Journos lead change at Collegian
The Massachusetts Daily Collegian underwent a change to a primarily digital format this academic year. With this transition, printing would only take place twice a week and an increase in digital content was implemented. The Collegian’s staff chose to improve their website in order to provide their readership with easily accessible content. Journalism majors Devyn Giannetti, Editor in Chief, Hayley Johnson, Managing Editor, and Phil Sanzo, Sports Editor, helped spearhead this change.
Giannetti ‘18 explained the choice to switch their publication format to accommodate the ever changing journalism field.
“While the change to going primarily digital was a real tough decision to make, this year's Collegian staff thought it was necessary to create a more modern and fresh atmosphere through our new website and rebranding, which was really spearheaded by Phil Sanzo and Maxwell Zaleski,” said Giannetti. “In my opinion, the field of journalism always requires innovation and the thought of how you can make your publication better, and that was our main goal.”
Johnson ‘19 feels that the change was a successful one.
“We are really happy with how the Collegian’s transition to a primarily digital news publication has gone. The change creates a lot of potential for more multimedia production,” said Johnson. “Next year we’re looking to take more videos, do more podcasts and really keep up with the digital direction journalism is going in.”
Journalism Department Tour
Journalism student Maria Manning ‘19 worked with Olga Kyle to create a °360 video tour of the journalism department. The tour is interactive with video clips placed in areas around the department with information on the department’s curriculum, facilities and student groups. Take a look inside our multimedia classrooms, state of the art broadcast studio with a control room and the radio broadcast room. The tour also features videos of journalism alums Aviva Luttrell '15, Taylor Snow '14, Audie Cornish '01, Liz Strzepa '14 and Mackenzie Maynard '15 who talk about how the journalism department has impacted their careers.
Social Justice Journalism
During the fall, the Social Justice Journalism Course students took a mass incarceration course in Hampshire County Jail. The course was taught by Raz Sibii and Shaheen Pasha. Read more about the pilot class here.
In fall 2018, the SJJ course will focus on the topic of 'whiteness.' Instead of doing stories about race that focus on people of color (such as, 'What does it mean to be a person of color in America?'), we will examine issues of race from the perspective of 'whiteness': What does it mean to be white in America? What exactly is 'white privilege'? How do 'white people' think of themselves and their place in American society? What do people make of 'political correctness', What does it mean to be a white liberal in Western Mass./America, etc.
Students
Bryan Bowman ‘18 was named a UMass Rising Researcher amongst five others at the university. Bowman co-authored the article “Exploiting Black Labor After the Abolition of Slavery" with Professor Kathy Forde. Their research was focused on the relationship between the press and unlawful practices that influenced today’s South and its political, economic and social systems. The article was published in February of 2017 in The Conversation, an online publication. The piece was then published again by other outlets such as U.S. News & World Report and the Associated Press.
Alvin Buyinza ‘19 focuses his journalistic and extracurricular work on newswriting and photojournalism. Becoming Assistant News Editor for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian during the spring of 2018, Buyinza also dedicates his time to photographing students of color on the UMass campus.
“What I aim to do is to essentially represent people of color, especially African Americans, through photography. I want to represent them in a very dynamic and interesting way,” Buyinza says. “Lots of African American organizations, black fraternities and multicultural organizations go to me for photography. I reach people mostly through my Instagram page, Buyinza Photography.” He is also a photographer for the UMass Commonwealth Honors College. Buyinza will intern at the Christian Science Monitor in Boston this summer.
Henry Brechter '19, the 2018-2019 news editor of the Amherst Wire, interviewed CNN's Jake Tapper about being the UMass 2018 Commencement Speaker.
Internships are the best way to gain experience and produce professional journalism while you are still a student. Take a look at where some of our students have interned this year or will intern this summer.
Serena McMahon - NPR Washington, DC; Mark Dunphy, Henry Brechter - Boston Globe Sports; Morgan Hughes - WGBH, Boston Globe; Jackson Cote - Boston Globe; Lauren Crociati - Improper Bostonian; Maria Manning - Chronicle; Stephanie Murray - State House News; Nicole DeFeudis - Boston Globe Magazine; Alvin Buyinza - Christian Science Monitor; Mollie Walker - New York Post; Caeli Chesin - NEPR Media Lab; Carly LaCross - Express Yourself; Samantha Zaino - Sean Smith Marketing.
Alumni
On October 12, 2017, we held the 2017 Alumni All-Star Night where seven alumni came back to campus to share career advice with our students. Thank you to Kori Chambers '03, Stacey Shackford '99, Aviva Luttrell '15, Daniel Rodriguez '15, Frannie Carr Toth '04, Dan Wetzel '94 and Maria Sacchetti '91.
Watch alum Audie Cornish '01 talk about how she got her start in radio at 91.1 WMUA and realized her journalistic potential with the help from professor Nick McBride.
Rosemary Kelly '13, Director of Audience at the MIT Technology Review, was selected to take part in the Poynter Institute's 2018 Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media.
Mackenzie Maynard '14, reporter for NBC 7 San Diego, has been nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding performance for the news story Plane Strikes Neighborhood.
Faculty
Our faculty had an eventful 2017-2018 academic year. Shaheen Pasha was named a 2018 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow. As a fellow, Pasha’s research will focus on prison education systems and how universities could help implement a journalism curriculum for inmates within local prisons. In addition, she co-authored a book, wrote multiple opinion pieces on the #MeToo movement and wrote a narrative on her personal search to find a women who helped her family years ago in Brooklyn, NY.
Rodrigo Zamith also had a busy year, publishing research on Quantified Audiences in News Production in Digital Journalism and having it be named one of the most interesting pieces of social research in 2018 so far.
Maddie Blais was honored and accepted the Samuel Minot Jones Award for Local Literary Achievement from the Jones Library in Amherst on April 26, 2018.
Kathy Roberts Forde was elected to the 2018 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) publications committee. Forde also worked alongside Rising Researcher Bryan Bowman ‘18 to conduct research and write this article for the Washington Post on how slave labor built the state of Florida.
Jennie Donohue will join our faculty as a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Public Relations Curriculum in fall 2018. She will teach Principles of Public Relations and Writing for PR. Students can register for these classes on SPIRE.
Guest Speakers
Take a look at some of the guest speakers we have hosted in the department and in our classes this academic year.
Kate Fagan returned to UMass Amherst to discuss her book What Made Maddy Run in front of a packed room of about 100 people in the Massachusetts Room of the Mullins Center on September 21, 2017. Fagan had first visited the Journalism Department in the fall of 2015 to discuss her reporting for the ESPN piece Split Image.
Daniella Zalcman visited Brian McDermott’s Visual Storytelling class to discuss photo stories with students.
Senior NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski visited the Journalism department on March 1, 2018, as a guest in the Issues in Sports class taught by Cristina Daglas. “Woj” packed the Ziff Gallery as he discussed how to build relationships to create sources and how he worked his way up to being a popular NBA news source.
On March 22, ESPN's Seth Wickersham discussed his reporting, finding and getting sources to talk and the backlash he faced after he wrote a piece about the New England Patriots withthe Issues in Sports class.
Former Las Vegas Review-Journal Editor in Chief, Mike Hengel, talked to Journalism Ethics classes about the sale of the journal.
Alum Eric Athas ‘08, senior editor for digital training at the New York Times, talked about his career path, which also includes the Washington Post and NPR; his current work at the Times, and ethics, with a special focus on digital.
Maddie Meyer, Associated Press photographer, visited Brian McDermott’s Visual Storytelling class to talk photography and photo stories with students.
Women in Sports Media Symposium - April 13, 2018
Share The Experience: The Second Annual Women in Sports Media Symposium took place on Friday, April 13, 2018. This full-day event, organized by seven journalism students and professor Steve Fox, attracted over 100 people to its morning and afternoon sessions. The two keynote speakers were ESPN PR's Keri Potts and A-10 Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade. The event also featured a panel of ESPN editors, Jena Janovy, Cristina Daglas and Christina Karl, and a one-on-one interview with Adrienne Matt, founder of the Adrienne Matt Women in Sports Journalism Scholarship.
After lunch, seven UMass sports journalism alumni from the class of 2016 and 2017 discussed how they emerged into the sports industry and their experiences as females in a male dominated industry. A networking session with current students and guests concluded the day. The event was made possible by a grant from Women for UMass Amherst and was co-sponsored by the McCormack Department of Sport Management and the Department of Communication.
Read more about the event on the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.
Bare Knuckles Film Festival - May 2, 2018
Visit Amherst Wire TV to watch the short-form documentaries on everything from endangered New England species to an a capella group that were produced by students for the inaugural Bare Knuckles Film Festival. The documentaries were created as projects for the Short-Form Documentary course.
KTA Initiates and Scholarship Recipients
Congratulations to the 2018 KTA initiates and journalism scholarship recipients!
KTA initiates: Melissa Myers, Hannah Depin, Hannah Browne, Erica Weiss, Matthew Zabik, Mica Reel, Rachel Ayotte, Stuart Foster, Alexa Rockwell, Natalie Connors, Olivia Jones, Sylvie Fan, Stephanie Murray
The Dandley Internship Awards: Maria Manning, Will Soltero
The Scott J. Bacherman Internship Awards: Michaela Chesin, Morgan Hughes, Carly LaCross
The Thomas Family Scholarship: Samantha Zaino
The Adrienne Matt Women in Sports Journalism Scholarship: Mollie Walker
The Lawrence Dana Pinkham Study Abroad Scholarship: Justin Risley
The Megan S. Daley Scholarship: Hayley Johnson
The Rhonda Swan Memorial Scholarship: Cynthia Ntinunu
Chester Weinerman Journalism Scholarship: Jackson Cote
Robert Crowley Memorial Prize for Excellence in Collegian Column Writing: Jessica Primavera
Curtin Memorial Scholarship Fund: Henry Brechter
Congratulations to the Class of 2018!
View photos from the Senior Brunch and SBS Senior Celebration on our Facebook Page.