Beyond the Anchor: Students and Broadcasting Opportunities

Abstract

Anchor. That's what most of my broadcast journalism students say when first ask them, do you want to do in TV It's a perfectly reasonable reply given the glamour, fame, and money involved in anchoring. It's also understandable because most students - like most other Americans - come to understand TV news through the star of on-air talent, a system that places the anchor at center stage, supported by a cast of less visible reporters and totally invisible producers, writers, assignment editors, camera operators, editors, directors, technical directors, and so forth. It's pretty difficult to want to be something you never see. A traditional broadcast journalism curriculum doesn't help matters much. In fact, to a great extent it aggravates this warped perception of TV news - to the detriment of students. The problem lies in the structure of college broadcast journalism programs. In most, students learn a wide range of skills -- writing, reporting, producing, shooting, editing, production - one class at a time over a period of years. The various skills are presented to the students as difficult, sometimes tedious, tasks rather than as fullfledged alternatives to anchoring. In the absence of an attractive and realistic alternative. the students retain for too many years their unrealistic aspirations of anchoring in a major market. Only at the end of their college years can students enroll in a senior-level newsroom/classroom course that pulls all the diverse skills together. And only then is the job of anchor demystified and put into perspective, along with all the other newsroom jobs. It's my experience that, after taking all the prerequisite classes, most students entering the senior-level newsroom/classroom course still want to anchor. But they often change their minds after working in an actual newsroom. Then their choices come to include a variety of positions: Writer. Producer. Assignment Editor. Or, sadly: I really don't like the news business. By the time a student has reached that conclusion, four to six years of a life have been wasted. But there is an alternative way and believe a better way - for students to learn about broadcast journalism What if students, instead of entering the newsroom/classroom only at the end of their college years, could work and learn in a newsroom environment in their first broadcast journalism class as well? What if they could immediately discover the wide range of career choices available to them and see how each newsroom job is inseparably linked to the other? What if, in their first television news class, students could perform each newsroom job and test their skills, determine their preferences, and find out what they like and don't like about television news? What if they could learn the basic principles of broadcast journalism sound, ethical news judgment; clear, accurate, balanced, concise writing; quality shooting and editing; matching words with pictures -- under the real-life pressures of newsroom deadlines and not in the artificial atmosphere of the classroom? What if they could immediately learn for themselves if they like the deadlines and pressure? In the spring of 1998, we tried such an approach at California State University, Northridge, in a class titled Editing for Broadcast. We took students who had never before enrolled in a TV news class and introduced them to the chaotic, multifaceted world of television news. This instant immersion marked a radical departure from the incremental approach of traditional curriculum. In fact, it turned the traditional approach on its head. The first class The first and only classroom session of Editing for Broadcasting lasted about 30 minutes. After greeting the 19 neophyte newsmen and -women enrolled, told them they faced a dual challenge this semester. First, they would have to learn the principles of running a television newsroom and producing TV newscasts. …