• Digging starts for new journalism building
• New Pollner Prof joins J-School faculty
• J-School hires new office manager
• Work book on shelves now
• Broadcast students sweep NATAS scholarships
• AIJI full of rewards for 2 J-school profs
• Broadcast senior meets ABC VIP
• Senior wins national scholarship
• Broadcast students attend conference

Digging starts for new journalism building
More than a concept
A year after the speeches were finished and the silver shovels stowed, work on the new journalism building got under way. On left is how the site looked on the first day of Fall Semester, 2005, looking east to Hellgate Canyon.

photo by Sarah Galbraith
	Dean Brown gets busy (Click on photos to enlarge)

Click icon for video news clip by R-TV students

New Pollner Prof joins J-School faculty

Christine Boese, a writer for CNN Headline News and a blogging pioneer, arrived in Missoula in late August to teach at the J-School as the fifth Distinguished Pollner Professor.

Boese, a Wisconsin native, has been a newspaper reporter and photographer and has taught at universities in Wisconsin, Arkansas, Georgia, New York and South Carolina. Her doctoral dissertation at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute examined the online fan culture of "Xena, Warrior Princess."

Boese, who is also a poet, is teaching a seminar on blogging and works with the Kaimin staff. She will deliver a public lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 10 in the University Center Theater.

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J-School hires new office manager

Schiel

Rebecca Schiel, a Colorado native, started in August as the J-School’s new office manager. Schiel and her husband, a new graduate student in forensic anthropology, and their dog, arrived in Missoula in early August. Within a week, she had landed the J-School job.

“I am elated to be a part of this department during a time of such excitement with the new building, and I cannot wait to see what else this year brings,” she said. Schiel replaces Tamara Martin, who left the job in June after four years.

Work book on shelves now Professor Clem Work's book, "Darkest Before Dawn," was published last month by the University of New Mexico Press. The book details the effect of Montana's 1918 sedition law, which punished people who voiced anti-war or anti-industry sentiments, and became a model for the federal sedition act passed later that year.
	photo by Ryan Brennecke

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Broadcast students sweep NATAS scholarships

photo by Denise Dowling

Abby Lautt and Sarah Hubbard visit KING-TV in Seattle after the Saturday night Emmy Award ceremony. Lautt, Hubbard and senior Andy Atkins won all three NATAS scholarships this year.

Three UM broadcast students won all three National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences regional scholarships this year. Seniors Andy Atkins, Sarah Hubbard and Abby Lautt each will receive $2,000. Atkins is a production major from White Sulphur Springs who works at the CBS affiliate in Missoula and runs his own production company in his spare time. Hubbard,from Tulsa, Okla., is a weekend television news producer in Missoula. Lautt is a broadcast major from Hardin and works at KPAX-TV in Missoula as a weekend newscast producer.

For more on the awards, click here, then click on "NATAS Monitor - July 2005" and scroll down to page 6.

AIJI full of rewards for 2 J-school profs

Two UM journalism professors spent three weeks this summer in Vermillion, S.D., teaching at the American Indian Journalism Institute. From June 5- 24, Denny McAuliffe and Michael Downs worked long hours in a journalism lab, supervising and advising native student reporters and photographers who tracked down stories to fill two issues of a tabloid called The Native Journal.

“It was like being back in the newsroom,” Downs said. “It was great fun.”

At AIJI, students from 20 tribes learn journalism skills in the intensive course. They spend mornings in the classroom and afternoons and evenings in the newsroom or on the streets writing stories and covering events.

Downs	McAuliffe

“It was absolutely the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done,” Downs said. “It took me a good week to recover.”

This was Downs’ first summer at AIJI and McAuliffe’s fifth. “I have the sad distinction of having lived in the Travel Lodge Hotel in Vermillion, S.D., for six months,” McAuliffe said with a laugh.

He’s been involved with AIJI every year since its inception, for which he is partially responsible.

Native students who have completed at least one year of college are invited to attend AIJI. McAuliffe said the program is often the only opportunity native students have to explore careers in journalism, a profession in which American Indians are underrepresented. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, only about 300 of the nation’s 55,000 journalists are Native Americans.

AIJI is an integral part of McAuliffe’s work with www.reznetnews.org, an online newspaper by and for Native American students. All but two students currently working for Reznet attended AIJI.

McAuliffe believes the best part of AIJI is that the school’s top 17 graduates receive paid internships at newspapers for the rest of the summer. This year, students worked at papers in Fargo, N.D.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Lincoln, Neb.; Muskogee, Okla; Tucson, Ariz.; Billings, Mont., and in Missoula.

In the past, students who attended AIJI and worked for Reznet have received internships at the Washington Post, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Associated Press.

“That just totally jump-starts their journalism career,” McAuliffe said.

After his first trip to AIJI, Downs is already making plans to go back. “I should have gone earlier,” he said. “It was one of, if not the, most rewarding journalism experiences I’ve ever had. I absolutely loved it.”

-Kristi Albertson

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	Broadcast senior meets ABC VIP Broadcast senior Andy Atkins spent time with veteran ABC newsman Sam Donaldson during his Summer 2005 internship at WFTV in Orlando, Fla. "I am learning a ton," Atkins wrote in an e-mail to RTV Chair Ray Ekness over the summer. His internship host was UM RTV alum David Sirak, the news operations director at WFTV.
	photo courtesy of Andy Atkins

Senior wins national scholarship

In June, Jesse Nation-Ames, a senior in the print emphasis, was awarded the Bodie McDowell Scholarship by the Outdoor Writers Association of America. The award was presented at the annual OWAA conference in Madison, Wis. where Nation-Ames was the conference photographer. Nation-Ames plans to expand his current outdoor writing career into a full-time freelance one. His emphasis is hunting and fishing and their importance to conservation.

Broadcast students attend conference

Broadcast seniors Abby Lautt and Tyler Claxton listen during an international deliberative democracy workshop in Dayton, Ohio, in July. Lautt, Claxton and professor Denise Dowling were invited by The Kettering Foundation for their work on the Footbridge Forum, an experimental KBGA radio show aimed at solving problems on campus and in the Missoula community.

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