Just For TV Teachers

Most kids have a heck of a time producing a news story or feature. It’s not easy. When I was in high school, I struggled all the time with my newspaper stories, first as a reporter, then as the sports editor. Finding the story was not as hard for me as telling the darn story. What’s my angle? Where do I start? I need a better lead. How do I wrap it up? What to include, what to leave out.

So as a teacher, I constantly look for ways to boil it down for my students, to make it not so overwhelming for them. One way that works for me is to ask the kids to tell me ONE THING I don’t already know. That’s it, really. Does your story say anything I haven’t heard before? Is there a piece of information I didn’t have access to until I watched your report?

It sounds so simple, and that’s the point, to take the pressure off and to focus the student on reporting new information. By asking them to find something for their audience that will be unique or new, you challenge them to go beyond the surface. At “Camp STN” every summer, we discuss what we see in many high school stories. They tend to be a mile wide, but only an inch deep.

Another way to issue the challenge, and at the same time give direction to your young journalists, is to say, “Tell me something I don’t know, take me somewhere I can’t go.” If they accomplish either or both of those, that depth that is often lacking will suddenly become a goal in every story they do.

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What will the future hold for high school TV when every kid becomes a broadcaster, whether they are in your class or not? Let’s face it, many of them already are going outside the confines of our classroom structure to get their videos “out there” for anyone and everyone to see. Youtube has forever changed the rules of the game, and as high school broadcast teachers, we better figure out what to do about it, or what to do with it.

How big is Youtube? Consider this: According to the latest “Shift Happens” report, conducted in conjunction with The Economist, more video was uploaded to Youtube in the last two months than if NBC, CBS and ABC had been airing new content 24/7/365 since 1948.

The number of unique visitors to NBC, CBS and ABC each month is 10 million, collectively. Youtube, Facebook and MySpace get 250 million unique visitors each month. None of those sites existed six years ago. What will it be like in another six years?

Other things we need to know as we walk into the classroom today:

*The average teen sends 2,272 text messages each month
*Newspaper circulation is down 7 million in the last 25 years.
*In the last five years, unique readers of online newspapers are up by 30 million
*In February of 2008, John McCain raised 11 million dollars for his presidential bid. In that same time period, Barack Obama attended NO fundraisers. Instead, he raised $55 million via online social networks.

If those things seem unrelated, we need to look closer. Everything about the way we send and receive information has been turned inside-out in the last five years.

The deep implications convergence has for our broadcast journalism classes goes beyond just building a website to feature your daily announcements, produced under the watchful eye of the teacher. It won’t be long before the most popular student-produced programs in the nation have nothing to do with the school’s broadcasting department. Don’t believe me? Search Youtube and see how many teen-produced videos, not filtered by adults, are already generating plenty of traffic. More people see teen videos on Youtube in an hour than will see your show in a month, maybe even a year.

Remember how teaching reading “across the curriculum” was all the rage ten years ago? Now the question is, can we afford to not teach “broadcasting across the curriculum” in the near future? If we don’t instill some standards, and create a new culture of media literacy that includes training teens as soon as they walk into our high schools, then we better prepare to sit back and watch Youtube fill up with student-produced content that will pay no heed to standards or ethics of any kind.

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I am the director of “Camp STN,” a workshop for broadcast teachers which began in the summer of 2000. Last fall, my camp partner, aka “Martha, my wife,” and I hosted a weekend conference for high school broadcasters here in Springfield, MO as a way to promote our camps while providing some fun, educational experiences for about 200 kids and teachers.

This year, the “Four-State Conference” continues thanks to Drury University and the broadcast leader there, Brian Shipman. While the 2008 conference was at a hotel, and lasted 2 1/2 days, Brian has trimmed it to a one-day event, and the response was great. He had to shut down registration about two weeks after it opened, and he will greet about 270 teachers and kids tomorrow.

Regional events for scholastic broadcasters make sense. Print people have been doing them for years. They allow schools to stay closer to home, avoiding the expenses of more ambitious trips, especially in tough economic times. They also allow the hosts to get creative. Drury offered three “pre-conference contests” in Broadcast Journalism, Music Video and Movie Production. Teams received prompts, audio tracks and such on Wednesday, and they will turn in their finished products tomorrow morning, 72 hours later, when they check in. There were also mail-in categories for news, feature, humor and such.

Another thing Brian is trying–unlimited entries, and unlimited numbers of participants on each team. Let me clarify. If I entered a team in “Spot Feature,” I could enter two kids, or four kids, or whatever. No micromanaging here. We could enter several teams if we wanted. A music video crew could include 15 kids if you want. Judges will just look at the final product, and evaluate its effectiveness no matter how many worked on it. Of course, we know too many cooks spoil the stew, so I am guessing most teams will not be “over-populated.” My Spot Feature team is just a photographer and reporter.

The conference will also feature presentations in the AM and PM, and get this–Drury is providing all three meals, including a Golden Globes-like awards ceremony that takes place during dinner. The day begins at 9 a.m. and wraps up at 7 p.m., time for most schools to return home if they choose, thus avoiding the cost of a hotel. Conference registration is a whopping ten bucks per person.

The Four-State Conference is working here in the midwest because it’s in the fall, when we still have time to provide motivation for our seniors, something that is almost impossible in the spring. It’s also an alternative to the large, national convention hosted every November by JEA/NSPA, where yearbook and newspaper people run the show.

Regional events make sense now more than ever. They can help stir up excitement for broadcasting, and thus more excitement for the STN national convention in March, the one big event truly designed for scholastic broadcasters. If you have a region where teachers are excited about broadcasting, you might give this approach a thought.

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