More News

• R-TV Dept. becomes 'Broadcast Journalism'

• J-School jumps to front in Hearst competition

• Kaimin editor speaks on future newspaper readers

• Have Fulbright, Will Travel: Barrett to Uruguay next spring

• Knowles selected as NATPE Fellow

• Reznet getting noticed

Same mission, new name
R-TV Dept. becomes
‘Broadcast Journalism’

To better define what it does, the J-School’s Department of Radio-Television has decided to become the Department of Broadcast Journalism starting next fall.

After approval by the faculty and the dean, the change was approved by the UM Faculty Senate in November.

Currently, R-TV manages two options — broadcast journalism and radio-television production. Production graduates receive a B.A. in Radio-Television; broadcast students earn a B.A. in journalism with broadcast option. Under the new system, production graduates will earn a journalism degree with a broadcast production option. News graduates will continue to earn a journalism degree with a broadcast news option.

Next fall, all courses taught by department faculty (expect JOUR 100) will have a BCST designation.
Faculty members believe everything the department teaches is journalism. The broadcast production major is the electronic parallel to still photography taught in the photo option on the print side. Students who want to be television photojournalists take our production option, where they also learn the intricacies of non-linear video editing. That’s the television equivalent of editing or page design on the print side. They also learn studio cameras, lighting, directing and audio — all required to properly use the broadcast medium. But when our students take a video camera out to cover a story, they’re photojournalists.

Faculty visits with alumni over the past several years revealed that our production graduates would have liked more writing, and our news graduates wanted more production. That’s why the line between the options is purposely blurry, as students from both options take courses that produce programs for MontanaPBS and other outlets. The faculty believes they should receive the same degree: a B.A. in journalism.

The department’s mission won’t change under its new name. We’re still emphasizing our hands-on, this-is-what-it’s-supposed-to-look-like-and-this-is-how-you-do-it approach to broadcast education. That’s the tradition of the School of Journalism. We’re not about to mess with it. We’re just clarifying.
—Bill Knowles, chair, RTV/BCST

J-School jumps to front in Hearst competition

Two UM journalism students have bumped the J-School into second place in this year’s Hearst Journalism Awards with winning entries in the features portion of the annual competition.

Senior Kristen Inbody won 8th place and $500. Senior Paul Queneau won 13th place. The features competition, the first in a series of 13 contests throughout the school year, drew 115 entries from students around the country.

"Yahoo! We're off to a running start," reports print department chair Carol Van Valkenburg, who coordinates the J-School’s Hearst entries.

Inbody and Queneau entered stories they wrote for last year’s Native News tab, which focused on family systems on Montana’s Indian reservations. Inbody wrote about the Crow clan system, while Queneau examined a family coping with diabetes.

The Hearst Awards, considered the Pulitzer Prize of college journalism, are funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in conjunction with the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication (ASJMC). There are six writing, three photojournalism, two radio broadcast news and two television broadcast news competitions each academic year, beginning in October and ending in April. The monthly competitions honor the top 10 winners with awards ranging from $500 to $2,000, with the schools receiving matching grants.

Last year, UM finished in 10th place in the national competition.

Kaimin editor speaks on future newspaper readers

Editor’s note: Kaimin editor Jessie Childress was asked to sit on a panel at last month’s Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association meeting in Spokane. This is her account of the meeting.

As Professor Carol Van Valkenburg and I headed west on I-90, I realized it was the first time I had left town since taking on the Kaimin editorship in August. Here it was mid-November, and I was glad for any excuse to get out of town. As it turned out, though, the annual conference of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association was a particularly good excuse.

Rowland Thompson, PNNA executive director, had invited me to be on a panel about newspapers and the youth market. Editors from around the region were gathering for two days of speeches, award banquets and catching up about the news business.

It was my first time at a conference like this one, and I was nervous. Thursday morning, before my panel at 10, there was an omelet-making workshop that helped me acclimate and meet some of the other 50-some people.

Also on the panel with me were two other college paper editors —Jade Janes of the University of Idaho Argonaut and TJ Conrads of The Daily Evergreen at Washington State University — and two women from Weekly Reader, a national news publication used in K-12 schools.

We were asked to talk for a few minutes on what we thought the youth market wanted from newspapers, and how newspapers could do a better job of bringing it to their younger readers. I focused on new newspapers like the Red Eye and the Red Streak in Chicago, which both aim at getting young audiences by focusing solely on entertainment, music and celebrity news. I said younger audiences do care about news, and that it's important to not give us just junk-food news. We are affected by world events just as much, if not more, as others and so we have a stake in the news.

I was happy to have Carol, J-School Dean Jerry Brown and his wife, Libby, in the audience so I could pick out familiar faces from the crowd. After we spoke, the panel answered questions; it was clear from the questions that editors are nervous about getting and keeping young readers.

After the panel, I talked with several people about their opinions of younger readers and how newspapers should attract them. They were interested to hear what the Kaimin does and how their newspapers might draw a younger audience.

Have Fulbright, Will Travel: Barrett to Uruguay next spring

Professor Sharon Barrett has received a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant in Communications and Journalism to teach at the University ORT of Montevideo,Uruguay, next May.

She will lecture to graduate and undergraduate students, attend or lead seminars for professional journalists, consult with administrators and instructors on faculty development and help develop curricula.

Barrett, who previously held a Fulbright Lectureship at the University of Lima, Peru, also has worked and taught in Colombia and Mexico.

Knowles selected as NATPE Fellow

Bill Knowles, chair of the R-TV Department, will travel to New Orleans in January as a Faculty Fellow for the 2003 Conference of the National Association Of Television Program Executives.

Of particular note at the NATPE meeting is a seminar for with the latest job and career information that Knowles plans to bring back to his students.Knowles said he applied for the program to strengthen his background to teach RTV 301, Broadcast Programming, an elective he teaches in odd-numbered years.

Knowles was selected as a Faculty Fellow from a large pool of applicants, said Greg Pitts, director of NATPE Faculty and Student Programs.

Reznet getting noticed

Reznet, the J-School’s online news outlet written by and for American Indian students, is popping up in headlines all over the country.

AP Helena bureau chief John Kuglin wrote a story about Reznet this fall and sent it out on the regional wire. By November, the story had run in newspapers all over the country, from Washington D.C. to Tuscaloosa, Ala., — and across the sea in the UK’s Manchester Guardian, as well. Reznet is the brainchild of Professsor Dennis McAuliffe, the J-School’s Native American journalist in residence.

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