As discussed at the news division meeting in 2010, the festival committee has asked the division to formulate eligibility requirements for student and faculty entries. Specifically, the question pertains to what constitutes “broadcasting.” Does it mean the entry must be published to the Internet, presented to some other audience, or if there should be no “presentation” requirement at all. Vic Costello, festival chair confirmed this is a matter that should be decided by the division membership. The deadline for submitting the division’s formal eligibility requirement to the festival committee is in June. Therefore, we would like to discuss and resolve this matter at the news division at 9:15am, Tuesday, April 12.
The discussion of this issue at our business meeting last year was spirited but necessarily short. You are receiving this memo because you made some valuable contributions to the debate that need to be considered by all members of the news division. Please summarize your position in one or two concise sentences and email your argument to me by Friday, April 8 at sybril.bennett@belmont.edu. I would appreciate it if Peter Casella would then outline the options for the members and facilitate a vote to be taken at the meeting. If the proposal is adopted, it will be submitted to the festival committee. If it is rejected, we will solicit further input and offer an amended proposal and second vote. The process will be repeated until the membership adopts an acceptable presentation eligibility requirement.
With gratitude to Peter Casella for leading the charge on this,
Sybril Bennett
BEA Chair, News Division
Sybril,
In regards to the issue of festival submissions, I don’t see an overwhelming concern that Student work needs to have been broadcast, so long as it is done for class work. Some smaller programs do not have the opportunity to broadcast in the same way larger programs do. Also, beginning students may be compelled to enter work that has been given the opportunity to be broadcast.
I feel the festival needs to try to accommodate smaller programs better than what has been done in the past. In this light, it may be useful to create competition divisions based on department/program enrollment, project budgets, or other criteria.
As far as faculty entries, I think there is certainly a higher expectation of “broadcast” although this too should be used loosely. In this world of converging media, there are may new means of distribution of media. The Web has become a much more legitimate source of information than it once was, with many entities providing video via web only.
Comment by Tom Hallaq — April 7, 2011 @ 5:52 pm |