This page is here to share with you a not-as-good-as-being-there, but better-than-nothing raw audio recording of a Communication Week panel, Friday, April 5...
It's intended as a supplement to note-taking by student reporters covering the panel for their news writing class.
Apologies to the professional journalists on the panel...The recording is every bit as bad as this cellphone photograph.
Communication Week's final session, introduced by professor James Collier (left), included: Tim Saunders, Lynchburg bureau chief, WDBJ7 (CBS); Deanna Perry, Radford News Journal (Main Street Newspapers, Christisansburg); Travis Handy, managing editor of the Southwest Times (Pulaski), and Jami Ryan, president, NextThreeDays, Blacksburg
This attached MP3 recording is weak in spots -- about what you would get if you left an inexpensive mp3 recorder running on a front-row seat. It starts just after the four were introduced. Tim had already begun talking about his job at WDBJ. All four are Radford grads. All are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or all three, in addition to their companies' websites, so you should be able to use the Web to get more information about them.
This panel was at 12 noon on Friday, after a separate panel in the same room at 11. Many students had to leave because of conflicting classes at 12.
Students who asked questions didn't always identify themselves and weren't always near the recorder, although one was closer to it than the panelists.
How's my memory? Check these notes against the recording:
- Tim works in TV news, but had this advice about news writing: "I think this school really knocked some sense into me... Work on your writing... people have no writing skills, and it's embarrassing."
- Deanna came to Radford rather than go to college back home on the other side of Virginia, then wound up settling here. She worked for the online community news group Patch.com back home before taking a shot at an opening with the small local newspaper chain in the New River Valley.
- Travis is managing editor of the recently reorganized Pulaski newspaper -- just a year after graduating from Radford.
- Jami said he combined majors in computer science and journalism at Radford at a time when most of his introduction to the Web came from the journalism courses. He later took full control of the dotcom events site he originally proposed to his former employer.