe and Brooke Fox for "The Children of 9/11"
• 2nd Place for TV In-Depth Reporting: UM Student Documentary Unit for "Meth: Dark Cloud Over the Big Sky"

First place winners in the regional SPJ competitions now advance to the national competition. National Mark of Excellence winners will be announced Sept. 12-14 at the 2002 SPJ National Convention in Fort Worth, Texas.

Last year, the UM Journalism School had two national SPJ Mark of Excellence winners. For Television In-Depth Reporting, UM’s Student Documentary Unit won first place in the country for "Anaconda: The Legacy," which aired on Montana PBS. And print student Ryan Divish won first place in sports writing for "Reluctant Hero," which ran in a Gameday Kaimin.

On the same weekend that R-TV students were cleaning up at the regional SPJ convention, they also were winning awards at the national convention of the Broadcast Education Association in Las Vegas, where Professor Denise Dowling said she was delighted to keep accepting awards on her students’ behalf.
BEA national Student Production Awards went to the following students:

•1st Place in Radio Hard News: Kim Dobitz for "Underage Drinking"
• Honorable Mention in Radio News: Johanna Feaster for "Skateboarding Damage"
• Honorable Mention in Documentary: UM Student Documentary Unit for "Meth: Dark Cloud Over the Big Sky"

KUFM honored for post 9/11 newscast

KUFM-FM, the University of Montana public radio station, has won a 2002 regional Edward R. Murrow Award, the only small-market radio station in its region to be so honored.

The station won for its Sept. 13, 2001, Montana Evening Edition broadcast. The winning newscast featured KUFM News Director Sally Mauk interviewing UM history professor Richard Drake on the nature of terrorism, as well as a piece by Assistant News Director Edward O’Brien on increased airport security. Co-anchors of the broadcast were Jennifer Servo, a UM broadcast journalism senior, and Kirk Siegler.

As a winner from Region 1, which includes Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, KUFM will compete for a national Murrow Award, which will be announced in June.

The Edward R. Murrow Awards are presented by the Radio-Television News Directors Association to honor outstanding achievements in electronic journalism. "Murrow Award recipients demonstrate the spirit of excellence that Edward R. Murrow made a standard for the broadcast news profession," according to the RTNDA Web site.

FACULTY NEWS

Knowles to give "last lecture"

No, he’s not retiring.

But R-TV Department Chairman Bill Knowles, who for 16 years has introduced UM freshmen and sophomores to journalism in his "Intro to Mass Media" course, will sum up his thoughts later this month as though it were the final lecture of his teaching career.

Knowles is one of six UM professors asked to participate in the Mortar Board Society’s "Last Lecture Series," which poses the question, "If it were your last chance to speak to the public, what would you say?"

Journalism senior Arianna Robinson, a member of Mortar Board, said the senior honors fraternity likes to ask "cool professors on campus — people that stand out" to participate in the series.

"We try to honor professors for what they do best," she said. Robinson, news director at KBGA, the UM student radio station, has taken four classes from Knowles.

Knowles said his speech will include personal musings about the media, along with cuts from video tapes he uses in advanced reporting classes and highlights from the Mass Media Intro course.

His lecture, "Lifetime Reflections on the Media," is scheduled for 7 p.m. April 29 in the Gallagher Business Building, Room 123. Admission is free.

Downs does it again

"Elephant," a short story by Visiting Assistant Professor Michael Downs, will appear this summer in Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art, published at Georgia State University in Atlanta. "Elephant" is Downs' seventh published short story.

Student Highlights

Begay wins NYT internship

UM J-school senior Jason Begay will spend his summer as an intern at the New York Times, a fact noted on the Web site of the Native American Journalists Association.

According to the NAJA Web site, one of those evaluating Begay for prestigious internship said of him: "Many journalists are craftsmen; Jason is on his way to becoming an artisan."

Begay, a member of the Navaho tribe, will graduate from UM next month and has already interned at The Associated Press, the Oakland Tribune, The Wichita Eagle and The (Portland) Oregonian.

Ruddy presents findings on fertilizer

Jenn Ruddy, a journalism senior, will present her story on the use of hazardous materials in fertilizer in Montana at UM’s Undergraduate Research Conference April 19-20.

Ruddy localized reporting done by Duff Wilson of the Seattle Times in his series, "Fear in the Fields," a report on the legal use of hazardous waste as filler in fertilizer. Ruddy, while covering the environmental beat for her Public Affairs Reporting class, taught by Visiting Professor Michael Downs, learned that Montana has no laws to regulate the use of hazardous waste in fertilizer, and she learned why efforts to make such laws failed. She also found ranchers east of the divide who have used fertilizers filled with toxic waste and whose children show higher than normal levels of heavy metals in their hair and blood.

Her story was her final project in the Public Affairs Reporting class.

Dowd hustles stories at ASNE

Journalism junior Tara Dowd is one of 18 student journalists from around the country who spent April 9-12 writing stories for the ASNE Reporter, the official newspaper of 2002 convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington D.C.

As this edition of the J-school Web page went to press, Dowd had already bylined a first-day story from the convention and also had contributed to a story about a water main break in the hotel that housed the convention.

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