J-School News

School of Journalism   The University of Montana

November 2000

McAuliffe recruited for nationwide effort to put more American Indians in news rooms

Over four days in September, professor Dennis McAuliffe Jr. traveled 800 miles and visited five colleges, searching for American Indian students who want to be journalists.

"I expect quite a marathon year of work and travel," he said.

McAuliffe, a University of Montana associate professor and Native-American-Journalist-in-Residence at the School of Journalism, was named recently as one of four Freedom Forum Diversity Fellows. His task

will be to travel the country recruiting American Indian students for careers in print journalism. The Freedom Forum's other diversity fellows were named to help recruit black, Asian-American, and Hispanic students into newspaper and magazine careers.

McAuliffe will spend one year as a Diversity Fellow. The grant means he will also stay at UM and continue to enhance the School of Journalism's reputation.

According to Dean Jerry Brown, McAuliffe's honor further raises the national profile of the school, and his award is the result of many years of effort.

"We (UM) were among the first to recognize that Native news was not being covered," Brown said. "Mainstream media were not aware of (Indian) problems and how to report them in a way that was fair and that went beyond the stereotypical and the superficial.

"I believe the Freedom Forum saw that Denny's success in recruiting and helping to retain Native American students was based on a solid record," he said.

The School of Journalism received a $150,000 grant from The Freedom Forum to fund the Native American Diversity Fellow position. The Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan international foundation dedicated to promoting free press and free speech. The Freedom Forum together with the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press Managing Editors has pledged $5 million to $6 million for a nationwide effort to improve newsroom diversity.

The three organizations will work together with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to increase the number of minority journalists, focusing particularly on recruiting from colleges. The ASNE wants the ethnicity of the newsroom to mirror the population at large and move beyond the approximately 11 percent of minorities now working.

Brown said the grant allows McAuliffe to be released from teaching most of his classes to travel as an ambassador and mentor across the country. Sheri Venema, a visiting assistant professor, has been hired for another year to fill in for McAuliffe. McAuliffe will still be based out of UM and still teach the Multicultural and Diversity Problems in Journalism class on campus on Mondays. McAuliffe teaches his students to report with fairness in mind, and he monitors and questions media coverage of minorities.

McAuliffe, like the other fellows, will act as a scout, searching for students who want to study journalism but don't have the opportunity because their schools are not equipped to teach journalism.

McAuliffe has already begun his search for Indian students from smaller colleges. Such students might not have the opportunities for scholarships or internships that go to students at better-known journalism schools. During his visits, McAuliffe confers with college presidents, administrators and students, and gathers information that the Freedom Forum will use to get new journalism programs started.

There is an assumption that tribal colleges have no journalism programs or school newspapers, McAuliffe said. However, he recently learned that Stone Child College on the Rocky Boy's Reservation has had a journalism class and a school newspaper for two years. He said the paper was "wonderful, vibrant and funny," and that he will try to get the Freedom Forum to help support it. "This is part of the reason for this Diversity Fellows program," he said.

McAuliffe, who is an enrolled member of the Osage tribe, said he thinks he was chosen as a fellow because of the success of UM's program. And as UM's Native-American-Journalist-in-Residence, he said he knows of no other American Indian who teaches college journalism in the country.

McAuliffe believes the enrollment of Indian students at UM will ultimately increase because of the School of Journalism's reputation, even though his role is to encourage students to enter journalism and not to actively recruit for UM.

"We're the only school in the country that specifically targets American Indian students," McAuliffe said. Indian students feel welcome and wanted at UM, he said. Other colleges neglect Indians.

"And (the UM journalism school) is becoming better known," he said. "This is the place where Indians come from all over the country."

The UM journalism school has 19 students representing every reservation in Montana, McAuliffe said. Students are from the Blackfeet, Fort Belknap, Rocky Boy's, Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Peck reservations. Also, a native Alaskan and a native Canadian are in the program, as is a student from New Mexico.

McAuliffe noted the UM journalism school's appeal to the Indian students who attended the annual Native American Journalists Association conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last summer. McAuliffe said he mentored the 12 students who worked on the Native Voice newspaper during the conference. At least half were from UM. Others told McAuliffe they wanted to transfer to UM.

Jason Begay, a journalism junior, was one of those UM students. Begay is a Navaho from Gallup, N.M., who said he applied on a whim to the 1998 NAJA conference where he first met and worked with McAuliffe. Begay said McAuliffe saw his hard work during the conference and liked the story he wrote for the Native Voice newspaper. As a mentor, McAuliffe pushed Begay to further his talent in journalism and worked to get him scholarships to attend UM, Begay said.

"He wanted me back in school, anywhere," Begay said. "I'm here all because of Denny."

A joint program with the Freedom Forum, ASNE, and Knight Foundation provided the grant that brought McAuliffe to UM in January 1999 as a visiting professor and Native-American-Journalist-in-Residence. McAuliffe had taken a one-year leave of absence from the Washington Post foreign desk where, he said, he was one of the few Native Americans working for a big daily newspaper.
McAuliffe has since resigned from the Washington Post to accomplish his UM and Freedom Forum goals.

He said he wants to bring more American Indians into journalism to report on their own communities.

McAuliffe said that he and his colleagues in the Native American Journalists Association have been "scratching their heads for years" trying to figure out why there are so few Indian journalists and what it will take to get more in.

"These are some of the challenges: how do you get more Indians into journalism when all the on-ramps to working journalists today, school newspapers and journalism courses, they're are all closed on Indian reservations," he said.

"My goal -– and it's a dream it's not a goal – is to crack the nut on the mystery of why there are so few Indians in journalism," he said. "And to come up with a program that works."

 

RTV student receives national support in fight against subpoena

Compiled, in part, from Kaimin reports by Erik Olson

A UM journalism student is fighting the Missoula city attorney's office effort to subpoena her film of clashes this summer between Missoula residents and police.

Linda Tracy, a senior majoring in radio-television, filmed the confrontations and later produced a documentary called "Missoula, Montana" that she made available to the public. In October, she received a subpoena from the Missoula city attorney's office demanding the film that didn't make it into the documentary. Police want to use the film to prosecute those who tussled with them.

Tracy's fight has drawn attention and support from local and national organizations. She has received $1,000 for her defense from the Society of Professional Journalists and $500 each from the Montana Freedom of Information Hotline and Montana Newspaper Association. The Freedom Forum has mentioned the case on its web site (http://www.freedomforum.org/news/2000/11/2000-11-02-01.htm).

Jerry Brown, dean of the University of Montana School of Journalism, said the school will also help Tracy. "The press in Montana and School of Journalism will be involved. We are not going to roll over and play dead," he told the Associated Press.

The clashes occurred in July and were connected with the visit to Missoula by the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. Police presence increased in response to the Angels' visit, and some Missoulians protested the unusually large number of police – including some from out of state – patrolling the city. Over the course of a weekend, police and protesters battled three times, with police using pepper spray and clubs to disperse protesters while arresting dozens. In the wake of the confrontations, Missoula's mayor appointed a committee to review the events, which split the community between those who believed police reacted with unreasonable force and others who thought the protesters gave the police no other option.

Bill Knowles, chairman of UM's Radio-Television department, said Tracy's work should be protected by a Montana law called the Media Confidentiality Act. The Media Confidentiality Act is a shield law protecting journalists from revealing their sources or information, such as notes, unpublished photo negatives, or their non-televised video footage. "We're not going to do the police's work for them," Knowles said. "If the city had any class, they'd drop (the subpoena)."

Tracy's lawyer, Rick Sherwood of Helena, said he filed a motion with the Missoula District Court to dismiss the subpoena. But Gary Henricks, a deputy city attorney, told Judge Douglas Harkin that the shield law is intented to protect the sources and documents used by working journalists in their news-gathering jobs. When Tracy shot the film, he said, she did not hold a paid position with a newspaper, magazine, radio station, news agency, news service or press association.

David Aronofsky, UM's chief legal counsel, said the university supports Tracy's position that her work ought to be protected by the shield law.

Tracy said she shot the documentary to fulfill a School of Journalism requirement that she have an internship. Originally, she said, she worked during the summer to produce a different video, but Montana's summer wildfires interrupted her work. Tracy said she was at a barbecue when she saw helicopters flying overhead, so she grabbed her camera to get footage. She ended up with three hours worth of footage, which she edited to one hour for her documentary.

"She wasn't there trying to cause trouble," Knowles said. "She was there trying to cover a news story."

People who are interested in helping pay for Tracy's legal defense can send tax-deductable donations in care of the Montana Freedom of Information Hotline, P.O. Box 5810, Helena, 59604. Checks should be made out to the hotline. John Kuglin, chairman of the board of the hotline, has said that any leftover money will be returned to donors, so donors should be sure to identify themselves.

 

RTV students help produce congressional debates

"Five minutes."

Voices lowered negligibly. Students, faculty, administration and community members shuffled around the intimate confines of the Castles Center at the University of Montana Law School. They squeezed into seats that circled a dais with three chairs and three candidates.

"Three minutes."

Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, Democrat Brian Schweitzer and Reform Party candidate Gary Lee sipped from water glasses, studied notes and looked at the audience.

"Ten, nine, eight ..."

On a television monitor, the opening credits for the Montana PBS Debate Night 2000 filled the screen. Inside, the crowd readied itself for the U.S. Senate debate. UM journalism students and faculty were running the equipment, moderating and working behind the scenes to present the statewide debate on television and radio.

This Oct. 16 senatorial debate was one of two produced by KUFM-TV public television and production students in the School of Journalism's Radio-Television division. The crew also produced an Oct. 22 House debate between Democrat Nancy Keenan and Republican Dennis Rehberg, which was held at the Montana Theater. And on Election Night, KUFM will host coverage of the major statewide races.

John Twiggs, a producer at KUFM and UM adjunct professor of television production, produced the debates. UM students performed 80 to 90 percent of the broadcast duties, working as technical directors and production assistants as well as running the cameras, audio and graphics.

Denise Dowling, a first-year professor in Radio-Television and an alumna of the School of Journalism, moderated the debates. Among the panelists questioning candidates were School of Journalism alums John Stucke (then of the Missoulian, now of the Spokane Spokesman-Review) and Erin Billings of the Helena bureau of Lee Montana Newspapers. Professor Dennis Swibold and KUFM-FM Radio News Director Sally Mauk also served as panelists.

"We try to take great pride in that it's a professional looking broadcast – that the candidates come in here and they're treated fairly and that the broadcast itself comes off professionally," Twiggs said.

And come off professionally the debates did, though Twiggs said the negotiations were not always easy and the formats were not ideal. First, the three campus theaters were booked with performances for most of the fall. Twiggs just squeezed in the House debate, he said, getting lucky that the Montana Theater was open on that date.

"That's what forced us into the Castles Center [for the Senate debate]," he said. "It went pretty well. I just have a lot of problems with three people in a debate. That's what caused us the most trouble, to be quite honest."

UM President George Dennison had required Twiggs to invite all the candidates for an office to the debates. Libertarian candidate Jim Tikalsky declined an invitation to the House debate. Having the third party candidate in the Senate debate, however, took 17 minutes of sparring time from the main candidates, Twiggs said.

"I thought our two debates really illustrated the fact that debates were designed for two people," he said.

"The exchanges that you had between Rehberg and Keenan helped people who watched it differentiate between the candidates. I think you would have had a lot more of that if it was just Burns and Schweitzer."

In a three-person format follow-up questions on specifics were "out the window," Twiggs said.
The House debate offered different problems, Twiggs said. He had wanted to involve students by having 15 on stage, though only two would question the candidates. Thirteen of the group would represent Youth Vote 2000, a coalition of groups such as the College Democrats, the College Republicans, MontPIRG and ASUM.

Twiggs said Rehberg balked at student participation because he said most U Vote groups are liberally biased and because having students on stage would play to Keenan's strengths as superintendent of public instruction for 12 years. Publicly, however, Rehberg said he feared for his safety, citing an incident at UM in September when an activist threw salmon at Idaho Representative Helen Chenoweth-Hage. A pro-student, anti-student debate ensued between the campaigns and after much wrangling two videotaped student questions were allowed, Twiggs said.

Twiggs has received positive responses on the debates, both for the professional-looking broadcasts and the way the campaigns were treated, he said. Much of the professionalism was a result of good preparation by the students, Twiggs said. The full rehearsals scheduled before each debate helped the students and the professionals work out potential problems. During rehearsals, students acted as candidates to give a sense of camera shots and timing, Twiggs said. Students worked everything from changing camera angles and positions to exchanging rolling swivel chairs with stationary chairs – simplifying things so there would be no surprises when the debate went live.

Linda Tracy, a radio-television senior, ran the audio for both events and said the experience was terrific. She worked with William Marcus, Broadcast Media Center director, who set up the individual microphones in the rooms. Tracy then sat in the control room and ran the beginning and ending music for the programs and monitored the microphone levels. She said her favorite job was the editing – actually "pushing the buttons" during events. "I like to work with KUFM anytime I can," she said. "And it's good resume material."

Twiggs said holding debates on the UM campus adds to the interest in elections because being in the room with the candidates gives the audience a different perspective.

"Missoula is a pretty activist-driven place so the debates are very well attended," he said. "They like to see them in person and not have to watch just on television."

Despite the logistical problems and personality difficulties, Twiggs was happy with the overall results.

"Bottom line is we're very pleased with how it worked," he said. "It's the perfect example of professional staff, student and faculty working on a project and having that all come together."

Long-time R-TV adjunct leaves class for "retirement gig"

Terry Conrad believes radio is something you have to learn by doing.

"I think it's important for students to learn this type of business from people who are actually doing it," said Conrad, who for nearly three decades has taught as an adjunct on the School of Journalism faculty. "So people could listen to me on the radio and know that I am doing what I'm asking them to do."

After 27 years of teaching, Conrad – an architect in the creation of KUFM radio – has retired. He left his job as programming and music director for KUFM radio on Oct. 31. Conrad's influence will still be felt, however. He'll continue working at KUFM doing what he calls a "retirement gig": a Wednesday morning show, a Thursday afternoon jazz program and the music programming for the Morning Classics shows.

"I didn't want to just stop," he said, "because I enjoy it."

He'll also continue his role as advisor to KBGA, the student radio station, offering his knowledge and insights to students.

"I think I'll do my teaching there in a sense," he said, "not in a formal setting but as a wise person."
Conrad has taught the Introduction to Radio/Audio class every semester since he joined UM. The class is a practical, hands-on course in beginning radio production, and most students who take it have never done any radio work before. Sometimes, he said, faculty joked that they had to teach students which end of the microphone to talk into.

Though Conrad's job as director of KUFM was a 365-days-a-year, 24-hours-a-day responsibility, he said he enjoyed his additional role as teacher.

Many of his students have gone on to work in television and radio, Conrad said. His class was a necessary step in preparing them for their careers, and most surpassed his expectations.

"The thing that is so rewarding over the years is that the people really put out very good work," he said. "Some are more gifted than others and there will always be those who excel in certain areas, but nearly everyone gave me their best, and that's all I can expect from students."

Read a feature on Terry Conrad, written by School of Journalism alumna Ginny Merriam, that appeared in the Missoulian.

Emptying the Notebook . . .

Come teach Photojournalism in Big Sky Country: The University of Montana School of Journalism seeks a tenure track photojournalism professor starting in August 2001. Duties will include teaching some or all of the following courses: beginning, intermediate, advanced and documentary photojournalism, design, new media and our Native News Honors Project. We prefer applicants with at least ten years of full-time professional experience as a journalist. Experience teaching journalism at the college level is preferred. A master’s degree is required. Deadline for applications is December 15. Review of applications will begin December 15 and continue until position is filled. Send letter of interest, resume, three references and portfolio to Keith Graham, School of Journalism, The University of Montana, 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, MT 59812-0648. For further information call 406-243-2238. The University of Montana is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and encourages applications from women, minorities, Vietnam era veterans and persons with disabilities. This position announcement can be made available in alternative formats upon request. ... Jennifer Perez, a senior in print journalism, received a UNITY Journalists of Color scholarship for $2,500 and will begin a mentoring program through the group this month. UNITY is a four-group-alliance of journalists of color that includes the Native American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. UNITY will pair Perez with a veteran journalist from a mainstream national paper who will serve as her mentor for five years. The program offers support and guidance to beginning journalists, and Perez will communicate with her mentor by e-mail and telephone and the two will meet quarterly at conferences in major cities. . . .

J-School News

School of Journalism   The University of Montana

November 2000

Editor: Michael Downs, visiting assistant professor

Reporter: Tracy K. Whitehair

 

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