Hopkins radio delivers broadcast news format
By Shannon Jackson · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · May 6, 2006
A number of students apply to Hopkins interested in different mediums of journalism. With no journalism major offered, some students explore journalism as an extracurricular activity and decide to study an alternative subject. Still, others are motivated to bring journalism to life at Hopkins. For senior Jen Chang, Hopkins' lack of a journalism major has motivated her, in her final semester, to create the University's radio news broadcast: WJHU News.
Chang was inspired by Professor Stanford Carpenter in the Anthropology department to start WJHU News in March of this year and has been airing an hour-long segment every Sunday evening since.
The show reports strictly Hopkins news and began with only 15 minutes of actual news reports with 45 minutes of "filler time," which included music and ads. The program has evolved to be 15 minutes of news summary followed by interviews with student groups or rebroadcasts of lectures. Prior to Chang's creation of the news show WJHU was strictly a music station for Hopkins with no talk opportunities available.
"Because WJHU is internet radio, we don't have a lot of listeners, so the show is really a labor of love for Jen and I," said Katherine Brewer, a junior who has been working with Chang for nearly a month, putting together the arts and culture portion of the broadcast. Both share a passion for broadcast journalism and have experience in the field. Chang is currently working with WYPR's Maryland Morning, a weekly news program on Fridays at 9 a.m. hosted by Sheilah Kast, a former ABC news anchor. Brewer interned last summer with the John Batchelor show on WABC in New York.
Chang acredits a lot of her broadcast training to her work with another broadcast radio show, The Mark Steiner show. When she first started the program it was a lot of work for her to handle the reporting by herself. She had to learn how to interview and how to use basic editing software. She also had a problem with figuring out how to deliver a strong story and over time learned to adjust her writing style for greater impact. "I had to learn to throw out the rules I learned in English class and take risks [with my writing]," said the Neuroscience major and Anthropology minor said. She faced some difficulty in this due to her background in science and technical writing, but has managed to surpass these challenges.
Both Brewer and Chang feel that radio is an important news outlet for the community. "I find broadcast journalism, especially radio, to be such a dynamic medium and I think we can put together stories that you can't hear anywhere else," Brewer said.
Leads for the WJHU News stories come from other news outlets on campus as well as from the student council and flyers. Chang and Brewer attend the events or interview the people their stories are about and then must compress the data into 5-6 minute clips. "For example," Chang said, "If I'm doing a story on a lecture I'll sit through the whole lecture and pull out key quotes to make a news script."
"Once we have all out raw recorded data we spend several hours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Digital Media Center cutting clips and recording our own voices," Brewer said. "Then on Sunday at 6 p.m. we go to the WJHU radio station in McCoy Hall and play the news program."
Chang began this endeavor apprehensively, "When I first started I didn't want people to hear me do the show because I didn't think I had any credibility with just me reporting," she said.
With Brewer now on board, an English major and Writing Seminars minor, Chang is more confident about the show's reporting. Chang will graduate in May and Brewer will be taking over the show.
Brewer is encouraging students at Hopkins to get involved with the show next year. "The great thing about radio is all the unique voices you can hear," Chang said. "My calling is in public service and I feel that my interests in medicine and public radio are not mutually exclusive or as bizarre as some would think." She is looking into a career in public radio and will be working this summer with Soundprint Media, which produces weekend documentaries for American Public Media.
Chang's advice for students interested in any form of journalism is that, since Hopkins offers no journalism major, students should, "find a way to make one and make your own path." She encourages students to take risks without fear. Chang said, "It's worth taking a risk, especially if it's something you learn to love."