UM grad will head to Poynter Institute
Student places in Hearst competition
Features editor: Trust your instincts
Backstage at the Oscars: Beyond the diamonds, stars are just folks
Footbridge Forum scores another success
Photog is finalist in college photo contest

UM grad will head to Poynter Institute

photo by David Erickson

Liz Grauman will represent UM at the Poynter Institute.

For the second year in a row, a UM photojournalism senior has been accepted into the Poynter Institute’s visual journalism program for college graduates.

This June, Liz Grauman will travel to St. Petersburg, Fla., for the six-week program that will cover photography, design, informational graphics and visual reporting.

“What excites me most is that (the program) combines all the elements of visual journalism,” said Grauman. “It’s not just photojournalism.”

The prestigious Poynter Institute was founded in 1975 as a school for journalists, future journalists and journalism teachers. Since its inception it has worked closely with the St. Petersburg Times.  Grauman will get the opportunity to learn skills and techniques from industry professionals from that publication as well as a variety of other media outlets.

Last summer, UM photojournalism students Kate Medley and Lisa Hornstein were part of Poynter’s visual journalism program.

Grauman, originally from Billings and in her fourth year at UM, applied to the program last fall and found out she had been selected last month. Along with her acceptance, she was awarded a scholarship that will cover most of the costs associated with the program.

“I am really excited to be a part of the program,” Grauman said. “There are a lot worse places than Florida to be for the summer.”

- Bennett Jacobs

Student places in Hearst competition

A UM J-School student who graduated last May  has claimed 15th place in the sports writing category of the Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

Alisha Wyman's story,  which appeared in the Kaimin, was written after then-Athletic Director Wayne Hogan said UM needed to double the student athletic fees. Hogan cited athletic fees at several other Big Sky conference schools, saying UM students paid much less. Wyman contacted those schools and discovered that the amounts were incorrect or had compared quarter payments with semester payments. Hogan, who was at the time embroiled in a controversy over a $1 million debt in the Athletic Department, later resigned.

Wyman will earn her a certificate of merit in the prestigious competition.

The Hearst awards are sponsored by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation  in conjunction with the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication  (ASJMC). The contests allow the nation’s best students in print,  photo and broadcast journalism to compete for scholarships and money. More than 100 undergraduate programs participate in the competition, which includes six contests in writing, three in photojournalism, and two each in radio and television news.

The UM J-School has placed in the top 10 in the overall Hearst competition each year since 1999.

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Features editor: Trust your instincts

photo by David Erickson

Michael Rollins, editor of the Oregonian's Living section, elicits a few laughs from students while speaking to a feature writing class at UM last month.

Feature writers need to look for story ideas in unexpected places,an Oregonian editor told the J-School’s feature writing class last month.

“Sometimes the nuttiest ideas are the best ones,” said Michael Rollins. “Trust your instincts. They are almost always right.”

Rollins, editor of the Oregonian newspaper’s Living section, visited from Portland on Feb. 28 to share his wit and wisdom with professor Sheri Venema’s feature students as well as students in the Native News class, taught by professors Carol Van Valkenburg and Teresa Tamura.

And share he did; students eagerly listened to his soft-spoken, low-key and humorous presentation. If a story stinks, he said,  “Just take it out back and shoot it. Don’t print a bad story; it’s not fair to the writers.”

Feature writers get more time and newspaper space than regular news reporters. Organization and focus are keys to success, and writers should know what their lede and nut graf will say before they start writing, he said.

Rollins is a 20-year veteran at the Oregonian. He covered the “cops and robbers” beat for five years, was the night city editor for several years and was assigned to the features desk two and a half years ago. The paper wanted a “hard news” guy to bring up reporting standards in what is traditionally viewed as a soft news section, he said.

Rollins meets with his writers every day and schedules stories at least a week in advance of publication. Some stories take months to write.

A feature story can be hard news too, he said. The Oregonian broke a story about the baby adoption business on the cover of the Living section, which CBS News “60 Minutes” later picked up. Putting a feature story on A1 will ruin it, he said,  because feature stories have their own visual dynamic.

“As beautiful a story as you can write, it won’t be read if it isn’t displayed well,” he said. “Photos and good pull quotes are essential.” A newspaper’s front page is too cluttered to properly display a feature, Rollins said.

Rollins warned against putting the “I” word into news stories. “Most first person stories are self indulgent,” he warned.

Still, writers can push the boundaries with feature writing. But first, he admonished, “You need training in the excruciating fundamentals” of news writing.

-Jim Beyer

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Backstage at the Oscars
Beyond the diamonds, stars are just folks

Alison Bryce, a graduate student in the R-TV Department, spent the last week in February behind the scenes in the workup to the Oscars. She filed this report.

Bryce at the Oscars

Beyonce stood on stage in diamond-covered stilettos ready to rehearse a song in French, while 20 men dashed around her fixing lights and cameras. Knowing Beyonce, those had to be real diamonds. Beyonce defines the word diva.

It was Friday and I was watching rehearsals for the Academy Awards for the Feb. 27 ABC telecast. I had flown to LA the week leading up to the show to work for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences publicity department. For one week, I helped organize the press — representing 128 countries — that had come to cover the Oscars, either on the red carpet or in the interview and photo rooms. These were some of the most prestigious journalists in the world.

On the night of the show, I was running film for the Associated Press photographer covering the event. Jamie Foxx walked offstage after winning Best Actor and a handful of us were there as he quietly cried out in excitement. Then, I walked with him and his daughter up the stairs to the photo rooms where the photographers screamed and elbowed each other in an effort to get a top-selling photo — Foxx’s eyes looking directly into the camera.

As Adam Sandler and Chris Rock presented on stage, I was running behind the screen, where I alone saw Kirsten Dunst roll her eyes up to the sky and shudder with all her body, seconds before she got the cue to go onstage to present an award.

Years ago, I was star-struck, obsessed with fame. Now, however, I see clearly that flashing lights and TVs dramatize celebrities. Although Charlize and Leonardo are absolutely beautiful in person, much of the excitement disappears when the cameras go away — they aren’t any more special than the rest of us.

-Alison Bryce

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Footbridge Forum scores another success

Footbridge Forum, the talk show on student-run radio station KBGA that examines community issues, aired its fourth program of this academic year on Feb. 28. Participants explored the controversy surrounding the possible development of alumni housing in the South Campus area, now the site of the University golf course. Read the Kaimin story here. Footbridge Forum is a project of the J-School's R-TV Department and is coordinated by professor Denise Dowling. photo by Scott Poniewaz

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Photog is finalist in college photo contest

A camera, a fly rod and New Zealand trout are not the only things Mike Greener is thinking about right now. He was one of 1,500 finalists — of more than 30,000 applicants —  in the 25th Annual College Photography Contest held by Photographers Forum magazine and sponsored by Nikon.

Mike Greener

As a finalist, Greener will see his work published in The Best of College Photography Annual 2005. The limited edition publication will be distributed to college libraries and instructors of photography, art and graphic design in June.

Greener, a junior in photojournalism, entered five or six photos to the contest as a requirement for the Picture Story class taught by professor Keith Graham.

“The photos range from a portrait of an organic farmer that I’ve been following to an artsy shadow picture I took at the Homestead apple picking party earlier this fall,”  Greener said. He also entered a couple of action pictures he captured at the Cheyenne Rodeo last summer.

“Like the J-school teaches us,” he said, “it’s about looking at your surroundings in a different way.  And it’s pretty cool that mine might be published in a coffee table book.”

Now, Greener is living it up in New Zealand.  He was hired by a Seattle-based company to photograph and videotape a fly-fishing expedition during the island’s summer months, November through April.  While other UM photojournalists are shooting in Montana’s winter weather, Greener is stalking the southern hemisphere’s 10-pound brown trout and soaking up the mountain scenery through his camera lens.

Greener’s best New Zealand photo moment, he said, was when he put down the camera and caught a 3-pound trout on a dry fly.

“Sometimes you need to experience first hand to be able to truly capture the excitement that your subject feels,” he said.

Although Greener did not place in the top four, his dad, John, who lives in Chicago, says he’s proud of his son: “Even Pulitzer Prize winners have to try a few times.”

-Kelley McLandress

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