This semester, six journalism students have stepped into the live newsroom of WANE 15 (WANE-TV) to watch and learn how to create amidst the pressure of deadlines.
The collaboration between WANE 15 and the Pulliam Journalism Center has been offered on demand the past few years, and is designed to help students gain real-world experience, Jenna Huff, news director for WANE 15, said.
The class involves students by having them commute to the television station in Fort Wayne on Thursdays. It is split into two different hours of learning, taught by Huff and Joe Carroll, the digital director of WANE 15’s website.
Huff said she has received feedback in the past from college graduates WANE 15 hired that said nothing in their studies prepared them for the urgency and business of the newsroom.
“We feel like if people could get a little more taste of what the job actually is, we can hook them on the interest and kind of help support our next round of journalists coming up in the game,” she said.
Huff said that the class has been covering a broad spectrum of roles that journalists have in the newsroom while diving into various elements that make the process ethical but also functional.
While Huff and Carroll begin each class meeting with an itinerary, she said that the students often participate in discussions that deal with events currently affecting the day’s newscast.
Contessa Hussong, a senior professional writing major and co-editor-in-chief of The Echo, said that the class sparked her interest because of a prior meeting with one of the professors.
Huff had visited Intro to Media Writing, a class that Hussong took during her freshman year. Although Hussong was not considering pursuing journalistic writing at that time, Huff’s visit intrigued her.
Now, Hussong is the current co-editor-in-chief of The Echo and has found Huff and Carroll to be helpful in showing her how to navigate obstacles while leading a news team.
“I think that this has been a great opportunity for somebody above me to go, ‘Hey, this is how we do it,’” Hussong said. “‘Watch me—I'll show you how it's done, and then you can teach.’”
Caleb Joshua Heffron, a junior multimedia journalism major, said he has had a strong interest in broadcasting since he was a 7-year-old, turning the volume down and commentating on his own Madden games.
His ultimate goal has been to host a radio or television show in the future.
“I really wanted to learn more about the nitty-gritty inner workings of how a broadcast is run, and news is one of the tightest ships that you have to run in television,” he said.
Heffron said that his favorite moment of the class was when Huff pulled up WANE-15’s television schedule template that was going to be used for their newscast that night.
Heffron said that Huff broke the complexity down by explaining the function of each column and row and the responsibilities each staff member needed to complete before going on-air. She then began to ask students about how they would deal with time conflict issues.
“I liked that it was hands-on, without the pressure of actually having to run a newscast,” Heffron said. “It was a perfect learning environment to learn one of the most difficult parts of working at a news station.”
Sam Maurer, a senior multimedia journalism major, said that while students are off campus for four to five hours during their involvement in the class, the workload has been relatively light.
Maurer said that spending quality time with peers in the journalism major has been an added benefit.
On Thursday, Sept. 12, the class went on a field trip to The Bradley Hotel in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for an artificial intelligence (AI) and journalism conference.
Hosted by the Indiana Broadcaster’s Association, Al Tomkins presented on how AI can generate information, whether its digital footprint can be recognized by journalists and how they can use it in ethical ways, Maurer said.
Maurer added that he came out of the conference with a better understanding of how to use AI as a tool in organizing information and creating outlines, while still being an ethical journalist.
Heffron, Maurer and Hussong said they look forward to delving further into concepts of broadcasting in the class.
“I just think it's a very unique partnership that a local university would tap into a resource in their own area,” Huff said. “Growing up and knowing that I wanted to pursue a career path like this, I wished that my college’s program had something like this, because I think it would have set me up even more-so for success in the future.”
