KHQ-TV: LIVE AT UM
Reporter and photographer spend five days
teaching and working with journalism students

Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, most TV stations cut local news to allow more coverage of national events.

KHQ-TV, of Spokane, Washington, was no exception.

KHQ anchor and reporter Dana Haynes, as well as the station's chief photographer Jeff Hite, had only a one-hour time slot to report the tragedy’s effects on their community.

"As few newscasts as we did, we were still exhausted by the end of the day," said Haynes, who has been employed at KHQ-TV for five years. "We were still going out on stories, and a lot of the stories involved emotional people. That’s always hard to cover."

Both Haynes and Hite taught Sept. 27-Oct. 1 at The University of Montana School of Journalism as part of Broadcasters-in-Residence, a program administered by the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication. The program, which is funded with an $11,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, will bring six more KHQ-TV employees to the university this year to work with broadcast journalism students.

"ASJMC had the pilot program for Broadcasters-in-Residence last year, and it was so successful they decided to fund it another year," said Denise Dowling, assistant professor of journalism.

During their stay at the university, Haynes and Hite worked with students in reporting and television production classes. They had students participate in role-playing to learn about teamwork and ethical decision-making in the newsroom.

"In ethics, there's no black and white answer,” Haynes said. “It's about picking the best choice in a situation.”

"There's often a lot of decisions to make in a short amount of time," said Hite, who has worked at KHQ for 20 years.

On Sept. 28 the two KHQ employees presented an overview of the industry for the senior seminar. Both agreed that the current state of the industry is bleak due to the nation's depressed economy.

"The news is funded by advertising, and if a businessman is feeling the pinch, advertising is the first to go," Hite said.

As a result, many news stations are decreasing their staff sizes, he said. However, he and Haynes also illustrated the positive aspects of the industry at the seminar through video. They presented footage of some of their biggest stories from the past few years, including the Mount St. Helens explosion, the Spokane serial killer, and the Washington State Cougars’ trip to the Rose Bowl.

"We wanted to show how cool news is," Haynes said. "And that although it’s sometimes tough, we do something that's really neat."
Haynes and Hite ended their week in Montana with a sports reporting workshop. They helped students assemble news stories at the Grizzly football game against Eastern Washington University.

“It’s exciting to see young people excited about the business that we’re in,” Haynes said.

The remaining KHQ-TV Broadcasters-in-Residence that will visit the journalism school this year include employees of both the promotions and viewer development departments, as well as the programming director and general manager. They are scheduled to teach in October, February, March, and April.

Return to October 2001 archive