J-School Breaking News
| School of Journalism • | The University of Montana • | February 2000 |
New journalism building in the planning stage
It isn't bricks and mortar yet, or even on a blueprint, but the initial phase of a project that will someday result in a new journalism building has been approved by university officials and presented to the state's Board of Regents.
Already, more than $45,000 has been pledged toward a fund for planning a single facility in which all students and faculty may interact.
A target figure of $60,000 has been suggested as sufficient for covering architect's preliminary drawings and the preparation of models to be presented to prospective donors.
Given the amount of space needed to house all departments, it is estimated that $12 million will be needed. No site has been identified. "The need for a new building was discussed when I was interviewed for this position," said Journalism Dean Jerry Brown, "and I've been pleased at the response to requests for planning grant support. As this project moves through channels, we hope it will gain momentum. The new building idea is not only a response to spatial needs but also to the arrival of a multi-media world, requiring students to move between and among news and production formats. How better to reinforce this latitude than by having all of us working together, in one facility?"
The present journalism building near the Oval dates to 1935; R-TV faculty offices and classes are centered on the north side of campus.
Professors awarded publishing grants
Two School of Journalism faculty members have won coveted professional publishing grants from the Freedom Forum.
One of the grants went to visiting instructor Michael Downs, a former reporter who went on to obtain a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arkansas last year. Downs, who grew up in Hartford, Conn., plans a non-fiction book on five young men, originally from inner-city Hartford, who as teenagers pledged to return to the city to stay and make it a better place to live. "Their pledge arose from their dismay that Hartford lacked role models, in part because those who left to pursue a college education seldom returned because of the city's crime, poverty and poor school system," said Downs.
The teenagers' mutual pledge was never fulfilled; only one of the five lives in Hartford today, but Downs says that's what makes the book project interesting, probing the motivations and feelings of the men today as a means of exploring the question of "what we owe the people and places where we were raised."
Assistant professor Jackie Bell is the recipient of a similar grant from the Freedom Forum. Bell won funding to complete work on a project that she has pursued for eight years. Bell, formerly a prize-winning photographer for the Nashville Tennessean, has been documenting the street life of indigenous cultures in Latin America. So far, she has photographed, in black and white, vanishing and merging indigenous cultures in 12 countries, from the Tarahumara cave dwellers of the Copper Canyon on the Mexico-Texas border to inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.
With the grant, Bell plans to return to Latin America next summer to finish shooting the project. "I hope to show the cycle of cultural change by photographing isolated indigenous populations, peoples living in mixed cultures and areas where Indians have become extinct." Bell plans to publish her work in magazines, put together a show and publish a book. Bell will also be teaching a documentary photojournalism workshop over spring break in Antigua, Guatemala.
Click here to see a few of Jackie's photos.
School third in Hearst broadcast news contest; print students also recognized
The Hearst Journalism Awards Program has recognized several talented students at the School of Journalism in print and broadcast journalism.
The school placed third in the Intercollegiate Broadcast News Competition, based on accumulated points in the radio and television competition. Two students are finalists in the television competition, and one student placed in the radio competition.
Heather Roberts placed fifth in the television competition for her documentary on the Bison Roundup and the Piegan Language School. John Thaggard placed tenth in the television competition for his documentary on the white/Indian legal conflicts in Montana schools and the Montana working poor. Kathy Weber placed nineteenth in the radio competition.
Print student Michael Fegely placed fifth in the In-Depth Writing Competition for an article he wrote for the Native News Project last spring. The article covered the Crow Tribe of southeastern Montana and their attempt to land the VentureStar space vehicle launch pad and landing strip contract from Lockheed Martin Corporation.
The top ten winners in each category are awarded a scholarship from $500 to $2,000. The top five finalists in each category advance to the next round, to be judged on additional submissions to the competition.
Four students win Dow Jones editing scholarships
I t's a banner year," said the School of Journalism's internship coordinator, Prof. Dennis Swibold, discussing the four students awarded internships this summer through the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.
The fund awards paid internships every year to about 100 students from across the nation who score best on an editing exam. The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internships include a week to two weeks of professional training, a 10- to 12-week editing internship at a professional publication, and a $1,000 scholarship for all students returning to school in the fall.
First year graduate students Jason Mohr, Greg Girard, Kyle Gearhart, and undergraduate Erik Olson were awarded internships to publications across the country.
Mohr will spend the summer in Columbus, Ohio, at the Columbus Dispatch. Girard will be in Mankato, Minn., at the Mankato Free Press. Gearhart will be in New York City at the Dow Jones News Wires, and Erik Olson will spend the summer in Arizona at the Arizona Daily Star.
All the internship winners are excited about working in a professional atmosphere and improving their editing skills this summer. Swibold said the number of winners is a "testimony to the caliber of students" the School of Journalism attracts. In past years, UM has never had more than two Dow Jones winners in any one year.
"Professor Jazz" to lecture on legends
Broadcast professor Bill Knowles, a lifelong fan, student and collector of old jazz, will be giving lectures in the next few weeks on two legendary jazz players.
On the evening of February 17, Knowles will talk about gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt at the Missoula Public Library, as part of the Smithsonian Institution's Jazz Age in Paris exhibit. On March 7, Knowles will show videos and play recordings of New Orleans soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, whose career flourished during his long residency in Paris.
Knowles, who grew up in Los Angeles, traces his interest in jazz to a revival in the 1940s of jazz from the Twenties and Thirties. "I couldn't get into clubs to hear it live, of course, so I bought records and listened to them with friends," he said. Knowles' collection of LPs, CDs and field recordings made at jazz festivals numbers in the hundreds today and helps feed his lifelong passion for the art form.
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