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• J-School scores big win in regional SPJ awards J-School scores big win in regional SPJ awards
Students in the University of Montana’s Radio-Television Department swept the regional awards given to college broadcasters by the Society of Professional Journalists last weekend. UM students placed first in every broadcast category in which an award was given. In addition, two UM online publications also took first place awards. The first place winners in the Mark of Excellence competition now advance to the national competition where they’ll be judged against first place winners from 11 other regions. Click here for the list of UM winners. Multimedia expert shares vision with students
The race is on to put the passion back into journalism that shareholders and corporations have taken away, said Brian Storm, a multimedia expert who worked for MSNBC and Corbis before founding MediaStorm in 2005. Storm visited the J-school during the week of April 3 to give a lecture and speak to students. He created MediaStorm as a way of offering a different type of journalism, he said, one that’s more audience based. MediaStorm offers varieties of visual journalistic pieces ranging from drama to comedy to tragedy. “I think journalism needs to be interesting,” Storm said. The Web site is able to captivate its audience by featuring not only amazing pictures, but picture with audio to better tell the story as well as video journalism. “I want timeless stories, combined with fun and interesting ones,” Storm said. He also said he feels big media are losing some journalistic credentials by answering to shareholders. “In my life I had been the most miserable when I was making the most money,” Storm said. “Without a question money is one of the great evils out there.” Storm said he hopes to fund original journalism through the profits of MediaStorm. “That’s what excites me; that’s what I want to be about and do,” he said. “I’m spending my own resources to booster up this company and get it off the ground because I believe in what it means journalistically to have a publication that is not answering to anyone except an audience.” -Sarah Swan
Caitlin Copple, a print graduate student at the University of Montana J-School, has won a summer fellowship to the Academy of Alternative Journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Chicago The eight-week course (June 18-Aug. 13) is taught by the school’s faculty and also brings in guest professors and speakers from around the country. The program gives students a $3,000 stipend and immerses them in the intense writing and reporting of the alternative press. “It was sort of the last thing I applied for as far as all my internships and summer plans go,” Copple said. “I am definitely interested in working in alternative journalism, non-corporate owned preferably.” By the end of her fellowship, Copple and the other 10 students in the fellowship are expected to turn in one piece of writing ready for publication. Copple said she is happy to have been selected for the fellowship, and believes it will benefit her. “I think as far as networking it should be really good,” Copple said, adding that the program will bring in speakers from big weeklies from around the country. “So it’s definitely good as far as meeting people for job opportunities later, and just being able to do the kind of journalism that I think I want to do.” -Sarah Swan Czech prof explores exchange opportunities
During the first week of April, the University of Montana welcomed Czech media scholar and professor Dr. Jan Jirak as a guest of the School of Journalism. Jirak, the vice dean of social sciences and a journalism professor at Charles University in Prague, spent the week lecturing and visiting journalism classes, accompanied by former J-School Dean Charlie Hood. Hood, who worked as the director of the journalism program at the Anglo-American College in Prague from 2000 to 2004, was part of the effort to bring Jirak to the UM J-School. Jirak’s public lecture on April 4 in the UC Theater was titled “A Tenuous Balance: Czech Journalism and Politics 16 Years After the Velvet Revolution,” and focused on tensions between modern journalists and the Czech Republic’s politicians. Jirak attended a number of classes including Dennis Swibold’s Investigations and Michael Downs’ Current Events class, observing the classes and offering his insights into the state of journalism as a profession and as an industry. Along with Jirak, two other faculty members from Charles University were also at UM this week to continue discussion and research into an exchange partnership between Charles University and the University of Montana. This would include student and faculty exchanges as well as cooperation on academic projects. Charles University was established in 1348 and is the oldest university in Central Europe. - Hannah Heimbuch High school students check out J-School
Polish wildlife photographers visit Trailing the Siberian pika, two Polish students went into the wild as tourists and wildlife biologists and emerged as documentary photographers.
Julia and Stanislaw Pagacz presented their photo exhibition, “Siberia – Buryats: Herdsmen and Hunters” to Keith Graham’s Documentary Photojournalism class on March 21. “We always dreamed of seeing Siberia,” Julia said. The then-Warsaw Agricultural University students first ventured into the Baikal Lake region during vacations. After returning and presenting a mini-exhibition of their photos, the couple got encouragement from a publisher to return and continue photographing. In four different trips, the husband-and-wife team spent a total of about four years in Siberia taking photos and researching pikas, or “rock rabbits.” They also explored the people and culture of Baikal Lake, the world’s deepest freshwater lake. During their presentation at the J-School, to the accompaniment of native melodies, Julia Pagacz weaved stories with the photo slides, explaining the traditions of the Buryats, one of several minorities living in the area. When the couple arrived in the winter, “The first thing I asked … where I can get such a hat,” Julia said about a child’s fox-fur hood. Outfitted in hats and elk-skin boots, they braved the freeze, armed with a small tripod and a cheap $80 Canon lens. The photos gave glimpses of Baikal Lake and Buryat life – from blue-shuttered homes and tractors as “luxury vehicles” to alcoholism and short life expectancies. The couple, who have authored a photography book and two travel guides, now study the Olympic marmot in Washington as scientists. They hope someday to return to photojournalism as well as the unspoiled land around Baikal Lake. - Katrin Madayag
When it comes to getting a message through the press and to the public, the University of Montana’s chapter of the Native American Journalists Association realized that not all groups are experts on how to maximize their use of the media. In March the 15-member group, which formed in fall 2005, hosted two workshops in the UC Theater on media awareness. The workshops, conducted by J-School students Jasa Santos and Adam Sings In The Timber, focused on important media contacts in the area, how to write a good press release and how to prepare to speak with a reporter. NAJA president and J-School senior Luella Brien said NAJA members were mostly targeting ASUM student groups hoping to make themselves more visible. Brien said she has been part of many groups over the years, and most had one thing in common: “The one thing I always heard everybody saying was, ‘Nobody knows what we’re doing.’ ” Brien said that as a journalism student, she felt she had some skills to share with people who want more access to the press. About five student groups attended the morning or afternoon workshops, which provided a booklet of how-to’s on press releases, fliers, basic design, pitching ideas and talking to reporters and editors. Guest speakers Alex Strickland, Montana Kaimin editor; and Dianne Bentz, Kaimin design editor, also contributed advice. NAJA plans to continue to provide an expanded version of this workshop every year in the fall, Brien said. Contact UM's NAJA chapter. -Hannah Heimbuch RTV students make annual trek to Spokane
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8/23/07 2:21 PM