Monday April 23

This week we read about Media Convergence.  I believe it is a great idea to join the campus media groups together because I think it will motivate groups like R-TV who are not as developed to become bigger and better like the Sandspur and WPRK.  I think R-TV could learn a lot from the other campus media groups about how they are run and how they retain interest in their teams.  I think it would be good to create a PR and promotions office for all three campus media groups so they can bounce ideas off of one another and promote one another.  As we read in the reading, groups that do not mix seem to have negative thoughts towards the other groups because they think they get more support than their own group.  Creating media convergence will allow all groups to feel like they have support and to support one another.

Community Outreach Strategies for Media

This article gave us a lot of good ideas on how to reach out to the community. It was great to read this article the week before our community outreach proposals are due because it will give us some good ideas to discuss during class today. At first it seemed like sponsoring an event would not be realistic because our budget is probably not that much right now, but then I read the idea of giving the event some free advertising space for sponsor space at the event in return. Another good idea this article mentioned is to create a community dialogue, we could discuss topics in the area of Winter Park on R-TV and involve the community to be part of our shows. The 4th tip is to hold a contest or competition because everyone loves to win. Maybe R-TV could host a film competition and have prizes for "best drama," "best comedy," "best picture," etc. This would be a great way to get people involved because people would be giving content in order to try and win prizes. All in all we have to do our best to get the R-TV name out to the community because the more people that know about us, then the more people that will support us.

Downtown Community Television

The article about DCTV was very interesting. It was great to see the success and improvement of a television station. Sometimes I feel like working with R-TV is a waste of time because I feel like no one cares. This article gave me some hope that maybe one day it could get big. It was interesting that DCTV streamed shows that exposed political, social, and economical issues. Their "home" was the Lower East Side and Chinatown Manhattan and many people from this area are minorities and live in poverty. Many of these people do not have a say in mainstream media so DCTV was a way for them to express their feelings. We need to get people involved in R-TV that have a passion about something, people that want their voice to be heard. This article also mentioned how DCTV "trained tens of thousands of students in basic video production techniques. In addition DCTV helps local artists, community groups, and independent producers create television programming of uncommon integrity, creativity, and utility. Many of these community producers have gone on to successful careers as media educators, independent producers, and video artists" (137.) This reminded me of our community engagement projects because they engaged themselves in the community and it paid off. The community was really portrayed throughout this article. It is important that we create and reach out to the Rollins community and get them engaged in R-TV.

Volunteer Management

This weekly reading was all about gaining and retaining volunteers. Gaining and retaining volunteers is very crucial to campus media. It is often hard to get members to join a campus media group because people don't think they will have enough time to commit themselves to the group. Some people also do not like to join because there isn't any big incentive for them to join, they're not getting paid and they're not getting school credit. I think this class is a great way to get students involved in campus media because we are getting school credit for doing this. The campus media organizations know they can rely on the students in our class because we have to be involved in order to receive credit. Hopefully this class can make a big impact on campus media organizations and eventually the organizations can rely solely on volunteers again. As we read in the reading, it is important to make these organizations as structured as possible. Volunteers should be screened before being accepted into the organization and there should be a written policy manual that all members will follow. Also, it is important to give each member of the organization some responsibility so they feel important enough to stay in the organization. People will stay in organizations if they feel they are wanted and more importantly needed in that organization.

Weekly Post 3/26

This week was pretty productive. I went to the beginning of Hot Coffee in Bush Auditorium on Monday, but could only stay for the first 20 minutes because I had to work. I am going to finish up the documentary this weekend because it seems like a great documentary. I also went to the meeting with Susan Saladoff on Friday, which was awesome. I was supposed to assist Chris in filming the event because he had to leave for class at 11:00, but he decided to stay til noon. I did however help him up with setting up the camera and tripod. Lastly, I made a promotional flyer for R-TV this week. Lauren Silvestri informed me that she is having a tabling event tomorrow so I emailed her the flyer and she is going to print out copies at the Sandspur. Unfortunately I cannot attend the tabling event because I will be interning, but at least I will be getting information out about R-TV while I am not there.

You're Fired!

This article is beneficial for our entire class considering we are all now involved in campus media. I think a policy manual is a great idea and absolutely necessary for any type of campus media. If the rules and regulations are written down, there are no excuses why everyone shouldn’t be following them. It also makes firing someone much easier because there is no grey area of what is right and what is wrong. It is also true that an initial screening process would be helpful in campus media groups. Requiring all potential members to go through a screening process ensures that we would have a dedicated, hard working group.

This article also discusses ethical issues that campus media groups may face. Newspapers often have problems with plagiarism, but we should not have to worry too much about plagiarism at R-TV. What we do have to worry about at R-TV is the ethical content of the videos being streamed. We must ensure that there are no hurtful messages being portrayed such as racism or any other type of discrimination. Members who violate any ethical codes or any rules and regulations in the policy manual should be warned and then fired if it is a repeated action. Overall, discipline is key to a successful campus media group.

1 Newspaper, 3 Students

The article "1 Newspaper, 3 Students" by Mary Ann Pearson was very helpful for our community engagement class. She said the three skills to revitilizing a struggling program are recruiting, training, and retaining skills. I am working with Rollins Television doing promotions, however as of now there is nothing to promote because R-TV does not have any media. The most important skill for R-TV right now is recruiting. Mary Ann's 7 steps to recruiting are great ideas to get people involved in R-TV. I thought the first tip was one of the best ones, which is to "create an atmosphere that is fun and creative." Right now, there is not much to the R-TV atmosphere. If we could make the R-TV office more fun and exciting like the WPRK office than maybe we could get more people to want to be involved. Another tip I thought was a great idea was to advertise in the school newspaper. Our promotions team had already talked about using eachother's media groups to spread the word about events, but I think we could use the Sandspur and WPRK to spread the news that R-TV is looking for more people to get involved.

Once we finish the recruitment process for R-TV we can focus more on training and retaining. The most important thing in training and retaining is to keep it fun. People are volunteering to be here, so they don't want it to feel like a job. Being part of campus media should be a fun and exciting activity.