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 Feature, guests, J-School, Student

New Pollner Professor, Sally Stapleton, Teaches “The Value of the Moment”

As a third-generation journalist, Sally Stapleton grew up in the newsroom that her father owned in Kennett, Missouri. But her passion for journalism soon mixed with her desire for adventure, and she started working for The Tampa Tribune when she was 24 years old. Since then, her work has taken her to South America and Africa, and now to the University of Montana School of Journalism as the spring 2016 T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor.

photo of Sally Stapletion
Follow Stapleton on twitter: @sestapleton

Stapleton’s theme for her seminar, open to both undergraduate and graduate students, is “The Value of the Moment.” Coming from a full-time job as the managing editor for online and photography at The Day, she’s excited to have this opportunity to immerse herself in teaching. Over the course of the semester students will produce a portfolio of visual narrative stories worthy of publication. Stapleton uses one-on-one meetings with the students to figure out their unique skills and discuss their story ideas. “It’s about figuring out what makes you want to get up at four in the morning,” she said.

The power of photojournalism first hit Stapleton in 1984 when she saw pictures of the Ethiopian famine. Ten years later, she led a team of AP photographers in covering the Rwandan Genocide, an effort for which several members of her team won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995.

“I loved being on the ground and experiencing history right in front of my eyes,” she said.

Stapleton says she also loves stories told by people who stick with a story after it’s left the front page of the news. The biggest challenge for young photojournalists comes from successfully pitching their stories to an editor so that their work can be seen.

“There’s talent everywhere,” Stapleton said. She sees the J-school as part of this unlimited talent pool and also notes, “The facilities are great, the instructors are welcoming, and the minute I crossed the state line I knew this was going to be great.”

“I have good travel karma too,” she added with a laugh.

Whether or not the students have this kind of karma too won’t make or break their journalism careers. Stapleton says the options and opportunities are endless. The key to being a great journalist comes from being honest, trustworthy and keeping one’s work transparent.

Learn more about Stapleton’s recent work in Rwanda at http://www.greatlakesmedia.org

by Jana Wiegand
montanajournalism Events, guests, J-School, Student

Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Journalist to Lecture at UM

Journalist and novelist Ken Wells will deliver the eighth annual Jeff Cole Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 29, in the University of Montana School of Law Room 101. The event, hosted by the UM School of Journalism, is free and open to the public.

photo of Ken Wells standing on a mountain edge after a hike.
Wells also dabbles in blues and jazz guitar and songwriting and cooks a mean Cajun gumbo.

The talk, “Not Your Grandpa’s Business News: Confessions of an Accidental Business Journalist,” is part of a series of lectures honoring Jeff Cole, a 1980 UM School of Journalism alumnus who worked as an aerospace editor at The Wall Street Journal and died in a plane crash while on assignment in 2001.

According to the bio on his website (http://bayoubro.com/), Wells grew up in Bayou Black, Louisiana, where his father “was a part-time alligator hunter and snake collector and full-time payroll clerk for a local sugar mill” and his mother was “a homemaker and gumbo chef extraordinaire.” Wells began writing stories for his hometown paper when he was 19 years old and served as editor from 1973 to 1975. After graduating from the master’s program at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he worked as a reporter for the Miami Herald for four years and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his series on how an agribusiness drainage system was destroying the Everglades.

Wells joined The Wall Street Journal in San Francisco in 1982, covering a variety of stories across the West and writing the popular Page 1 “middle column” feature. He transferred to its London branch in 1990 and traveled extensively, reporting on the first Persian Gulf War and nonracial democracy in South Africa. Wells moved to the New York branch in 1993 and worked as both a writer and editor, with two of his reporters winning Pulitzers. While working in New York, he won the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ distinguished headline-writing award in 1994. He joined Bloomberg News in 2009.

Wells also has written five novels about Cajun culture in Louisiana and two nonfiction narratives. He has edited two anthologies of The Wall Street Journal’s front-page stories. He currently serves as an adjunct faculty at Columbia University’s graduate School of Journalism. He received an honorary doctorate from Nicholls State University and an induction as a Louisiana Legend by Louisiana Public Broadcasting in 2009.

In 2015 Wells left Bloomberg News to work on a book about the “social and cultural history of gumbo.” It is scheduled to be published in 2017. To read more about Wells, visit his website at http://bayoubro.com/.

Founded in 1914, the School of Journalism is now in its second century of preparing students to think critically, to act ethically and to communicate effectively. They were recently named as one of the “Top Ten” journalism programs in the country by the Radio Television Digital News Association. Check out the website at jour.umt.edu.

This news release is also online at:http://bit.ly/1nADY6G