Oral Presentations - Session 1F: UC 333
The Story Behind the Story
Presentation Type
Presentation
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Ray Ekness
Faculty Mentor’s Department
Journalism
Abstract / Artist's Statement
The goal of this research was to examine how well the University of Montana School of Journalism prepares students for jobs within the journalism industry (particularly at local television stations) by looking at the skills obtained through intensive capstone classes such as UM News, a short news segment produced each week by journalism students for air on KTMF-TV and KPAX-TV. In a 13-page paper, I detail the contrasts in newsgathering between KECI-TV NBC Montana (where I completed a supervised journalism internship during Summer 2014) and UM News where I produced and reported throughout Autumn Semester 2014. I discussed the process of newsgathering from the beginning of a story idea to the final on-air product and how that process differs for the two groups. I also analyzed the specifics of the day-to-day operations of the local station in comparison to the operations of the capstone class the UM School of Journalism. In addition to the paper, I produced, photographed, wrote, and edited a video showing the behind-the-scenes look at the weekly production of UM News. During production of this video, I captured video and still photographs of the other students in my UM News class as they worked. Through my research, I found that students at the University of Montana School of Journalism are well prepared for careers in broadcast news and radio-television production because they are held to professional standards are given hands-on opportunities to practice the many useful skills they learn.
Category
Visual and Performing Arts (including Creative Writing)
The Story Behind the Story
UC 333
The goal of this research was to examine how well the University of Montana School of Journalism prepares students for jobs within the journalism industry (particularly at local television stations) by looking at the skills obtained through intensive capstone classes such as UM News, a short news segment produced each week by journalism students for air on KTMF-TV and KPAX-TV. In a 13-page paper, I detail the contrasts in newsgathering between KECI-TV NBC Montana (where I completed a supervised journalism internship during Summer 2014) and UM News where I produced and reported throughout Autumn Semester 2014. I discussed the process of newsgathering from the beginning of a story idea to the final on-air product and how that process differs for the two groups. I also analyzed the specifics of the day-to-day operations of the local station in comparison to the operations of the capstone class the UM School of Journalism. In addition to the paper, I produced, photographed, wrote, and edited a video showing the behind-the-scenes look at the weekly production of UM News. During production of this video, I captured video and still photographs of the other students in my UM News class as they worked. Through my research, I found that students at the University of Montana School of Journalism are well prepared for careers in broadcast news and radio-television production because they are held to professional standards are given hands-on opportunities to practice the many useful skills they learn.