University of Montana School of Journalism students have been named the winners in nine of the categories in the region 10 SPJ Mark of Excellence Awards.
Eight others were named finalists as well. See the winners and links to their excellent work below:
After growing up in Montana, as a wild child of the woods, Lara Tomov studied filmmaking at Emerson College in Boston, lived abroad in Central America, was based in Los Angeles for a decade, and is now happily back home in Montana. Lara has worked as a camera operator and cinematographer for narrative & documentary films, and television networks such as Travel Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic. Her work has taken her to more than 30 countries, and she always appreciates observing how different cultures and communities interact with their landscape.
In 2020, Lara founded the hybrid production company, Stories for Action, which works to spark positive momentum through the power of storytelling, and focuses on content that connects community and environmental well-being. Stories for Action produces short films, a podcast series, and leads Story Workshops. Lara holds a BA in Film from Emerson College and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Systems from UCLA. She is also a licensed drone pilot and certified PADI Rescue SCUBA Diver and underwater camera operator.
University of Montana journalism student Robyn Iron recently interviewed Tomov about social media. What follows is a transcript of the conversation, edited slightly for brevity and clarity.
Q: How is the importance of staying relevant on social media helped you share your stories?
A: I mean, I appreciate the relevancy of the medium of social media because a lot of why we started stories for action is to reach audiences that weren’t going to sit down for a two-hour documentary film about a certain topic. And so, the opportunity to have people kind of stumble upon our content. That’s kind of the purpose of why we started stories for action.
So, it gives us that medium to share even shorter clips of our short films to really pull people in who may not think that they’re interested in a certain topic. Myself, I haven’t been, you know, formally trained in social media. So, I also battle with trying to find the best ways to get our content out there to learn more about, you know, what the algorithm rewards and what it doesn’t. But I do try to at least, you know, because I’m not just putting my time into social media, it’s also producing content.
So, I’m not able to put as much time into social media as I would like to. I’m not able to post necessarily every day, but I do make sure to keep the stories posted. Because that’s something I’ve learned is that folks say that you don’t have to post every day necessarily for the algorithm to like you or reward your content. But as long as you keep stories posted somewhat frequently, so I put more time into that and it takes less time to share repost a story, right? That’s also a lot of what stories for action likes to do is curate content from other people. And so, the stories create a great avenue to do that, easily, quickly and link directly to the producer of that content.
Q: Has social media benefited you by reaching a larger audience?
A: Yes. Yes, absolutely, and a lot of our posts, even if, you know, we can’t run an ad on it, the post still gets out there, right? And the ability to add hashtags so that you can reach people that aren’t following you already. You know, and, and I, I strategically use hashtags that don’t just preach to the choir of the posts that I’m posting, but to literally the opposite of that audience. And so, since that is a lot of our purpose of stories for action is to yes reach the choir, but also reach those people that think they have the issues going on in a certain community or in a certain landscape, have nothing to do with them. Like those are the people that I want to reach. And so, hashtags are a way that you can do that.
It’s given us the ability to expand our reach, you know, and then also through when we post clips on YouTube that gets a lot of like quote accidental traffic as well as social media. So yes, that being a lot of our intent of the content we create is to reach beyond the choir. It does allow us to do that.
Q: How much time do you have to commit to social media?
A: It’ll be like 10 minutes here, 20 minutes here. But to create a post usually takes me about an hour just because I overthink the wording on my post so much. You know, and a lot of our posts are video clips. So, I have to not only edit down that video clip but then create a caption, right? And overthinking the words, sometimes I run it by somebody else like is this fit. And so I, I might take more than the average person in time to, to create a post. But as a filmmaker, you know, coming from the film world where you’re working on a product that’s two hours long, potentially, and it’s only going to be seen in a theater or in YouTube or in a, you know, a classroom. I’m rethinking my own work and approach to make sure that my work remains relevant.
I used to think that, you know, 30 minutes was a short film, but now that seems incredibly long with the way that people are getting content nowadays. And so, I’m even rethinking like, you know, starting next year, am I going to completely move away from film as we know it and just focus on doing like 62nd vignette clips, you know, and then how do you fund that? How do you get, you know, a funder to pay you what it actually takes to go out in the field, maybe drive quite a distance, take time to interview someone edit it if you’re just getting a 62nd product, right?
But I’m, I’m constantly thinking of like, well, maybe that is how we need to reform our own business model and the way that I put stories out there to only focus on content that’s for social and not doing anything over like two minutes.
This Q&A is part of a series created by students in Courtney Cowgill’s Social Media and Audience Engagement course at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Students sought out creatives who are doing using media for good to offer tips and insights into the ever-evolving landscape of social media.
David Rose is the news anchor for Fox 13 Seattle at 6, 10, and 11 p.m., as well as the host of The Spotlight, a weekly half-hour broadcast focused on crime and safety issues. Rose was hired as weekend news anchor and weekday reporter. Eight months later, he was promoted to anchor the 10 pm News. Rose has worked for Q13 for more than 17 years, joining in July 2007, before the FOX Broadcasting Company purchased Q13 from Tribune Media in 2020, and changed the station brand to FOX 13 Seattle.
Rose has 10,860 followers on Facebook, 6,452 followers on Instagram, and 18.700 followers on X. His posts on local crime usually attract between 100-1000 views and likes. In an interview over email, this is what David Rose had to say on the use of social media in his work:
Q: What is your favorite topic of reporting?
A. Crime. I love helping victims get justice. From 2008 to 2022, I hosted Washington’s Most Wanted which gave a voice to victims and helped law enforcement solve crimes and locate almost 1500 fugitives.
Q: Do you enjoy utilizing social media in your work?
A: I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to because media companies like Meta have made it difficult for news stories to reach wide audiences. Social media companies don’t want users to click away from sites like Facebook so their algorithms don’t prioritize other information over links to news stories.
Q: How does access to social media help you with your job?
A: While we don’t reach as wide of an audience on social media as we used to, it still generates tremendous leads and story ideas. Access to social media remains crucial to driving traffic to our website.
Q: Do you feel that sharing your crime reporting to social media helps to spread your stories and keep the community safer?
A: Yes, social media absolutely helps. I have three Facebook pages, one Instagram page and two Twitter accounts. Many tips come into Crime Stoppers from users of social media. I also get ideas for stories and viewers contact me to ask for help because of my social media profiles.
Q: Does social media ever make your job harder? If so, how?
A: Social media doesn’t make my job harder. However, it can be very time consuming. At one point, I was spending several hours a day answering questions from viewers sending me instant messages. It wasn’t leaving me enough time to research, write and produce stories. I disabled instant messaging and encouraged people to email me instead. It slowed the volume of requests to a manageable amount.
Q: How has social media changed since you started using it?
A: Tik Tok and Instagram are more popular now than Facebook and many people get their news from those Apps. Youtube has also become a priority for us.
Q: How has your reporting changed since social media became popular?
A: My reporting has stayed the same. However, we focus heavily on producing stories in a manner that are appropriate for each social media site. For example, while we will post the video of a news story directly to Youtube, we may make a graphic with text and a compelling image to share on Instagram. For TikTok, we may upload a behind the scenes video of how we made the story.
Q: What advice would you have for an aspiring journalist regarding the use of social media?
A: Think twice about everything you post on any personal social media site. If you wouldn’t want your mom to see it or read it, don’t post it. Media companies will look at your social media when making a hiring decision. It’s important to remember that when you are posting on a station branded account, you represent that company and it’s not about you but about the content. That being said, always be yourself on social media. Viewers see right through you if you are not authentic. Figure out what drives your passion whether it is sports, hard news, entertainment news or weather and post about those topics.
Q: How do you decide what is beneficial to post and what is not?
A: I try to post stories that either help keep the community safe, ask for help from the public or inform the users about an important issue. The main thing is to not waste a social media users’ time.
This Q&A is part of a series created by students in Courtney Cowgill’s Social Media and Audience Engagement course at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Students sought out people in media who are doing social media for good to offer tips and insights into the ever-evolving landscape of social media.
Montana Journalism 