• Broadcast students shine in BEA competition
• R-TV seniors to premier documentary
• Professor wins diversity award
• Students selected to national honor society
• Dowling talks ethics at RTNDA
• Students win spots in prestigious programs

Broadcast students shine in BEA competition

Left: Amber Bushnell, Cortney Fawthrop and Heather Hintze accept first place awards in video competition at the Broadcast Education Association convention in Las Vegas last month. Middle: Melanie Overcast took first in radio news, radio features and Best of Festival. At right: Matt Sampson and Heather win third place in TV feature competition. Photos by Matt Sampson, Natalie Mourton and Amber Bushnell

R-TV seniors to premier documentary

On May 11, the J-School’s Radio-TV Department's senior documentary class will finally reap the fruits of a semester's worth of labor. The group’s work, an hour-long documentary focusing on the lives of six Montana teenagers, will premier at the University Center Theater at 7:30 p.m. 

It is tradition for the senior documentary to premier the night before graduation. The documentary,  "Beyond the Myths: Growing up in Montana," seeks to reveal Montana teens as they truly live, without catering to cowboy or redneck stereotypes. It addresses such topics as racism and teen pregnancy, in addition to more familiar teen topics like gossip and family relations. The teens range in age from 15 to 19 and live across the state.

Students broke into five groups and followed their subjects through all their daily activities: school, sports practice, sporting events, work and home life. The students also followed each subject to their school prom.

Broadcast professor Denise Dowling and adjunct professor Gita Saedi taught this year’s class, replacing Bill Knowles, who retired last year. "Beyond the Myths" will premier on Montana PBS May 22 at 8 p.m.

-Aimee Velk

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Professor wins diversity award

Denny McAuliffe

Associate Professor Denny McAuliffe received The University of Montana’s Nancy Borgmann Diversity Award at a ceremony last month. The $1,500 award is given annually to “any full-time permanent University employee who contributes substantially to cultural diversity at UM.”

McAuliffe, who was nominated for the award by Patrick Weasel Head, director of American Indian Student Services at UM, came to the J-School from The Washington Post in 1999 with the idea of increasing the number of Native Americans pursuing journalism careers.

In 2002, McAuliffe started reznet, an online student newspaper for Native America. Each year, reznet hires native students from colleges all over the country to report on tribal issues in their communities. Reznet students have gone on to intern and work for top-tier publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and The Seattle Times. This year, the online news site has 32 students from 17 tribes, attending 15 colleges in 11 states.

McAuliffe thanked Weasel Head for the nomination, but gives most of the credit to his students. “It really is the student’s award. The reznet project depends on a lot of students doing a lot of good and hard work,” McAuliffe said. “Without them I wouldn’t have a project.”

-Will Moss

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Students selected to national honor society

Three J-School students have been selected as members of the UM Mortar Board. 

Melanie Overcast, Dan Boyce and John Zimmerman will join the UM chapter of Mortar Board, a national honor society. The society recognizes college seniors for their exemplary scholarship, leadership and service.

Seniors who will be honored this year are Jacob Baynham, print; Peter Bulger, Montana Kaimin; Sara Gale, photo; Becca Sayre, R-TV production; Eli Bierwag, broadcast; Emilie Ritter, KUFM radio; Aimee Velk, KUFM-TV; and Matt Sampson, KGBA.  

Every year, the J-School faculty selects six outstanding graduating seniors to be honored by UM Mortar Board, said Carol VanValkenburg, chair of the print department.  One student is chosen from each of the four journalism options, as well as one from both KBGA, KUFM (radio and television ) and the Montana Kaimin.

-Rachel Honrud

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Dowling talks ethics at RTNDA

Professor Denise Dowling, left, moderates an ethics panel at the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention in Las Vegas in April. Dowling is on the RTNDA board of directors. On the panel are (from left) Mike Conway of Indiana University; Edward Lawrence, anchor and reporter in Las Vegas; Kash Cashell, UM RTV grad and a photojournlaist in Las Vegas; and Patrick McCreary, news director of KPTV in Portland, Ore.

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Students win spots in prestigious programs

The list keeps getting longer. The University of Montana School of Journalism can add two more names to its plethora of awards and honorees for the 2006-07 school year.

Amber Kuehn, a junior in print from Columbus, Mont., and Natalie Neumann, a sophomore in broadcast journalism from Sidney, Mont., have received invitations to prestigious journalism programs for the summer.

Kuehn, a sports reporter for the Montana Kaimin, was selected for the 2007 Sports Journalism Institute, a nine-week program starting in June that specializes in teaching students the finer points of sports reporting. Kuehn will train with 12 other student journalists at the SJI headquarters at the Poynter Institute in Florida before heading out to her internship in Tacoma, Wash. 

“[Kaimin Sports Editor] Danny Davis did the program last year and on my first day at the Kaimin this year he handed me an application and said I should apply because the internship is for minorities and women in sports reporting,” said Kuehn. “I kind thought he was crazy because I didn’t have any clips yet, but I applied and ended up getting it.”

Neumann was selected from more than 2,000 applicants to attend the Journalism & the Free Society seminar this June at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia. The seminar, titled “A Workshop on Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Headlines” meets from June 9-15 to  examine the relationship between a free press and political liberty. The seminar will include workshops on objectivity in modern media, how numbers and statistics are used in media and even a dinner talk with a White House correspondent.

After a trip to Nicaragua for an environmental studies course, Neumann will fly directly to Philadelphia for the seminar. She said traveling over the summer will offer good experience in what she wants to do upon graduation: international reporting.

“I’m excited to meet people from all over the world,” Neumann said. “It’s kinda funny, [the seminar] created a Facebook group for us. There are going to be people there from London and all over the U.S.  I hope to meet lots of new people and make connections and network with people for my future.”

-James Laber

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