By Henry Pree
Walter Medcraft is the cartoonist for UM’s independent student newspaper, the Montana Kaimin. Medcraft is also an artist and a senior art/journalism student.
Fellow UM student Henry Pree interviewed Medcraft recently after his art show and below is a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Continue reading “Journalists on Social Media: Q&A with Walter Medcraft, Cartoonist at the Montana Kaimin”By Luke Schmit
Fritz Neighbor started as an art major at the University of Montana. In his sophomore year of college, he took Reporting 270, which changed his life forever. He enjoyed journalism so much, he changed his major and set his goal of becoming a sportswriter. He did not graduate from UM but did join the local daily newspaper, the Missoulian, part-time in 1987. Then, he took a full-time job at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in 1988 and then moved to the Billings Gazette in 1991. Finally, he returned to the Missoulian again in 2004 and left in January of 2015. Now, Neighbor works for the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell as a sports editor. Fritz has 2,059 followers on Twitter, which is the only platform he posts to. But, he does enjoy laughing at TikTok and catching up with friends and family on Facebook. The most likes Fritz has seen on one of his tweets is 47 and that included a record 24 retweets for him.
Neighbor recently chatted with current UM student Luke Schmit over email. Below is a transcript of their conversation, edited slightly for length and clarity.
Continue reading “Journalists on Social Media: Q&A with Fritz Neighbor, Sports Editor at the Daily Inter Lake”By Brooklyn Grubbs
Joshua Burnham is the digital editor at Montana Public Radio. He manages the station’s social media pages, website, podcasts and email newsletters.
Burnham recently answered emails from UM student Brooklyn Grubbs about how he uses social media in his work. Below is a transcript of their conversation, edited slightly for clarity.
Q: How do you keep your personal interests, opinions and biases from intersecting with the interests of running a social media page? How do you choose what other pages to interact with?
A: Everything you do on social media has to be guided by your organization’s mission and an understanding of the audience you’re trying to serve. Those are the guardrails you have to maneuver between, and they’ll be different depending on where you work.
What I always tell the reporters is to behave like a journalist on social media. It’s ok if some personality comes through. I can express an opinion about things like proposed state flag redesigns, or daylight saving time, or the best beer in the state, without sacrificing any journalistic integrity. Part of what you have to do on social media is to be social and build relationships, and nobody wants to build a relationship with a bot. Just stay between those guardrails.
I don’t really have any method for deciding what pages to interact with. I’ll tag and share things posted by shows or podcasts we run. We collaborate with other news organizations, so I’ll interact with them. When someone publishes something good about us, I’ll share or comment. And on Twitter, I’ll share any piece of Montana news important to our audience that we’re not covering. But, again, within those guardrails.
Continue reading “Journalists on Social Media: Q&A with Montana Public Radio’s Joshua Burnham”
Montana Journalism 