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.

hearst logo

“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 Feature, J-School, Student

Student Spotlight: David Detrick, Journalist & Entrepreneur

Ten years ago, if you asked UM Senior David Detrick what he would be doing today, he might have still pictured himself writing, but with his words grounded in music rather than in the news. He played with bands in Los Angeles, California before moving back home to Seattle, Washington. Detrick founded his own band in Seattle called Saving Arcadia, and he wrote all of the lyrics to the Green Day and NOFX style songs.

Detrick got his first taste of journalism at the South Puget Sound Community College (SPSCC) in Olympia, WA. He had been majoring in Political Science when he started working at the school’s paper The Sounds as a reporter and writer. The more he learned about the political system, the more he realized that wasn’t his dream career. “I don’t want to work for these people,” he said. “I want to expose these people.”

Detrick sports a Griz Lee hat and gets ready for a Griz basketball game on December 22nd, 2015, as part of Griz Vision.
Detrick sports a Griz Lee hat and gets ready for a Griz basketball game on December 22nd, 2015, as part of Griz Vision.

With his newfound passion for journalism, Detrick had his eyes set on the School of Journalism at the University of Montana. His acceptance to the program also came with a Western Undergraduate Exchange Scholarship, based on his academic success at SPSCC.

The outdoor photography and sports journalism opportunities, ever popular in Montana media, aligned perfectly with Detrick’s interests. On February 11th, 2015, the Montana Kaimin published a feature-length piece that he wrote about a UM alumni football player who got signed to the Seattle Seahawks.

This past year Detrick photographed Griz football games and also filmed Griz and Lady Griz basketball games as part of a program called Griz Vision, which gives students professional experience with broadcasting sports live.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Detrick said. “I like being behind the camera.”

Outside of academics, Detrick started his own business in 2015 called Griz Lee, which he called “a Montana inspired clothing line with an attitude for anyone with a sense of humor to enjoy.” Around campus, most students are familiar with the Griz Lee logo, featuring Bruce Lee’s head on top of the body of a grizzly bear doing Kung Fu. Detrick gets a real sense of pride when he sees Griz Lee stickers slapped onto water bottles or laptops.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’d come up with T-shirt ideas, crazy ideas,” Detrick said, “But I never did anything about them.”

Yet he was determined to follow through this time around. Detrick pitched his product to the University Center Bookstore, and now says Griz Lee items sell out faster than they get re-ordered. Detrick has also spread his business around Missoula, thanks to social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, as well as word-of-mouth. Now he’s answering orders from people as far away as Tennessee, which he suspects has to do with the Memphis Grizzlies, a professional basketball team.

In April 2015, Detrick won the Dean’s Award for his outstanding performance in Journalism. As a senior this year, he’s only been taking Journalism classes, and he knows that more doors open as he continues to gain experience—not just for him, but also his nearly four-year-old son.

“The sky’s the limit now,” Detrick said.

By Jana Wiegand
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