Pacific Lutheran Universityis a small private college nestled just 40 miles south of Seattle on the Interstate-5 corridor. We have about 100 communication majors that disperse among these ecletic sequences: print/broadcast journalism, PR, conflict management, broadcast performance and production, and communication studies. Our j-faculty is comprise of four of us who also teach the introduction to communiciaton classes.
What works best for us: forming partnerships with local media.
Our print/broadcast sequence benefits enormously from healthy relationship with professional media organizations in our region. A few years ago we were graced with the embarrassment of riches in this area. We were receiving numerous requests for talented students to fill short-time positions and/or internships at local newspapers and other media outlets. We found ourselves often scrambling to find the right student to match the request. So we devised what we now call the "PLU MediaLab." This quasi-news agency is comprised of an elite group of students (pre-tested and approved by the j-faculty) who answer the call from around the region. Our MediaLab students shoot nearly all the video for the News Tribune (Tacoma) website, they produce mini-documentaries for local non-profit organizations; and fill in at weekly newspaper when needed. For the past two years MediaLab has had more clients than it can handle. These media clients reciprocate by sending representatives to classes to add professional voices to our courses and, naturally, by often hiring our students upon graduation.
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Joanne M. Lisosky
Date:
RE: Pacific Lutheran University PART II/ Unique aspects of student media
I am struggling where to add this material about our student media. It's not really working... not yet any way... but it's not entirely broken either.
Despite being a small campus, we also boast an award-winning student newspaper, closed-circuit student radio and television station. But these student media operations are not under the auspices of our department of communication and theatrewhere our journalism sequence is foundbut these student media are housed in the campus life divisionunder the vice president of student life. This makes for enormous frustrations for me as the faculty adviser to the student newspaper. In fact, last year the vice president decided she would no longer allow the student newspaper to accept ads from local taverns. Of course, she had the right to impose this mandate because we are a private school, but she might have had a bit more difficulty with this ruling if the paper were part of an academic curriculum.
But, alas, no courses or prerequisites are required to be part of the student media staff. Despite the recent advertising debacle, I admit my ambivalence with this model. The staffs of the student media operations spend most of their waking hours preparing a newspaper or developing a couple of newscasts simply because they are sincerely interested in media production. No grade motivates student more than pure passion. Student editors and producers are paid a small stipend and equipment is upgraded and/or replaced out of a student life budget line of about $800 thousand a yearnot nearly enough to keep the all these media state-of-the-art. That is evident in our miniscule online presence.
But things are looking up. Ive been working closely since the summer with the student media board (made up of leaders across all student media) to prepare a grant application to bring all of PLU student media to the 21st century by implementing an online platform to dissimilate all student media. Wish us luck.
