• UM broadcast students win big
• UM grad photographs life in Iraq
• More Hearst awards for J-School
• KUFM rewarded for news excellence
• Survey to determine career paths of grads

UM broadcast students win big

Award winners at the SPJ conference at Troutdale, Ore.: Martin Ross, Ashley Terry, Keagan Harsha, Marci Krivonen, Luke George and Marina Mackrow.

University of Montana broadcast students swept all television categories in the Society of Professional Journalists’ regional news competition last month. Print and photo students also took home awards.

The awards were presented at the annual conference in Troutdale, Ore., on April 17. The SPJ honors the best in college journalism with its Mark of Excellence Awards.

Students took first place honors in all eight television categories including non-daily newscast, spot news reporting, in-depth reporting and photography.

“We were going back and forth to our seats and up to the podium," said award-winning senior Marina Mackrow of Port Townsend, Wash. "The judge finally told us just to stay up there.”

Montana SPJ chapter president Ian Marquand was on hand to watch the parade of UM students. “I have been to a lot of regional conferences where Mark of Excellence Awards are given and I have never seen one program dominate the way UM’s Radio-Television department did,” Marquand said. “It speaks to the quality of the program and its singular status in the Northwest.”

First-place winners at the regional level advance to the national competition. Those winners will be announced in September. In addition to the broadcast and print winners, a UM photo student, Luke George, won second place in photo illustration for work he did as a student at North Idaho College.

Click here to view list of award winners

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UM grad photographs life in Iraq

A UM photojournalism graduate is getting an in-depth look at what it’s like to be a soldier in Iraq.

“The primary reason we came to Iraq is that we knew no other media outlet would tell the stories of the soldiers from the 133rd Engineer Battalion,” said Gregory Rec, who graduated in 1997. “If we didn't do it, no one would.”

photo by Gregory Rec

Kurdish men sit on a bench outside a tea shop in Dohuk, Iraq, waiting for their tea. Dohuk is only an hour away from Mosul but because it is mainly populated by Kurds, is a much more welcoming city than Mosul for American soldiers.

Rec, 37, has been a staff photographer for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram for seven years and has been in Iraq with the Maine Army National Guard since the night of April 10.

photo by Gregory Rec

A Muslim man fingers his prayer beads while standing in the market in Dohuk, Iraq.

He is stationed in Mosul and has been covering the daily lives of men and women of an engineer battalion — they rebuild roads and bridges and construct schools and housing. Rec’s photographs are posted on the Press Herald’s Web site, along with video clips of his experiences.

Rec has won awards for a photo taken during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and for a photo taken in 2002 in Guatemala of a car crash victim’s family. Rec was also one of the four students to photograph “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski after he was arrested and taken from Lincoln, Mont., to Helena in 1996.

Rec’s wife and 9-month-old daughter are in Maine, halfway around the world, as he is sheltering himself from mortar attacks.

"As journalists, we don't carry weapons and just hope for the best every time we leave the gate or when the mortars start falling,” Rec said.

Rec and his reporting partner from the Press Herald, Bill Nemitz, were due back in the United States by May 3.

-Brad Fjeldheim

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More Hearst awards for J-School

Two UM J-School students have placed in the most recent round of Hearst Awards competition.

Hayes	Moy
photos by Kathryn Stevens

Matt Hayes, a photojournalism student, finished ninth in the Picture Story/Series Competition and was awarded $500 dollars for his feature on a Montana high school swim team. Hayes is a senior from Oakland, Calif., who will graduate in May.

Chelsi Moy, a senior in journalism and political science, won her second Hearst award of the school year with a 20th place in Spot News Writing, a category that requires reporters to finish a story within 24 hours of a news event.

Her story was about pharmacy student Nathan Dague, who committed suicide last semester. Moy, who was the police reporter for the Montana Kaimin, wrote the story that appeared in the Sept. 30 issue.

Moy started by talking to a Missoula detective and making phone calls to the pharmacy school. She found that Dague was a good student and involved in a pharmacy club. She talked to a few more people about Dague’s life and thought she had her story until Maurice Possley, the Pollner professor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune, told her to call and meet with Dague’s father.

Moy hesitated at first because she knew Dague had committed suicide at his parents' home, but she realized it was something she had to do.

"If I want to be a good reporter, I’d better go," she told herself.

She went to the house where earlier in the day Dague had taken his life and interviewed Dague’s father, who was still in shock. After the interview she went back to the Kaimin newsroom and wrote until midnight.

“The next day I was mentally drained,” she said.

In November, Moy won 13th place in the Hearst feature competition for her story about a student on the Fort Peck reservation.

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation sponsors the Hearst awards 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.

-Josi Carlson and Matt Pritchard

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KUFM rewarded for news excellence

Missoula’s public radio station KUFM recently claimed four honors in the 2004 RTNDA Murrow Awards.

-Josi Carlson

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Survey to determine career paths of grads

The School of Journalism is surveying alumni to show journalism career opportunities to prospective students. The final product will be a booklet with the names of alumni, the year they graduated and their career path, said Gary Sorenson, a member of the Journalism Advisory Council.

A mailer is being sent to most J-School alumni, but if you don't receive a survey, please inquire at the J-School office (406-243-4001) or download one here. Click here to see survey (pdf format)

Tom Cotter, an alumnus of the sociology department, has donated $4,000 to fund the survey and publication of the booklet.

-Brad Fjeldheim

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