Faces Profile : Dan Boyce

By Eddie Haver

Broadcast student Dan Boyce received two impressive awards last year. His story, called “Table Tennis Club,” [click to listen to the story] won second place in the national Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards. Boyce also won second place in the national Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts award competition.

The idea for the story came to Boyce the day before it was due for class. He went with a friend to the meeting for the formation of a table tennis club and put the story together that night.

“I’m extremely lucky because I feel it only won awards because the guy hit my microphone with the ping pong ball,” Boyce said. He added that winning changed his perspective toward what listeners enjoy in a story.

Boyce received another change of perspective during his internship this summer, at a production company in Ireland. “It was another lucky experience because I kind of just fell into it,” Boyce said. RTV adjunct professor Gita Saedi, who had worked in Europe for ten years and Ireland for one, set him up with an old roommate of hers, who gave Boyce the internship. Going in, he had an idea that he might want to do documentaries, but was unsure. The internship strongly affirmed that for him. Boyce plans to work in hard news after college because of the writing experience he’ll gain. Then he hopes to make the transition to documentaries.

Click here for an MP3 of Dan Boyce's award winning audio project.