Professor Julie Scott, right, discusses a sports journalism class with students Mark Morgan, center, and Chris Riddlemoser in the new control room at the KUID TV station on Thursday. Photo by Jake Barber/Argonaut.

The transition in news from newsprint paper to digital media has been a gradual process and the University of Idaho is making necessary changes to keep up.

This fall, students studying broadcasting will be able to use a new digital television station after a renovation project, which has taken years to come to full fruition.

KUID station manager, Kris Freeland, said that transition was necessary after the FCC mandated that starting Feb. 2009, the 1,760 full-power broadcast stations in the United States must go entirely digital, eliminating the analogue signals picked up by antennas.

“We have a lot of students come through here and this will be a great opportunity for them,” Freeland said. “This will make them more marketable because now they can walk into the job with experience using equipment their competitors may not have.”

Broadcast teacher Denise Bennett said teaching students to use HD technology doesn’t change the basic rules of broadcast, but it does require students to approach their shots differently.

“Everything from the size of the screen to the makeup has to be considered. The resolution is great so that if you do something to close up you can see every pore in their face,” she said. “The most important thing is the person behind the camera, not the camera itself. You can teach a monkey to type Hamlet, but that won’t make him Shakespeare.”

In compliance with the regulation the television station has cleared out its old video equipment, some which was more than 40 years old, for digital.

In addition to the new station, broadcast students will also have access to cell phone-sized camcorders, which can be used to capture video quickly.

Julie Scott, a journalism teacher, said that the recording device is another example of the “new wave in journalism… where reporters are being asked to shoot and photographers are being asked to write.” 

Scott said that as media innovations continue to evolve, both reporters and editors are being asked to take on an escalating load of responsibilities, which involve both taking crash courses in web design and meeting shorter deadlines for online publications.

“There was a time where the idea of something this small, something you could buy at a department store, was ridiculous,” she said. “Now whole news spots are being shot this way and we are able to get our news faster than ever before.”

Reporters are not set back by these new requirements and now consider it routine to pack an arsenal of technology that includes a variety of recording devices and satellite phones for instant communication.

According to A.L. Alford, the editor and publisher of the Lewiston Tribune and the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, keeping up with the changes can be a daunting task, but he said it has been beneficial to the news business.

“As time goes by, as years go by, we presume we’ll see more and more interest in and reliance on the electronic online newspaper, and that’s good, not bad,” Alford said. “More will read us, in part or in the whole, on mobile devices, and others rely on laptops.”

	1. 27-08-2008 15:01
	Times Are A'Changin' Yes - that equipment was 40 years old or even older - I know from first hand experience. Certainly time for a change. These changes will benefit all who use KUID. Happy to see this happen! Registered

haggart

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