Donald W. Reynolds Foundation renews grant
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Workshop participants and Washington and Lee faculty in the Reid Hall TV Studio classroom. Photo by Patrick Hinely '73. |
The annual Roanoke Times Minority Journalism Workshop opened at Washington and Lee on June 20. During the following 24 hours, the eight high school students and two Roanoke Times reporters stayed in Gaines Hall, ate in the campus dining hall and met with five faculty members to learn basic journalism skills and principles. The students returned to their homes Monday night and spent the rest of the week with the staff of the Roanoke Times.
Organized by Kathy Lu, ' 97, features editor at The Roanoke Times, this annual, weeklong event brings together students in the Roanoke area who are interested in journalism and gives them a taste of the news industry.
See more of their experience.
Students go to court
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Prof. Toni Locy, Rachel Aiken, Michael McGuire, Jayna Johns, and Ben Petitto. Photo by Michael McGuire. |
Four Washington and Lee students are covering real cases in real time this Spring Term at federal courts in Washington, D.C.
The students in Prof. Toni Locy’s Jour 320, Covering Crime and Justice: A Practicum, are immersing themselves in criminal and civil cases in the U.S. District Court, arguably one of the nation’s most important federal trial courts, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, considered in legal circles as second only in importance to the U.S. Supreme Court.
They are sitting in on cases and oral arguments, researching areas of law, reading court files and conducting interviews with lawyers for both sides.
The course, one of dozens of new offerings in W&L’s reinvigorated, four-week Spring Term, exposes students to how the news media cover the three branches of government as they act separately and in concert in dealing with crime and justice.
For the course, Locy created a weeklong Washington & Lee “courts bureau” in Washington so students can get hands-on experience.
Locy was a journalist for 25 years, specializing in coverage of the courts and law enforcement. She worked for The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report, The Philadelphia Daily News and The Pittsburgh Press. She also covered the U.S. Supreme Court and national legal affairs for the Associated Press.
Two Rockbridge Report students win SPJ awards
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Cameron Steele '10 |
Laura Sanders ' 09 |
When an early morning fire broke out on the front porch of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house a year ago, all residents were safely hustled out, the damage was extensive – and journalism senior Laura Sanders was quickly on the scene. Sanders put together a professional-quality news package on deadline for that afternoon’s Rockbridge Report, the department’s Thursday broadcast on local cable Channel 18.
Sanders’ story has won a second-place Mark of Excellence Award for Region II of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Another W&L journalism major, Cameron Steele, ’10, won second place in the Television In-Depth Reporting category. Steele, of Richmond, was honored for her Rockbridge Report broadcast of last fall exploring the unsettling issue of sexual assault at W&L. The story, produced for a legal reporting class, included an on-air interview with a female senior who described being sexually assaulted a few years earlier by a W&L male.
Both awards were announced at the SPJ Region II conference at the University of Maryland March 27.
Sanders is now a morning producer with WCBD-TV, the NBC affiliate in Charleston, S.C.Steele, who graduates in May, will be working this summer at The Charlotte Observer as the newspaper’s first social-media reporter.
Sanders’ package can be seen at http://journalism.wlu.edu/rrarchive/03-12-2009 . Steele’s story on sexual assault is archived at http://journalism.wlu.edu/rrarchive/11-19-2009/STEEassault.html.
Students are advised to persevere in job market
Almost 2,000 journalists have been laid off in the last year.
But not everyone is willing to give up on a career in news just yet.
A couple of professors and a recent graduate of Washington and Lee’s journalism department advised and encouraged journalism majors April 1 about the market they’re entering.
“There are jobs,” said Professor Brian Richardson.
Jacob Geiger, a 2009 W&L graduate who covers the insurance industry for SNL Financial in Charlottesville, encouraged students to interview at any newsroom that will talk to them.
Geiger originally interviewed at SNL for a postgraduate summer internship, but he was called only a few weeks later to fill an empty staff writer position.
The job session was sponsored by W&L’s student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Richardson told about a dozen students that the key to success is continuing to pursue face-to-face interviews and just “getting your name out there.”
“Some of it’s luck, but you make your own luck,” Richardson said. Although students’ advisors can give them all the guidance in the world, students must work on their own to get an interview and make a good impression, he said.
Richardson said people are hiring, and W&L graduates have a good chance of taking empty spots in newsrooms because they are trained in multimedia, are eager to work, and work cheap.
Professor Indira Somani was quick to agree, coining the approach she used as the “road trip.”
“The key is to just get your foot in the door,” said Somani.
Geiger said a W&L degree has huge advantages. Although the W&L coursework might seem exhausting for some students, most newsrooms are impressed with the skills the graduates bring to their first job.
Richardson put it in a slightly different way.
“We beat on you so badly so when you go out there, you’re better than 95 percent of the other people,” Richardson said.
-- Grace Cushman ’12
Students explore First Amendment rights at Newseum
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Students begin their visit in Washington. Photo by Frances Richardson. |
Touring a Washington, D.C. museum dedicated to news might not seem like the most exciting way to spend a beautiful first day of spring. But 36 journalism students, professors and enthusiasts from Reid Hall who made the March 20 trip to the Newseum seemed to think otherwise.
“The Newseum was a great, interactive way to explore the freedoms the First Amendment offers,” senior journalism major Brett Holton said, “freedoms we often take for granted.”
Read full storySenior spends Washington break covering the Olympics
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The USA-3 bobsled team, led by pilot Mike Kohn, begins an early run in the four man competition. Photo by Jason Bacaj. |
Jason Bacaj, a senior from Morgantown, W.Va., talked his way into a reporting gig at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver over Washington Break, with help from the department’s Clark R. Mollenhoff Fund. Here is Jason’s account:
“Covering the Olympics as a senior in college might sound like a tall task. But when you break it down to a few manageable parts, it’s easy. All you need is a semi-valid reason to be in the area, an athlete from a small town with a newspaper that wants somebody to cover his exploits, and money to get out there -- thanks to the journalism department, that was only a minor hurdle -- and you're set. That's roughly the path I followed to Vancouver.
Getting accredited as a young journalist working with a small local paper is difficult, and I never succeeded in getting credentials of any type. But I was able to get tickets to bobsled events to watch the athlete I was assigned to cover: Mike Kohn, pilot of the USA-3 bobsled team.
Once I was in, it was a straightforward story project, getting to know his family and the sport of bobsled. The only difficulty after that was negotiating Vancouver's public transportation system and hashing out articles while thousands of people partied outside the hostel I was staying in.”
Jason’s stories appeared in publications of Connection Newspapers, a chain in northern Virginia. You can read the stories here:
Kohn’s Olympics Exceed His Expectations
Students and TV executives talk convergence
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Rockbridge Report students and their mentors visit WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C. Photo by
Kelly Lanzara, WJLA-TV.
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Executives at a Washington, D.C. television news operation had a chance to learn from Washington and Lee journalism students recently.
WJLA-TV, the capital’s ABC affiliate, is planning to launch a Web/cable enterprise June 1. The students, veterans of the converged Rockbridge Report, spent an hour with Vice President of News Bill Lord and Senior Executive Producer Steve Chaggaris as they talked about the new venture.
“Having to answer [their] questions helped us think about how to develop [the enterprise] further,” Lord said.
WJLA’s new enterprise and The Rockbridge Report share similarities. The Rockbridge Report’s converged model requires students to report to both a Web and a broadcast producer in preparing stories for both media. As students with The Rockbridge Report do, WJLA reporters will act alone to put together a video package and a full-fledged story for the Web on the same event or issue.
WJLA will be “hiring people down the road” with those multimedia skills, Lord said.
The students in W&L’s reporting and producing classes who visited WJLA were led by Professors Doug Cumming and Indira Somani and by Technical Operations Manager Michael Todd. They toured the news station, observed the control room during the 5 o’clock newscast and had lively conversations with the director and producer of the broadcast during breaks.
“We should have college students visit more often,” Chaggaris said.
Visiting journalists share war stories
Two prominent journalists who are veterans of covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror visited Washington and Lee less than a week apart.
Jane Mayer, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Dark Side: How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, appeared for a public question-and-answer session Jan. 21. Jackie Northam, national security correspondent for National Public Radio, spoke Jan. 25. Mayer’s visit was sponsored by the journalism department’s Fishback Fund for Visiting Writers and the university’s Johnson Lecture Series. Northam’s appearance was funded by a grant from The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.
Mayer was questioned by Associate Provost and Professor of Politics Bob Strong about her reporting on U.S. interrogators’ use of torture on detainees, and the Bush administration’s decisions to support such treatment. Mayer cited a combination of factors: “an amateur’s mistakes” based on fear, the lack of military experience high in the administration, and seeking the wrong sources for advice.
Northam’s public lecture focused on the prospects of a lasting peace in Afghanistan. She was pessimistic overall, citing inadequate forces on the ground even with President Obama’s recent decision to send more troops to the country. She also worried that the surge will not affect terrorists who have found safe haven in Pakistan.
Both journalists joined students and faculty for a reception and dinner after their public appearances.
The Fishback Fund for Visiting Writers brings an exceptional writer to speak on campus every year. It is made possible by a gift from Sara and William H. Fishback Jr., ’56, in honor of his parents, Margaret Haggin Haupt Fishback and William Hunter Fishback.
The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation funds several programs in the journalism department, including two professorships. Its support over the past decade has exceeded $4 million. The foundation is a national philanthropic organization founded in 1954 by the late media entrepreneur for whom it is named. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nev., it is one of the largest private foundations in the United States.
Student’s blog on Blair grabs online attention
Commonwealth Chronicle, a news blog created by a Washington and Lee journalism student and a recent graduate, grabbed the online news media's attention this week with its exclusive coverage of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair's visit to campus for the semiannual Journalism Ethics Institute.
A widely-read blog, Romenesko, published a link to the Commonwealth Chronicle's story that offered a behind-the-scenes view of W&L's 48th Institute. The blog, created by Cameron Steele ’10 and Becky Bratu ’09, includes a video interview Steele conducted with Blair after the Institute.
Journalist Jim Romenesko’s blog is published on the Web site of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which is dedicated to teaching working journalists. The Commonwealth Chronicle site had already gotten about 200 hits by 4 p.m. Tuesday, with a large percentage of traffic from people clicking on the Romenesko link.
Blair’s participation in the W&L Ethics Institute was controversial, prompting criticism from professional journalists who objected to a keynote address by the former reporter. Blair resigned from The Times in disgrace in 2003 after an investigation revealed that he had plagiarized and fabricated major elements of his stories.
Steele and Bratu created the Commonwealth Chronicle to report on such issues as transportation and education. Self-described "journalism junkies," Bratu and Steele also hope their site will help them find jobs in journalism.
-- Becky Bratu ‘09
Nicole Mooradian '08 wins regional Emmy
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Tammy Leitner, Nicole Mooradian and David Paredes holding the Emmys they won with the rest of the investigative team at KPHO for a one night "Assault on Arizona" special broadcast. |
Less than a year and a half after receiving her degree from W&L's Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, Nicole Mooradian, '08, took home a regional Emmy statuette for her work at Phoenix television station KPHO.
Mooradian, along with investigative team members Tammy Leitner and David Paredes, won the Rocky Mountain Emmy on Oct. 24 in the Advanced Media - Investigative category for the web component of the 5 Investigates "Assault on Arizona" series.
The Assault on Arizona series, which aired for a week on television in March, provided an extensive look into what Border Patrol agents see in the field.
Mooradian combined the broadcast packages and audio slideshows that Leitner and Paredes created with text versions of the stories, previous stories and related slideshows into the Emmy-winning online package.
The Rocky Mountain chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences covers Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and El Centro, Calif.
J&MC Slam!
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Prospective majors at the J&MC Slam watched video of Kelly Evans '07, anchor of WSJ.com's News Hub. |
Students heard career advice and got academic information. Current majors discussed their experiences in the department and presented PowerPoint summaries of their summer internships. Alumna Sarah Helms ’07 talked about her job with McCann-Erickson in New York City, one of the nation’s largest advertising agencies, where Helms works on the Exxon-Mobil account.
But prospective majors also heard more personal testimonials about the department.
"I know it's sappy, but it's true: The professors are like my family,” said Cameron Steele ’10. “They've been there for me when my parents weren't, my boyfriend wasn't, my sorority sisters weren't."
Department Head Brian Richardson acknowledged that the department is often referred to on campus as “the J-school.” But he pointed out its status as an academic department like any other, including its emphasis on scholarship. The university’s most recent Rhodes Scholar, for example, was a Journalism and Mass Communications and Politics double-major.
Richardson, Helms and current students also emphasized the department’s focus on communications media besides journalism, including public relations and advertising.
For curricular information about the department, go to http://journalism.wlu.edu/Curriculum/index.html
Prof. Artwick meets with alums at ONA conference
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Jess Ramos (’09) and Nicole Mooradian (’08) met up with Claudette Artwick at the Online News Association conference in San Francisco, where they learned about the latest in digital news. Kudos to Mooradian, who, as part of a team at KPHO.com in Phoenix, has been nominated for an Emmy. |
New look for The Rockbridge Report
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Professors Brian Richardson and Bob de Maria relax on the new tv set |
The Rockbridge Report, the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications’ public face, got a makeover this summer.
A thorough re-design of the department’s broadcast studio, including the installation of a new news set and lighting grid, was completed by FX Group of Orlando, Fla. in mid-August.
The new studio was made possible by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. The three-year, $1.75-million grant also funded a sweeping renovation of the department’s digital multimedia technology to accommodate conversion to High Definition broadcasting.
The grant has also funded a series of journalism, politics and law seminars, summer internships for prospective journalists, and a three-year faculty position in legal reporting.
“We’re delighted with our new look,” said Department Head Brian Richardson. “Its more professional look and feel will better help our students prepare for careers in broadcast and online journalism.”
Planning for the new studio and technology anticipated the increasing prominence of the internet in giving audiences on-demand access to broadcast news. Department faculty and staff, including Profs. Bob de Maria and Indira Somani and Technical Operations Manager Michael Todd, interviewed half a dozen vendors who responded to a formal request for proposals last winter.
“Even if local television news abandons its traditional live, over-the-air format for online-only broadcasts, we’ll be ready,” Richardson said.
The Rockbridge Report is the department’s multimedia local news production. It is broadcast live at 4:30 p.m. on Thursdays during the Fall and Winter terms, and appears on the Web at rockbridgereport.wlu.edu. The Rockbridge Report is a combined production of several journalism classes taught by department faculty.
The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation is a national philanthropic organization founded in 1954 by the late media entrepreneur for whom it is named. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nev., it is one of the largest private foundations in the United States.Professor Cumming publishes his first book
Associate Professor Doug Cumming has published The Southern Press, a look at literary Southern journalists from Edgar Allan Poe to Tom Wolfe and feisty regional editors from the antebellum period to the Civil Rights years.
The book was released by Northwestern University Press in July. Cumming, who joined the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications faculty in 2003, argues that the slower development of Southern cities, along with cultural dispositions, produced a more literary and emotional style of journalism. The influence of Southerners on the New Journalism movement of the 1960s has been overlooked, Cumming says, and he speculates on the future of regional traditions in a post-modern digital era.
The book is the latest volume in a paperback series called Visions of the American Press, edited by Medill School of Journalism professor David Abrahamson and published under the new Medill Imprint for Northwestern’s press.
According to the book’s dust cover blurb: “With analysis of such figures as Henry Grady and Ralph McGill, among many others, Cumming leads the reader through a thoughtful account of a regional press distinguished by ferocious editors, determined reporters and elegant, carefully wrought prose. Whether celebrating, criticizing, or explaining the South, these journalists helped outsiders understand the region.”
Cumming teaches reporting, magazine writing and newspaper history courses in the department.