WMU Home > WMU News >

WMU News

Students win broadcasting awards

Feb. 12, 2009

KALAMAZOO--Western Michigan University students, working with Kalamazoo Public School students, produced two documentaries as part of the Kalamazoo Youth Media Initiative that have tied for first place in a recent statewide competition.

The two documentaries won first place in the Michigan Association of Broadcasters' 2009 High School and College Broadcast Awards Competition. Both digital videos won in the Talk Show/Non-Fiction Long Form category.

"This is a great accomplishment for our student producers," says Dr. Jennifer Machiorlatti, associate professor of communication and a coordinating producer for the youth media project.

WMU senior Katherine Densmore of Augusta, Mich., won for her documentary "A Different Promise: The Evolution of the Eastside," while WMU senior Brian Lane of Ann Arbor, Mich. and graduate student Joe Johnson of Milwaukee won for their video "Our Neighborhood, Our Education: Stories from the Southside." Densmore and Lane are both film, video and media studies majors in the WMU School of Communication, and Johnson is a graduate student in counseling education and a graduate assistant at the Lewis Walker Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations.

Their awards will be presented during a luncheon at the Great Lakes Broadcasting Conference and Expo on March 11 at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Kalamazoo Youth Media Initiative invited high school students to come to WMU during the summer to learn how to shoot and edit video by working with WMU students. The students went out into the community last summer to record people's views about their neighborhoods, their educational experience and The Kalamazoo Promise college scholarship program.

Film screenings

People can see the finished products next week. The two winning documentaries will be given their premieres at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, in Room 2028 of Brown Hall on the WMU campus. The screening is free and open to the public.

Media contact: Mark Schwerin, (269) 387-8400, mark.schwerin@wmich.edu

WMU News
Office of University Relations
Western Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5433 USA
(269) 387-8400
www.wmich.edu/wmu/news