montanajournalism Awards, J-School, Student

J-School Alum Wins Hearst Journalism Award

February 10th, the Hearst Journalism Awards Program released its top ten winners in the Multimedia One/Features category, ranking Kaci Felstet’s piece “Late Start” 6th in the nation. Felstet produced the multimedia piece last spring as part of the class Native News, co-taught by Assistant Professor Jason Begay and Associate Professor Jeremy Lurgio.

“Late Start” tackles attendance issues at Rocky Boy Elementary School located in the center of the Rocky Boy Reservation in north-central Montana. Originally, Felstet and her reporting partner Courtney Anderson had been researching teacher retention rates, but they realized that the story’s core remained with the students.

Photo shows a darkly shadowed mug of tea sitting on a railing with a bright orange sunset in the distance
Taken during a photo-a-week challenge. By Kaci Felstet.

“Kids weren’t getting the education that they needed,” Felstet said. “And that was something really close to our hearts.”

Begay and Lurgio chose the theme “Relationships” for Native News in spring 2015. They challenged students to find unique, personal bonds that explored “how people on reservations connect with each other,” Begay said.

“It left a lot of room for us to branch out and find our own stories,” Felstet said.

She and Anderson traveled to the Rocky Boy reservation during spring break and spent several days following their characters and gathering classroom footage at the elementary school. Felstet said the kindergarten kids needed some time to get used to the cameras and stop making funny faces at them, but that their patience paid off in the end.

“The hardest thing is that you can’t go back,” Felstet said. “You have to get everything you need in three or four days.”

That was where working as a team came in handy. Despite extensive background research and planning, Felstet and Anderson knew that they need to stay both flexible and focused while in the field, so that they could find the true story even if it was different from the one they had envisioned. Lurgio said, “Kaci was very organized. She knew what she needed and she got enough to be able to adapt.”

Felstet’s first exposure to video came from a summer internship with KRTV in her hometown of Great Falls, Montana, but she considers herself more of a photojournalist these days. She’s currently pursuing a master’s in Economics here at UM, which will not only diversify her education but also open up new doors to her as a journalist, especially regarding business and finance beats, “which not everyone wants to cover,” she laughed.

A self portrait of Felstet clutching a scarf to her face while standing in the snow
Felstet’s self-portrait from her photo-a-week challenge. By Kaci Felstet.

To stay familiar with her camera, Felstet decided to create a photo-a-week challenge for herself to keep her creativity fresh. The recent recognition of “Late Start” serves as another boost from the journalism world.

“Kaci has a great eye for shooting and producing multimedia packages,” Lurgio said. “She works extremely hard, and she was very dedicated to producing a professional caliber story. And that’s just what she did.”

Kaci Felstet and Courtney Anderson’s collaborative piece can be found on the Native News website, which features more stories from reservations in Montana.

By Jana Wiegand
montanajournalism Events, J-School, Student

Preview: UM J-School at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

The 13th Annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (BSDFF) kicks off in Missoula on Friday, February 19th and runs through Sunday, February 28th. This year’s theme revolves around “impact.” Executive Director of the Big Sky Film Institute, Gita Saedi Kiely, describes this topic as a lens to examine “the impact of the stories we tell, the impact we have on the planet and the impact we can have on society.”

Big Sky Doc Film Fest logoOver 200 independent films will be showcased during the 10-day festival, and the University of Montana serves as more than just a sponsor for the event. Dean of the UM School of Journalism, Larry Abramson, is one of 12 members of the festival jury. “It’s my first time judging the Big Sky,” Abramson said. “I’m going to try to watch as a regular person, and then look at what makes them compelling and their journalistic sensibility.”

The jury will chose the winning films based on four different categories: Best Feature, Best Short, Best Mini, and the Big Sky Award, which specifically deals with films about the American West. Abramson’s thirty years as a reporter and editor at National Public Radio will help him evaluate the sense of balance and fairness in the films, “to make sure they back up what they say,” he said.

Abramson will also be leading a workshop for high school journalism students on Friday, February 26th. He plans to talk to the students about interviewing skills, including the importance of using their questions as a story arc for the interview. “A lot of kids that age are afraid to talk to important people,” Abramson said. He hopes this workshop will give these budding journalists more confidence.

UM will also be hosting a series of workshops in the University Center as part of the festival’s DocShop conference. In keeping with the theme of “impact,” DocShop will focus on FILMS FOR CHANGE and explore the power of documentaries and media activism to serve as catalysts for positive change. All of the workshops will be free to students and faculty at UM, as well those from MSU.

Keep following the blog on the UM School of Journalism’s website for more updates on their involvement at the festival.

To view the complete schedule of events, film trailers and other additional information, visit

the 2016 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival’s website.

By Jana Wiegand
montanajournalism Graduate, J-School, Student

Alum Alexandra Schwier Brings Journalism to Albania

At eight o’clock on a Thursday evening, Alexandra Schwier is building a fire in her home in Kukes, Albania. She’s been serving in the Peace Corps there for almost 11 months now, and her DLSR camera has come along for the ride. “I usually have my camera wherever I am,” Schwier said. “You start to pick up an ear for things, and think, hey, that would make a great sound bite.”

Schwier takes pictures during a recycling event in Kukes, where she is currently living.
Schwier takes pictures during a recycling event in Kukes, where she is currently living.

So far, Schwier’s documented traditional Albanian dances, a youth environmental outreach program called Outdoor Ambassadors and a local Cardboard Challenge based off of the premise of Cain’s Arcade, which originated in California.

However, Schwier’s also teaching what she knows about journalism to Albanian youth in her village and letting them experiment with video equipment to tell stories that they find important. Outside of her own initiatives, the U.S. Embassy also invited Schwier to the capital in Tirana to talk with journalism students about reporting ethics.

When Schwier graduated from the University of Montana in December 2012, she hadn’t planned on entering the Peace Corps. During school she worked at KPAX-TV in Missoula as a reporter and web producer, where she gained hands-on experience from the techniques she learned in the classroom.

Photo of Schwier after winning the Fox News Award
Schwier won the Fox News Award in 2012 and flew to New York to accept it.

“One of the things I really loved about the journalism program was that you had to take photo, video and print, regardless of your major,” Schwier said. At first she wasn’t too excited to learn photography, “But I fell in love with it.”

As a double major in Journalism and Spanish, with a Latin American Studies minor, Schwier practiced reporting abroad while on a Political Science trip to Mexico. She produced a video piece called “Breaking down Barriers” about the perceived disparity between Mexico and the United States regarding immigrants and culture. Schwier did all of the production, editing and translation by herself.

Yet, the piece she’s most attached to is video she produced with a fellow journalism student, Kyle Schmauch, about wolf hunting. Schwier called the video “a labor of love” and is proud of the fair representation it gave to both sides of this controversial issue in Montana. As a result, Schwier won the 2012 National Fox News Challenge, which led to an internship with Fox News and later, a job in New York City.

While Schwier was working for Fox News in New York, she also volunteered for an organization called New York Cares. Teaching photography to kids in Brooklyn gave her a satisfaction with which her day job couldn’t compete, so she applied to the Peace Corps.

“Journalism in Albania is more politically driven,” Schwier said. “There’s an agenda for what they’re covering and why.”

But Schwier’s found that people are interested in her projects and also surprised at her attention to their culture—something that they take for granted, but the majority of the outside world knows very little about. Her current projects include a documentary piece about Roma Egyptians in Albania and another video that preserves local memories of communism.

Stay up to date with Schwier’s work by following her vimeo account.