montanajournalism Awards, J-School, Student

J-School Alum Makes Top 10 List For Hearst Radio Awards

Emily Proctor talked with Vietnam War veteran Roger Cox for an hour and a half with the recorder running. She cut these 90 minutes down to three minutes and thirty-seven seconds of Cox’s own narrative, not adding a word of her own. The final piece, “Roger Cox’s Vietnam,” was one of two stories she submitted to the 2015 Hearst Journalism Awards Program. On February 3rd, 2016, the Hearst Radio News and Features competition ranked Proctor 9th in the nation.

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“I had an ah-ha moment with this piece,” Proctor said. “It totally changed what I wanted to do with my career.”

Over the course of the interview Proctor probed deeper into Cox’s memories as a marine in the Vietnam War. As she edited the piece, she listened to the moments where Cox’s stolid replies began to falter. Proctor felt the power of Cox’s voice and the emotion it carried without needing any extra narrative.

Assistant Professor Jule Banville, who worked with Proctor on the story as part of her Intermediate Audio class, watched Proctor’s interest in radio grow. “He was just really honest with her about what happened there and what he thinks about it now,” Banville said. “And because what she produced was his voice telling his story, it had so much more power for her than any journalism she’d done before. It just clicked.”

The story aired on the podcast Last Best Stories, and the full interview can be accessed through the Veterans History Project.

Since graduating last May, Proctor’s been working on some independent radio projects, including a Montana-themed piece about the modern cowboy. This summer she will be doing more radio work in Alaska and potentially connecting with J-school alum Ruth Eddy, who works at a public radio station in Ketchikan. However, Proctor’s next major goal involves going to graduate school for audio design, hopefully in Germany or New Zealand, she said.

When Proctor studied abroad in Athens, Greece, she shot a short documentary about the smoking culture and its importance to their society. She also tried to produce some audio stories, but said, “The language barrier made it hard to do good radio.”

Proctor addressed this issue again in the second story she submitted to the 2015 Hearst Awards, a piece called “Language Is No Barrier For Senior Companions.” The story centers on Frank Havlik, a native from the Czech Republic who now lives in Missoula and volunteers as a Senior Companion. Coming from Stanford, Montana, Proctor was conscious of the fact that her Montana audience wasn’t used to hearing a heavy Czech accent, so she took care choosing the most enunciated sound bites.

“I wanted to cover all my bases and make sure people understood the story,” Proctor said. She added her own voice-over narrative and provided a complete transcript when the story aired on MTPR on April 28th, 2015.

“I’m pretty insanely proud of her,” Banville said. “She went on to intern at Montana Public Radio, so she’s got some news chops too, and I’m so glad the judges recognized her talent.”

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.

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