What should we Tweet? What can we tell the public? Should we release the shooter’s name? Has the victim’s family been notified? Where’s the press conference? Is the shooter dead? Are students safe? Should we show photos of a dead body? What resources are there to protect our journalists’ emotional and mental state?

These are all questions that rang around the room as 20 journalism and public relations students, along with some of The Daily staff, grappled with a realistic simulation of a campus shooting. The students were split up into groups of editors, visual journalists, reporters, and crisis communicators and each sector had their own qualified mentor. The groups were given a piece of paper containing different facts at each of the three phases. Some phases included updates that intensified the decision making.

Seattle police reporter for The Seattle Times Sara Jean Green assisted the reporter group. Green was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for Breaking News Reporting during the 2009 Lakewood shooting that left four police officers dead.

Assistant Metro Editor for crime and justice at The Times John de Leon helped the editors, including editor-in-chief of The Daily Sarah Schweppe.

“It was great to get advice from professional journalists on how to handle sensitive situations,” Schweppe said. “I also enjoyed the discussion of the importance of getting the most accurate information out to the public, even if it means being a few minutes later than other outlets. Making ethical decisions on a time crunch can be difficult, and I think the exercise helped us work through what that’s like.”

Schweppe related the simulation to decisions made last year at The Daily during the Cafe Racer incident. She said it was interesting to look back at how they handled it well and what they could have done better.

The crisis communicator group was joined by associate vice president of media relations and communications at the UW Norm Arkans, and by Commander Steve Rittereiser of the UW Police Department. The group had to prepare a press conference at the end and answer questions from the reporters. Rittereiser was able to provide valuable insight about how many officers would likely be at the scene and what areas would probably be taped off.

Alumna Kellie Cheadle (B.A., 1996), multiplatform content manager at KING-TV, worked with the visual journalists and was able to give recent advice from the Federal Way shooting.

“Covering breaking news is not for the faint of heart,” she said. “It requires quick thinking and solid judgment. I was very impressed by the students who participated. They asked great questions and knew how to use social media to gather and disseminate information.”

In the new world of journalism, updates are made by the second. Cheadle said the one question everyone should always ask in breaking news situations is ‘how do we know that?’

Former editor of The Times Mike Fancher did a debriefing at the end of the training on ethical issues. Emeritus professor Roger Simpson, who taught journalism ethics here for many years, was also present to offer advice.

A special thanks goes out to Diana Kramer, who planned and ran the workshop, and Professor Randy Beam, who helped with planning.

-By Erica Thompson

“When people tell me no, that just makes me happy,” Quade said. “That’s like, wow I have an adventure ahead.”

Photo courtesy Jess Estrada

Born and raised in Seattle, Jess Estrada (B.A., 2005) is passionate about her city. And Twitter. The social media outlet has allowed her to become an independent consultant and devote more time to her brand Fresh Jess.

Estrada began her blog titled Fresh Jess in 2008 while she was working as the events director for the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. She was planning business networking events, professional development seminars and workshops, and doing research about other events happening around the city. This is where her inspiration came from.

“I wanted to show a piece of Seattle that you wouldn’t necessarily find in Seattle Magazine or Seattle Met, which I’m a big fan of,” Estrada said, “but I wanted to bring a local perspective and a young professional voice.”

With the 30Fresh campaign that Estrada started to celebrate her 30th birthday and her fifth year of blogging, she has been averaging around 50,000 views per month from areas all around the world. With a strong base in Seattle, Fresh Jess has people visiting from New York, L.A., Brazil, the Philippines, and more.

Estrada devotes much of her success to Twitter, her favorite social media tool. Back in 2009, the Twitter community was much smaller and tight knit. She was talking to people at KING 5, The Seattle Times, and The Seattle P-I, and she was able to create solid connections and friendships.

“For me, being active on social media was an easy way to promote my work and our events, and also establish the Chamber, which back when I was working there was 127 years old, so it brought a fresh angle to a really old institution,” Estrada said. “So it was a parallel: I was growing the Chamber’s presence on social media, but I was also growing my personal brand in conjunction with that.”

In addition, Estrada is a natural networker, which has helped her gain a following. While being involved in many events around Seattle, Estrada also has gone to fashion week in New York almost every season for the last four year, frequenting blogger conferences and meeting other writers.

“I’m not sure how I fell into the fashion bucket, but I’m not complaining,” Estrada joked. “It’s a combination of real-life networking and social media networking and because that’s what I was doing at the Chamber, I feel like I’m really strong at forging those two together.”

One year ago, Estrada was finished working at the Chamber and left her job at Banyan Branch, a social media agency that she worked at for two and a half years, to become an independent social media strategist and spend more time working on her blog.

“I never really looked at it as a job,” Estrada said. “It was just something I really enjoyed doing. People think that Twitter and Facebook can be a time suck, and it can if you let it, but you can also be really smart about it and still be able to grow a following and be active on there without being on it all the time.”

Estrada is able to teach her methods to her clients, showing them how to use social media for their own purposes in an efficient, creative, and useful manner. She still sits on the fence herself about being a full time blogger because to make money, bloggers lose some control over content with advertising and sponsored posts that may not match up completely with the brand. With the 30Fresh campaign, Estrada has been able to give readers a deeper look into her life.

“It’s turning more into a lifestyle blog where people learn more about me and I feel like I’m being more authentic, genuine, and vulnerable,” she said. “It’s been received really well, my traffic has pretty much doubled in the last month or so and all I’ve been doing is interviewing my best friends, talking about my family, my dog, and nonprofits that mean a lot to me.”

Estrada (L) and Caroline Li (R) speak to Natalie Debray’s Communication class.

Estrada is also adding five new contributors, some being UW students, to bring in some new blood and fresh voices to the mix.

“I wanted to get involved because when I met [Estrada] for the first time, we talked about fashion: our favorite stores, new iPhone apps, etcetera; and I really liked her style,” said UW journalism student Courtney Liu. “It was a great opportunity for her to offer me and I was flattered… I’m very inspired by what she’s doing, especially since she used to be in my shoes as a communications major at the UW.”

Estrada said although she taught herself many of the social media mechanics, principles she learned in classes at the UW still come up in her everyday life.

“Communications is funny because you’ll be sitting in class wondering when the hell am I ever going to use these skills and I can’t tell you how many times after college where I’ve literally sat in a business meeting or at a talk and I can envision the class I learned it from,” Estrada said. “So I would say the basis of social media and how to use it was self-taught, but taking that a step further and the networking piece, the learning how to articulate yourself, feed the right messages and the right stories, that definitely stems from my time at UW.”

She tells students to start on Twitter. Put yourself out there and you’ll grow confidence and get active in the community. She also advises to not be afraid to reach out to mentors.

“When students reach out to me, I always say yes because I was in their shoes once,” she said. “I still need a mentor.”

With every day being different, balance can be hard, but she is able to set her own schedule. She has an editorial calendar and idea bank that she updates every time she has an idea for someone to interview, topics to talk about, restaurants to cover, or books to review. She is an avid reader and said her Twitter favorites are full of articles she wants to read.

“Even then, sometimes you just want to get off the computer and get a breath of fresh air,” she said. “Just being outside can be really great at inspiring content ideas.”

Her favorite sites to check every day are “Sincerely, Jules” because she can adapt the author’s California style to her own, “Because I’m Addicted” (who also produces the YouTube channel LEAF TV for living, eating, and fashion), and BuzzFeed and Refinery29 for her daily news visits.

Twitter will always be her number one go-to though. She tells her clients that each media platform is a different audience.

“It’s a great platform to talk to people,” Estrada said. “And when you are on the go and busy, the 140 character limit is great because it keeps conversations short and to the point.”

The Department of Communication welcomes Michael Delli Carpini, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, as the 2013 Thomas Scheidel Lecturer. His talk, titled “After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment” will be held Wednesday, May 8, at 3:30 p.m. in CMU 120.

Synopsis: The new media environment has challenged the role of professional journalists as the primary source of politically relevant information. Drawing on the argument I and Bruce Williams make in our recent book, I put this challenge into historical context, arguing that it is the latest of several critical moments, driven by economic, political, cultural, and technological changes, in which the relationship among citizens, political elites, and the media has been contested. Out of these past moments, distinct “media regimes” eventually emerged, each with its own seemingly natural rules and norms, and each the result of political struggle with clear winners and losers. The media regime in place for the latter half of the twentieth century has been dismantled, but a new regime has yet to emerge. Assuring this regime is a democratic one requires serious consideration of what was most beneficial and most problematic about past regimes and what is potentially most beneficial and most problematic about today’s new information environment.

Brief Bio: Michael X. Delli Carpini (Ph.D., Minnesota) is the Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His research explores the role of the citizen in American politics, with particular emphasis on the impact of the mass media on public opinion, political knowledge and political participation. He has written numerous articles, essays and edited volumes on political communication, public opinion and political socialization. Dean Delli Carpini was awarded the 2008 Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Award from the Political Communication Section of the American Political Science Association.

The public relations module at the end-of-the-quarter showcase. Photo by Leilani Lehman from the “Perspectives” newsletter.

The College of Arts and Sciences April 2013 “Perspectives” newsletter featured Professor Ralina Joseph’s Black Cultural Studies course and its partnership with the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM). This unique collaboration has caught the eye of many scholars around the University and continues to be a talking point among the community. This article highlights the four modules and their role in the project.

“Planning these projects was a true collaboration,” says Chieko Phillips (MA, Museology, 2011), NAAM curatorial assistant. “It was clear from the start that Ralina wanted this to be beneficial to all parties, including the museum. And it was. All the projects were things that the museum staff wouldn’t have had time to work on.”

To learn more, read the full article here>>

Geary while studying abroad in Peru.

Undergraduate journalism student Devon Geary has dreams of becoming a travel or international correspondent reporter, and she is well on her way.

Geary interned at TVW last quarter in partnership with the Olympia Legislative Reporting program, where she worked full-time delivering stories with a political focus to people’s television sets. But she found that political reporting is much more than talking about bills and laws – it affects people’s lives.

“I didn’t know that politics could be that interesting and it really can be,” Geary said, “because you’re hearing about House Bill 1254 and it’s about scrap metal or incarcerated parents and you go to this lady’s house and she’s crying on camera. You realize what the passing of House Bill 1254 would have done for her. And it hits home that it’s essential that we know about it, so that we can help pass bills like that.”

Geary has been hooked on journalism since she was a freshman in high school. She joined the newspaper committee at Shorewood High and wrote a dramatic story that also happened to involve someone crying during the interview.

“I didn’t realize the impact that journalism could have,” Geary said. “So yeah, I got hooked. It’s a drug.”

Not anticipating going to the UW because that’s where her older brother went, she was suddenly impressed by The Daily, which a student had brought in to her newspaper class, and she decided to go to Greek Preview. Although not part of a sorority anymore, it’s for a good reason.

“I was abroad for two quarters, so it was too long to jump back into it,” Geary said. “I studied abroad in Granada, Spain and Cusco, Peru. I’m obsessed with it, I want to go back.”

Geary is getting that chance again this summer as she was accepted to be a Foreign Intrigue student in Cambodia. While her first two study abroad experiences were more to work on her Spanish, this trip will solely be for journalistic purposes as she writes for The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh.

“I’m just ecstatic,” Geary said, “just edge-of-my-seat excited.”

While not speaking a word of Khmer, the capital cities own dialect, she will have a translator conduct interviews for her and write from their notes. She hopes to do some language prep work before she leaves and be able to speak enough to get around town by the end of the trip.

Find more information about Geary’s internship at TVW at the COMMunity Building blog and watch a reel with clips from her stories>>

Geary conducting an interview

Recent alumnus Brett Bowker (B.A., 2010) is bringing us his first film as a producer and cinematographer called “The Long Ride Home.” The film premiered last year at the Seattle International Film Festival earning a ‘Best of Fest’ selection, and also winning at the Santa Rosa International Film Festival VetsFest.

The special screening will take place in CMU 120 on Wednesday, May 15 from 6 to 8 with a Q&A session with Bowker and director Thomas Lee Wright immediately following the film.

Synopsis: In 2001, Kevin Mincio was an up-and-coming Goldman Sachs vice president with an office at 1 Liberty Plaza (next door to the World Trade Center) when the first plane hit the tower. In an instant, his life was transformed. He put his promising career on hold to enlist in the Army and was assigned at Fort Lewis, Washington, to America’s first Stryker Brigade. Deployed to Iraq, Mincio was assigned as a reconnaissance scout in the 5-20 Infantry Battalion. Though he would eventually come home, his Army buddy, Staff Sgt. Jesse Williams, would not be as fortunate. Sgt. Mincio made a vow to help care for Williams’ daughter and family, and later to do all he could for the families of fallen soldiers. With those goals in mind, he started the Team Jesse Foundation, and launched fundraising efforts like “The Ride,” a challenging bicycle trip of 4,200 miles over 95 days aiming to arrive at Ground Zero on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. “The Long Ride Home” is the story of that ride – and of Kevin Mincio’s personal quest to honor the sacred promise he made to a friend and fellow soldier.

Bios:

Brett Bowker earned his B.A. in journalism at the University of Washington in 2010. After graduation he traveled to Europe and China. Having worked in lacrosse reporting in Washington State for several years, he discovered the story of Team Jesse and spearheaded the transcontinental filming effort as producer and cinematographer. “The Long Ride Home” is his first film of the beginning of a promising career.

Thomas Lee Wright (director, producer, writer) has been making socially-conscious documentaries for more than 20 years, ranging from the definitive film “Trade Off” about the WTO protests in Seattle, which won the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Documentary at SIFF 2000 and toured with the International Human Rights Watch Festival, to an investigation of gangs during the 1992 LA riots called “Eight-Tray Gangster: The Making of a Crip,” which the Hollywood Reporter called “more sympathetic and frightening than any film on the subject.” It also premiered at the American Film Institute Festival and aired on the Discovery Channel.

Please register to attend this free event >>

Last Thursday marked the fourth annual Spring Fundraiser event in the form of a silent and live auction at the brand new Husky Union Building. The Department of Communication has raised $176,000 to date at past fundraising events, and in one night was able to raise more than $37,000 – every dollar going to students.

In just the past few months, fundraising money has supported the Olympia Program’s 40^th year, a weekend trip to L.A., a winter study abroad in Rome, Death over Dinner, a new debate program, a day of service at NAAM, launching the CL program, playing a signature role in the Seattle Asian American Film Festival and the Women Who Rock conference, and bringing more than 30 alumni to campus to meet with students for mentor lunches and Career Kickstart events. Three students (undergraduate Deanna Isaacs, Ph.D. student Luis Padilla, and MCDM student Amber Cortez) spoke at the auction describing how they have flourished with the opportunities made possible through donated funds.

“Without the University of Washington’s Communication Department and the resources it provides to students, I’d just be another collegiate with dreams,” Isaacs said, “instead of standing here telling you my story of success.”

Faculty, alumni, and guests bid on several items, including a boutique brewery package, a Yakima wine weekend, and Seattle Mariners memorabilia, while enjoying spring rolls, mini sandwiches, and sipping on wine. There was a raffle for a cruise and many also got their photo taken with Dubs. Oh, and did I mention the mountain of candy in the center of the room, donated by All You Can Sweet?

Alumnus and 2010 Hall of Fame inductee, Terry Tazioli kicked off the live auction offering Seattle Sounders tickets, an improv team-building workshop, and an Italian dinner cooked by none other than himself. And what could have been the most generous moment of the night was the Fund-A-Student bid, where $3,000 was raised on the spot, with an anonymous donor matching that amount.

We want to extend a thank you to everyone who donated and continues to support the Department – faculty, staff, volunteers, alumni, item donors, and guests.

“The money that you are raising is not a charity,” Padilla said. “I would say it’s an investment. You are investing in people that are trying to make this world a little better.”

-By Erica Thompson

http://youtu.be/gfDvSEWYDOM

Photos courtesy of Jeremy Lange.

Jeremy Lange, a senior communication student, described his educational path as a “passionate stumbling accented with a lot of luck, curiosity, and drive.” The first stepping stone: a 110 camera.

“My grandma gave me a 110 camera when I was 10 years old, so it started back then,” Lange said. “I did yearbook and the school newspaper in high school and just continued with that.”

Lange attended Seattle Central Community College where he achieved an associate degree in commercial photography, a program he defined as “stellar.”

“I went through that program and decided that I wanted to do something more than just the photography aspect of everything,” he said. “So I pursued communication here at the UW.”

Although applying during a competitive year, Lange was accepted. He said his goals haven’t necessarily changed, but he’s looking to expand his tool belt.

“Out there in the bigger world of professional land you have tools,” Lange said. “One of the tools I have is that I’m a pretty good photographer – I understand composition and lighting and how those things need to be delivered to a client for production. Here I’m learning more about the distribution avenues, crafting messages, audience reception, and things of that nature, which is what I was hoping to learn while I was here.”

Last quarter, Lange took a public relations course and was able to work with two nonprofits: the Burke Museum and Blue Earth Alliance. This sector is his main clientele right now and Lange said his career has built upon itself, with his nonprofit work leading to work with campaigns for Seattle politicians.

“When I first got out of school I was focusing on the wine industry and that totally fizzled unfortunately,” he said, “but I got experience and was able to work with clients that led to other clients.”

More recently, Lange has begun working with a video production house that he said was a natural transition from still images, while being fully aware of the tricky changeover from a passion to a career.

“A lot of people actually will lose their passion for their art or their medium,” Lange said. “No matter what, when you start getting paid for it and commissioned to do what people want you to do, it loses some of the romantic luster.”

An avid backpacker and climber, Lange takes a lot of landscape and outdoor photographs, but he said he realizes that everyone has a digital camera these days and can download such images. Conscious of the fact that he can’t make a living “shooting pretty pictures of mountains,” he is finding an avenue that marries his passion with a job.

“You have to be okay with working in a similar field,” Lange said. “That’s kind of part of the reason I didn’t pursue becoming a full time photographer, because I noticed that happening and I was like ‘well what else can I do that still incorporates what I love about what I’m doing with photography,’ which is always going to be message delivery. It’s always how do you get people to understand and see things a certain way that you are trying to convey to them visually.”

Karen Bryant (B.A., 1991) has been there since the beginning, helping pioneer women’s basketball as a local Seattleite and overlooking the Storm as they brought home two WNBA national championships.

As CEO and President of the Seattle Storm, Bryant has had a job now for 17 years that she couldn’t even have dreamt of having as a little girl, simply because it didn’t exist.

“I long wanted a career in sports since it’s been a passion since I was 3 years old, or at least as long as I can remember,” Bryant said. “Part of the reason I went to school for communications is quite honestly because outside of coaching, which I knew I didn’t want to do, journalism was really the only way I saw women interacting with sports.”

Although she played many sports growing up, Bryant’s love for the game of basketball exceeded the rest. Beginning her playing career at a community college and later at Seattle University, Bryant transferred to the UW, playing Division I and drawing big crowds to Hec Edmundson Pavilion.

“As a local girl I always wanted to go to the UW,” Bryant said, “so it was great that I got the chance to not only play basketball there, but go to school there.”

In hopes of combining her love of the game and ambitions for a career, after graduation Bryant began a job in project management for an architecture firm where she learned valuable business skills, but soon after made her dreams a reality.

“I think what really came through was that I had played the game my whole life, I grew up here, I knew people in the basketball community…and my name just kept coming up,” Bryant said.

While also coaching high school and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) girls teams, Bryant was recruited as a volunteer for the American Basketball League’s Seattle Reign, the women’s pro league that preceded the WNBA, to hang flyers in gyms and use her reputation to help spread the word. And the rest is history.

Bryant was hired on as the director of operations for the league in 1996, where she later served as general manager, and in 1999 was recruited by the Seattle SuperSonics to lead the organization’s effort to secure a WNBA expansion franchise. In 2008, the Seattle Storm became an independent organization, naming Bryant chief executive officer.

“I just really love it,” Bryant said. “I find great meaning in what I do. For me, being the CEO of the Storm is a great combination of my love of sports, my love of the Northwest, and it’s also an opportunity to be challenged.”

Still trying to figure out how to position women’s basketball as a viable and profitable business, Bryant oversees both the business side of the organization and the basketball side, while being the main person of contact to the owners and the go-to spokesperson. While every day is different, Bryant and her team have four constant goals: win championships, be profitable, be active in the community, and to foster a really collaborative and learning environment for their employees.

“You’re always trying to improve, and personally I just want to continue to enjoy my time,” Bryant said. “If I ever wake up and it feels like it’s time to hand the baton off to someone else, then I certainly will, but for right now I really enjoy what I do and I’m really passionate about what we do here.”

Although welcoming a daughter into the world almost five years ago has forced Bryant to reprioritize some aspects of her life, she said this is not a career to her, it’s a lifestyle.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t get out of bed every single day and can’t wait to get to work and I feel really fortunate,” Bryant said. “I have said that since the day I started working 23 years ago. I absolutely love what I do and you will spend more time at work than you do at home, so the greatest gift you can give yourself is to figure out how to marry your passion with your career aspirations.”

-By Erica Thompson

Seattle Storm Timeline:

1946: The NBA was founded.

1996: Fifty years later on April 24, the WNBA was established by the NBA. Teams: Charlotte Sting, Cleveland Rockers, Houston Comets, Los Angeles Sparks, New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury, Sacramento Monarchs, Utah Starzz.

1999: On June 7, the WNBA selected four more teams to be added to the league, bringing the total to 16, but calls for a ticket pledge of 5,500 season ticket holders by October. Ten days later, Full House Sports and Entertainment names Karen Bryant as the Senior Director of WNBA Operations. On October 15, Seattle announced that it secured 7,200 deposits, 1,700 more than necessary, to meet the requirement and they were officially announced as a new team on October 22.

2000: Seattle announces that they will be called the Storm in January and the unveiled their logo a couple weeks later.

2002: Starting with a couple rough seasons, the Storm made the playoffs for the first time with rookie Sue Bird.

2004: The Storm won their first championship after five seasons, with Coach Anne Donovan becoming the first female coach on a WNBA Champion. They also became the first major professional sports team in Seattle to bring home a championship in 25 years.

2008: The Seattle Storm became an independent organization, upon the relocation of the SuperSonics. Three local businesswomen, Force 10 Hoops, stepped forward to purchase the Storm so that the team would remain in Seattle, becoming one of six independently owned franchises in the WNBA. The same year, Bryant was named the Storm’s chief executive officer.

2010: The Storm clenched their second championship.

2012: The Minnesota Lynx narrowly won the deciding third game in the Western Conference Semifinals to knock the Storm out of the running with a 73 to 72 win.

2013: What’s next for the Storm? They start their 2013 season on May 26 in Los Angeles, unfortunately without star player Sue Bird who will be out for the season due to knee surgery.