Students highlight Montana businesses

By Matthew Pritchard
J-School Web Reporter

photo by Kathryn Stevens

Amy Nile, a junior in broadcast news, explains her "Made In Montana" project to classmates along with her partner, Mollie Bond, an R-TV student. Nile and Bond plan to profile Wolfe & Wolfe, a company in Forsyth, Mont., that makes silver jewelry and accessories.

Gibson Guitars, Montana Wood Designs and Great Harvest Bread Co. are just a few of more than 75 Montana businesses that have been featured in television programs written, filmed, edited and produced by University of Montana students.

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“Business: Made in Montana” started 11 years ago as a way for broadcast news and radio television students to create a program for television. Students work on the project during spring semester and the shows air in the summer on Montana PBS and Montana Television Network stations. They highlight businesses that make products in Montana and sell them either within the state, throughout the United States or all over the world.

For many students it is the first thing they have done that goes on the air, said Marina Mackrow, a senior in R-TV who covered a business called Montana Tea & Spice Trading for her project last year.

Each student in the class must come up with three ideas from friends, friends of friends, the Internet or any other way they can think of, said Ray Ekness, a UM R-TV professor who helps with the project. From those ideas they pick about 12 of the best and split the class into groups of two or three. All the students from R-TV 351 (Television Production) and Journalism 351 (Newscast Production) are involved. Each group must create a three- to five-minute presentation on its business, which is combined with the other stories to create two half-hour shows.

“The stories must be told through interviews and natural sound,” said Denise Dowling, a UM broadcast professor who also helps with the project. Students cannot add any writing or any narration, she said.

Some of the businesses chosen this year include Wolfe and Wolfe, a custom silver jewelry maker in Forsythe; Back in Time Frames, a Havre company that salvages condemned wood from barns or other sources and turns it into custom frames; and Weber Mandolins, which makes hand-made mandolins in Logan.

Another business profiled by students this year is Phillips Environmental Products Inc. in Belgrade. Phillips makes a product called “Pooh Powder” that can be put on human waste, making it environmentally safe so campers and skiers and others who use the back country can haul it out, Dowling said. The company just received a U.S. Department of Defense contract, she said.

Ekness and Dowling urge students to find companies from all over Montana because the program is for a statewide audience. Students must travel to the places on their own time, but some of the expenses are paid through a donation of $3,000 from the Greater Montana Foundation. The process is expensive so students “pretty much only get one shot at it,” Ekness said.

“There are always surprises when they get out there,” Dowling said.

Dax VanFossen, a senior in broadcasting who covered OP/TECH, a business in Belgrade that makes straps, pouches and other accessories for cameras and electronics, said the hardest part was filming “a bunch of 40-year-old women that had never been on camera.”

Dowling and Ekness said they are always impressed with the students’ work and with the businesses the students find. They are amazed at the diversity of businesses based in Montana and the products they sell all over the world.

“Every year we go ‘Wow! Who would have known?’ ” Dowling said. “Food, human waste…it all goes together.”

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