Students Explore Careers in Journalism Up Close

Groups from several different classes traveled to “Radio City,” the studio of TMJ4, throughout the week leading up to winter break to learn about the ins and outs of broadcast journalism.

This field trip is part of a new initiative within the district to give students more real life exposure to careers that they might be interested in.

“As the cost of higher education reduces the margin of error students have to make mistakes with planning and degrees, it is imperative for K-12 education to provide authentic opportunities for students to explore the activities that actually occur in these career pathways.  Many students assume that they will like working in a radio station or in a laboratory, or operating room doing surgery, but until they actually experience the environment in which this work occurs, it’s hard to determine fit solely on coursework or limited experience that they may have,” GSD Superintendent Dr. Gary Kiltz said.  

“By providing these types of opportunities, students now have another critical piece of information to be more deliberate in planning for post-high school.  If students walk away realizing that they could never work in an environment like they observed, this is as positive of an experience as one where they fall in love with the work environment,” he added

One of the career pathways that the district wanted to give students an insight into was communication and media, and so a committee was formed.

“In October a community advisory team came together including one work group for communication and media professions.  This work group identified two activities including the trip to Radio City and WTMJ,” Kiltz said.  “The work group was fortunate to have Vince Vitrano as a participant.  He was willing to lead the tour at Radio City and make sure that students had a great experience to learn about career opportunities in media and communications,” Kiltz said.

Once students arrived, the tour began with an introduction by Vitrano about the architecture and history of the building, and then he led the students all around Radio City.

In the WKTI 94.5 Country. radio station room Vitrano explained the entire set up, information on how the studio is able to run on its own when they are on air with their technology and then proceeded to show the students the WTMJ  a.m. morning show, where host Jeff Wagner was live. In the WTMJ morning show a majority of the material is impromptu. In addition students were shown the Radio Newsroom, Control Room, and the Main Newsroom that was broken up into multiple sections.

In the Control Room, students watched as the Producer constantly reworked the setup of the show.  On Tuesday, students in Speech and Communication got to see what happened when Vitrano and his co-anchor spent too much time talking about one story: a whole human interest story was cut out of the program.

“My favorite part of the tour was when we went into the back room where we saw the Producer of the news cast controlling everything that was happening on live TV and I always admire the backbone of an operation,” junior Ismail Ademi said.

The amount of people who work behind the scenes on one broadcast was one thing Vitrano wanted students to take away from the trip.

“I wanted to make sure students saw how many people with varying skills work together to put on a newscast. At home, you only see the people on TV. The reality is, far more people than our on air staff are involved in creating our product on television and our digital platforms,” he said.

Lastly, students were given a tour of the main set. Vitrano then explained the crucial aspects of his job and how he prepares to be on air.

“My favorite part of the tour was just being able to see how the entire newscast operates. It gave me a view of what it’s like to be on live television and what it takes to perform at the top level,” senior Aaron Xiong said.

Before the live show started, students were given time to look around, take pictures and ask questions.

“I was surprised by how large the room of where they shot the news was,” Ademi said.

Vitrano enjoyed doing his broadcast in front of the students.

“I was most excited to show the students our television studio and the control room during a live broadcast of the noon news. I’ve been working in television for more than 20 years, and it still amazes me how everything comes together,” he said.

Overall, the trip was a positive experience for everyone involved.

“The student groups on the tour were fantastic. I was concerned, because I don’t usually give tours to more than 10-15 people at a time. These were very large groups, but everyone was quiet when we were on the air and respectful of our folks doing their jobs. Students asked some very good questions as well,” Vitrano said.

Most students enjoyed the entirety of the tour, and some even realized they might enjoy a career in journalism.

“I really liked getting a tour of the studio. It was really neat to see all of the behind the scenes of it. It was also really interesting to see them do a show live,” senior Molly Zehr said.  “I do think that a career in journalism would be interesting, and it was really exciting to see an aspect of that career when we were at TMJ4.”