Media College News

West Virginia University journalism students are playing their part in the state’s flood relief efforts by helping one community rebuild its high school journalism program.

This summer’s floods devastated Richwood High School in Nicholas County, and its award-winning journalism program is now struggling to get back on its feet.

Author and photojournalist Alysia Burton Steele spent nine months and traveled 2000 miles to capture the stories in her latest book, “Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom.” In September, Steele shared those stories, a written collection of oral histories of the Mississippi Delta’s beloved “church mothers,” with a packed audience at the College’s Media Innovation Center.

Steele set out on her journey with a desire to feel more connected to her own grandmother by meeting some of her contemporaries, listening to them and sharing their stories.
Steele’s presentation was an incredible journey of civil rights, humor, love and loss, as told through the eyes of the women in her book.

WVU alumna Margie Mason (BSJ, 1997) was on a seven-hour flight from Jakarta to a small city called Tual near the eastern edge of the Indonesian islands. When she arrived, the Associated Press Asia regional writer would meet hundreds of men, mostly from Myanmar, also known as Burma, who were so driven to earn their livelihood that they followed recruiters — who claimed to offer decent pay — onto Thai boats where they were enslaved. She wanted to change that. So she and her team told their story and by now more than 2,000 fishermen have been freed. Read the incredible true story of investigative journalism that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize at WVU Magazine online.

Margie Mason and her colleagues will discuss the project during their presentation, “Seafood from Slaves: From Investigation to Pulitzer Prize” on Monday, Oct. 10 at 7 p.m. in the Mountainlair Ballrooms.

With mid-terms fast approaching, it is normal for students to experience increased stress and anxiety. As part of the Wellness Workshop Series, The Carruth Center will be offering a free Workshop designed to help students manage these feelings in healthy, effective ways. The workshop will be on Tuesday, 10/4 from 6:30-7:30 in CPASS Room 101 and is open to all students. Students will learn about evidence-based strategies to help control worry, relieve tension, and reduce the overall impact of stress on their lives. For more information, please contact The Carruth Center at 304-293-4431. Additional seminars will be offered throughout the semester, so please visit the website for the full schedule!

See the attached flyer for more information.

For a year-and-a-half, alumna Margie Mason (BSJ, 1997) and three of her Associated Press (AP) colleagues fearlessly documented the harsh treatment of enslaved fishermen working on a remote Indonesian island.

Together they uncovered the stories of more than a thousand men who were locked in cages and abused to supply seafood to supermarkets and restaurants in the U.S. and around the world.

In keeping with the growing interest in sports, we now have a new student organization on campus: Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM). The AWSM news release about our chapter may be found at http://awsmonline.org/west-virginia-joins-15th-active-awsm-student-chapter/ .

Special thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Oppe, who was approached by students to begin and lead the new chapter as its first faculty advisor. According to Elizabeth, they already have plans to bring a number of women professionals to campus.

Ahrens started at Hyundai as the company’s director of global communications and was later promoted to vice president of global corporate communications. Out of thousands of Korean employees at company headquarters, he was one of fewer than 10 non-Koreans and the only American.

In his book, “Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unintended Hilarity Inside a Corporate Titan,” Ahrens recounts the three years he spent at Hyundai — traveling to auto shows and press conferences around the world, and pitching his company to former colleagues while trying to navigate cultural differences at home and at work.

Are you a graduate student interested in entrepreneurship?
Have you ever wanted to learn more about technology transfer at universities?
Do you want to establish connections with industry partners?

If so, then please join us for lunch on October 6th from 12-1 in Room 201 Erma Byrd, Health Sciences, for the inaugural meeting of the “the WVU TEC” (Technology and Entrepreneurship Club).

Barbara Fleischauer, the long-time House of Delegates representative from Monongalia County, is speaking to students about the 2016 election in West Virginia as well as how journalists should cover elections and state politics on Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 11:30 am in Martin Hall 201. This event is free and open to WVU students. For more information contact Assistant Professor Alison Bass.

Dr. S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, will present “Media Effects In the Age Of Interactivity: Affordances that shape the way we think and act” on Friday, September 30 at 11:00 a.m. at the Media Innovation Center (Evansdale Crossing, 4th Floor).

Dr. Sundar is founder of the Media Effects Research Lab at Penn State and a world-renowned researcher in social and psychological effects of online communication technology and human-computer interaction (HCI). His research is supported by the National Science Foundation, Korea Science and EngineeringFoundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Services, among others. In recognition of his latest research, Dr. Sundar will outline his groundbreaking Theory of Interactive Media Effects (TIME) and interact with the audience.