Arthur Slater distributed the first edition of the Optimist at Childers Classical Institute

in August 1912 and since that momentous day, students on this West Texas campus have pro-duced award-winning journalism.

In 2008, the Optimist remains, but student me-dia at Abilene Christian University has evolved into something Slater might never have been able to imagine. Where before student journal-ism was limited to the pages of a newspaper, new technology and new platforms to reach our audience bring the opportunity and necessity of evolution, just like the professionals.

This special section is not an attempt to boast, but to explain and explore the evolution of ACU student media. From its history on the printed page to its future on the World Wide Web. From the con-struction of the JMC Network Student Media News Lab to the structure of the student staff. From our dedicated advisers to the generous gifts that made this all possible. We are the JMC Network, and we proudly present the future of ACU student media.

Special News Lab Dedication Section

By Michael FreemanManaging Editor

In August 1912, student Arthur Slater of Clyde dis-tributed the first copy of the Optimist to Childers Classical Institute students. He worked on the first issue as a report-er, copy editor and typesetter. Ninety-six years later, the kind of dedication shown by Slater still materializes in modern Optimist staffs.

The history of student me-dia at ACU begins with that first issue Slater made, which mostly featured religious commentary, encouraging let-ters to the school and brief news pieces. For reasons un-known, he named the paper the Optimist. The name stuck as students joined to help produce the monthly newspa-per. Slater was the first editor for issues produced on the old campus on North First Street. D.L. Petty, who later died fighting in World War I, became the paper’s second editor the following year.

A few years later in May 1916, the first student year-book was published. Named

after the com-mon West Texas cactus with pear-

shaped fruit, the Prickly Pear, complete with 125 pages and a royal purple front cover, began being printed annually, high-lighting student groups and events. In the early 1920s, class editions of the Optimist were made as a competition, where each class of students elected a temporary staff to put together one issue of the paper.

As student media at ACC continued to grow on campus, so did its influence off cam-pus. In November 1919, mem-bers of the Optimist and Prick-ly Pear formed the Press Club and joined the Texas Intercol-legiate Press Association, the oldest collegiate press asso-ciation in the nation.

Although the newspaper was primarily an extracurricular ac-tivity, students devoted their time and effort to it, includ-ing Wendell H. Bedichek, who served three years as editor dur-ing 1921 to 1924—still the lon-gest tenure in school history.

In 1925, the staff moved out of the administration building and into the science building, thus beginning a trek around campus that included produc-ing the paper from Daisy Hall, Sewell Auditorium, the base-ment of McKinzie Hall, Cham-bers Hall, the basement of the

Library, in a barracks building where Christian Village Apart-ments currently stand, in the basement of the Campus Cen-ter and finally to the Don Morris Center in 1978, for 20 years on the third floor, and now in the new JMC Network Student Media News Lab on the second floor.

The constant moving did not pose the only obstacle to the staff; a few controversies arose along the way. On March 15, 1932, a faculty publications committee urged that a popu-lar column, called Hoots of the Owl, be canceled. The unsigned column began running in 1928 and was written by a variety of staff members. The article featured an owl who said he roamed the campus, spying on people. But the committee said the column “had become too juvenile and undignified for a college newspaper.” The col-umn was canceled. But a few weeks later, the Optimist start-ed a new tradition on April 1 called the Pessimist.

“The Pessimist was a hap-py tradition for many years,” said Charlie Marler, professor emeritus and senior faculty member of journalism and mass communication. “It was buffoonery, satire, slightly

veiled personal attacks and silliness all meant in fun.”

Early editions of the special issue had columns printed sideways and upside-down, and featured stories, often ridiculing faculty members and administrative policies. The edition died out when the potential for libel became an issue in the early 1980s.

In September 1941, the Op-timist began printing its issues on campus and continued un-til the late 1960s when the paper was shipped to various nearby towns, such as Stam-ford and Anson, before the Abilene Reporter-News took over the job.

The newspaper and year-book were not the only forms of student media on campus. In August 1950, on-campus ra-dio station KACC-AM began its inaugural year. The station’s first manager was Bill Teague, future president of the univer-sity. Three years later, KACC started serving live and record-ed broadcasts, ranging from political reporting to light-hearted comedy, to Abilene and surrounding areas within a 40-mile radius. Control rooms and equipment were located in the basement of McKinzie Hall and in Sewell Auditorium be-

fore being moved to the Morris Center in 1978.

As different media ap-peared on campus, so did an official department of jour-nalism. In September 1955, Drs. Heber Taylor and Regi-nald Westmoreland directed the creation of the Depart-ment of Journalism, which was spun off from the English Department, but the depart-ment was short-lived. In June 1964, Taylor and Westmore-land left ACU, resulting in its closure four years later.

But the department would not stay dead for long. Marler, along with Dr. Chapin Ross, Dr. Lowell Perry, Dr. B. Edward Da-vis and Clark Potts worked to establish a mass communica-tions degree within the Depart-ment of Communication, an im-portant step in the process of building a nationally accredited journalism program.

“We needed journalism and mass communication,” Mar-ler said. “The church needed it; the Christian universities needed it, and the secular me-dia needed more Christians on their staffs because they had good work ethics and they were committed to truth.”

After the degree was added, student interest shot up from

ACU community expects more from staffBy Sondra RodriguezStudent Contributor

The new broadcast and pub-lishing capabilities of the JMC Network Student Media News Lab will improve the final product for readers on and off campus.

The newsroom is equipped with all new computers for video editing, page designing and pub-lishing news, said Cade White, in-structor of journalism and mass communication and director of the photojournalism program.

The newsroom also includes a Podcasting room.

Outside the podcast room, the rest of the newsroom runs on the standard university software, but also has added Adobe Creative

Suite 3 Design Pro software. This includes InDesign and Photoshop for publication design and pho-tography purposes and Final Cut Pro—used for video editing.

“All of these are industry-rel-evant tools,” White said. “What we have right now might be as nice as or even nicer than what students will see in the profes-sional world.”

White said because of the expe-rience students will gain through working in such an environment, he expects ACU graduates to out-shine others, post graduation.

Dave Hogan, instructor of journalism and mass communi-cation, also said working in the newsroom will better equip stu-dents for a career in journalism.

He said publications will be look-ing for students with the broad range of experience this facility will provide.

“The news business is chang-ing and multimedia is becoming much more important. I think it’s important for students to under-stand how to run a video or pro-duce a podcast, as well as how to write a story in the traditional way,” Hogan said.

Because drastic technological advances were made for JMC stu-dents, readers will see changes in the final product. Readers are the ones who take an extra few seconds twice a week to grab a copy of the Optimist while tread-ing through the masses after Cha-pel, and the ones who continue to

grant reporters insight into their lives and routines for the sake of a story.

“A certain event will hap-pen and they pick up on it right away, like the noose incident. I hadn’t heard anything about it until I picked up a copy of the Optimist that day,” said Gregory Martin, junior interdisciplinary major from Cibolo.

Martin was unaware of the construction and opening of the newsroom but now anticipates the content and quality of this year’s issues with the upgrades.

Aundi Brown, senior ac-counting major from Wichita Falls, said as a student outside the JMC department, she thinks the newsroom will have a posi-

tive effect on both students and the newspaper.

“I know journalism is a hard field to get into, and hopefully this newsroom will give them the edge they need to break into it,” Brown said.

Ben Fulfer, junior sociology major from Memphis, Tenn., agreed with the decision to im-plement and practice multiple forms of media in JMC students’ education.

“Converged media makes ev-erything quicker and easier for both the department and read-ers,” he said. “It’s all you see in professional journalism now. This will definitely help out grad-uates in that are once they gradu-ate and get out there.”After 97 years, student media continues

Donors provide funds for student media roomBy Daniel Johnson-KimEditor in Chief

Dr. Charlie Marler returned to Abilene Christian College in the fall of 1974 to find an Abilene “newspaper man” eager to re-ignite the ill-equipped mass com-munication program.

Marler, professor emeritus and senior faculty member of the Journalism and Mass Communi-cation Department, came back to Abilene after completing his doctoral studies at the University of Missouri, and the publisher of the Abilene Reporter-News, A.B. “Stormy” Shelton, donated $10,000 to equip the program with 15 “state-of-the-art” IBM Se-lectric typewriters for reporting and copy-editing courses.

Before Shelton’s generos-ity, journalism students at ACC had only pens, paper and four dated, manual typewriters to record and report campus news — Marler said the IBMs were a gift from above.

“The 15 IBMS were delivered fairly early in the semester; it was like Christmas morning,” Marler said.

Fast forward to 2008, and it is

Christmas again for journalism students at ACU as the Morris Center is now equipped with cut-ting-edge technology and a JMC Network Student Media News Lab. But beneath the new toys and fresh paint on the walls lies the faith of foundations and the individual donors willing to put their wallets behind the JMC De-partment and its vision to rethink and revamp how journalism is taught to prepare students for the ever changing industry.

“It had to; it just had to hap-pen,” said Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the JMC department. “I just be-lieved that we would eventually make it happen.”

The university approved a proposal Dr. Susan Lewis, assis-tant professor of journalism and mass communication, wrote for the construction of a converged student media news lab in Janu-ary 2001. After approval, the JMC faculty estimated it would take nearly $1 million to make their dream of a converged me-dia news lab a reality. The only problem was figuring out where to find the funds.

“The university has a policy that doesn’t allow you to begin

a construction project until it’s fully funded, and we were living under that policy,” Lewis said.

The first victory in the battle to raise funds fittingly came from The Shelton Family Founda-tion, named after the same West Texas philanthropist and former Abilene Reporter-News publisher who gave Marler his “state-of-the art” typewriters. The Board of Trustees for the foundation begun by the late Shelton ap-proved a challenge grant the ACU development office applied for in 2004. The foundation initially committed to give $250,000 to the department’s project.

“They said we’ll give you a cer-tain amount of money if you raise ‘x’ number,” Bacon said.

After the Shelton Foundation’s initial donation, several individu-al donors and other foundations began to join the JMC dream. The Ethics and Excellence in Jour-nalism Foundation and the Zoe Foundation followed in the Shel-ton Foundation’s footsteps. In addition to the foundation funds, Russell C. and Jane Varner Beard of Abilene, and Paula and Sterling Varner of Wichita, Kansas, and other individual donors made

substantial gifts to the cause. But the funds were still not all there for construction to begin in the five-year time frame the depart-ment had initially planned for.

In the end, it was the foun-dation named for Shelton that put forth the funds to begin the planning, construction and fine tuning of the converged media news lab, putting the grand to-tal it donated to the project at close to $900,000 of the more than $1 million project and ending the fundraising effort in February 2007.

“I kind of look at it as it all hap-pened when it was suppose to happen,” Lewis said, adding that although it took the department longer than expected to raise the funds, the longer time period was a blessing in disguise; without the delay the newsroom could not have been equipped with the technology that was available when construction began.

David Copeland, president of the Shelton Family Foundation, said the foundation’s donation is miniscule when compared to what the money was used for and what students will be doing in the new newsroom.

“The real focus really ought to be on the university and what they’re trying to do because that’s really the hard part,” Copeland said. “To make a grant is in the big scheme the easy part; the hard part is taking the money, building the right facilities and really equipping the students with state-of-the-art knowledge as they go out in the world.”

Although the donors are hum-ble, Bacon said the department will be forever indebted to the list of donors for their kindness and courage to support this project.

“It was essential to provide [students] with what they need,” Bacon said. “I didn’t see it as op-tional. To me having this facility and using it well is a great oppor-tunity and it’s also a absolutely essential opportunity.”

The IBM typewriters Shelton provided increased the quality of Marler’s students’ education and training. Bacon was one of those students, and in 2008, Marler hopes students also turn their “Christmas morning into producing great journalism.”

Pg. 2

1912

Arthur Slater worked as a reporter, copy editor and typesetter to distribute the first edition of the Optimist.

1921

Wendell Bedichek begins his eventual three-year tenure as Optimist editor.

1916

The first copy of the student yearbook, the Prickly Pear, debuts. It was named after the pear-shaped fruit of a common West Texas cactus. The yearbook had 125 pages and highlighted student groups and events.

1957

The Optimist office moves to Chambers Hall. The office has been housed in several buildings during the years.

Pg. 11

1950

KACC-AM first goes on the air with first general manager Bill Teague, future ACU president.

about 25 students enrolled in the program to about 125 stu-dents within a three-year peri-od. By the mid-1970s, a profes-sional journalism curriculum was formed in the Division of Mass Communication.

In 1978, Optimist editor Ron Hadfield and his staff moved from the musty base-ment of the Campus Center lined with lime green shag carpet to the third floor of the newly built Morris Cen-ter. With the move came new technologies. The staff began using Compugraphic’s Uni-fied Terminal System video display terminals instead of typewriters. Despite the new system, articles still needed to be printed out on film, cut up with X-Acto knives, run through a waxing machine and placed on paste-up sheets in order to be put to press.

“It was a lot of busy work,” said Doug Mendenhall, in-structor of journalism and mass communication and Op-timist editor in 1980-81 and 1981-82. “Most of it was done over two days.”

The staff grew busier as the Optimist added a second weekly edition on Tuesdays in August of 1981. Before, is-

sues ran only on Fridays.“In some ways, it was a

lot harder,” Mendenhall said. “But in some ways, it made things a little more sensible. You wouldn’t have to wait a week to report on certain things. It certainly helped in that way.”

The mid-1980s saw a pleth-ora of progress in the field of broadcast student media. In November 1983, ACU-TV be-gan broadcasting on-campus talk shows; the next year, it produced Visions, a video yearbook. On June 2, 1986, KACU-FM, which had changed its name from KACC to stay in concordance with the univer-sity’s name change in 1976, began broadcasting; two years later, the on-campus television station KUF-TV7 went on air.

In September 1990, the JMC department received a Macintosh SE computer lab complete with 17 computer stations. Four Macintosh IIex machines and several laser printers were then installed in the Optimist office, and staff members started to use QuarkXPress system software to produce the paper. Student media had reached the digital age, and on May 1, 2002, the

Optimist launched its Web site www.acuoptimist.com.

“The Internet was creat-ing a whole new medium,” said Cade White, instructor of journalism and mass commu-nication and director of the photojournalism program. “For the visual journalist and former photojournalists, it really presented an amazing opportunity to add some very powerful tools to your tool-box—the storytelling tools of sound and motion.”

Since then, the Optimist switched its focus to conver-gence, the combination of print, audio, video and online journalism. ACU student Jamin Blount, ’05, helped set up the Optimist’s server, which was stored in White’s office, for the hosting of online videos.

“It was very cool, very excit-ing,” White said. “There’s a lot of technology out there that really makes this a lot easier.”

However, as the server aged, it slowed down, forcing the Op-timist to look elsewhere to post videos online. On September 7, 2006, the Optimist began pub-lishing news videos on www.youtube.com/acuvideo.

After the renovation to the Morris Center in 2007, the JMC department now of-fers KACU-FM, a 33,000-watt National Public Radio station serving West Texas, KUF-TV, a LPTV station broadcasting to the Abilene area, the Op-timist online, a Web site that features articles, YouTube videos and podcasts, and the Optimist, a twice-weekly broadsheet newspaper that has been rated All-American every year since 1975 by the Associated Collegiate Press. The Prickly Pear published its final edition last year.

During the history of ACU student media, the program produced many alumni such

as minister and best-selling Christian author Max Lucado, ’83, CBS Emmy Award-win-ning producer Lance Barrow, ’81, and Pulitzer Prize-win-ning photojournalist David Leeson, ’78. The department as a whole also has won thou-sands of state, regional and national awards since the mid-1980s.

ACU’s student media has advanced significantly since its inception in 1912. And despite the sudden and rapid growth, students of journalism and mass communication always will be needed, Marler said.

“The delivery systems are changing,” Marler said. “What we’ll have 25 years from now is not going to look like today. But the basis is that the pop-ulation of people in a given community doesn’t have the time, so they need some insti-tution that’s playing the role of gathering, analyzing, syn-thesizing, reporting and eval-uating information for them,” he said.

Professors dedicate time to students, newsroom By Colter HettichFeatures Editor

With much of the focus on the JMC Network Student Media News Lab itself, students and visitors might easily overlook the elbow grease that went into realizing a ten-year dream.

Kenneth Pybus, assistant pro-fessor of journalism and mass communication, and Cade White, instructor of photojournalism, spent countless hours preparing for all aspects of the newsroom and even more piecing it together this summer. The two men, along with the JMC department, share a deep concern for giving students the highest quality student media experience possible.

“One of the hallmarks of this department is that we are con-stantly looking forward,” Pybus said. “[The newsroom] shows that we’re thinking about our students careers and less interested in pro-tecting the status quo.”

The idea of constructing a con-verged newsroom was introduced to ACU more than 10 years. Dr. Susan Lewis, assistant professor of journalism and mass commu-nication, made a presentation to a Visiting Committee on the ben-efits of a converged media space. Pybus was on that committee and took the presentation seriously.

“I was intrigued because I was at a weekly newspaper where we were trying to figure out how to put our news on-line,” Pybus said. “[Dr. Lewis’

presentation] hit home; It was the very the challenge I had as editor of a newspaper.”

Pybus’ interest in journalism began with car-tooning. Pybus cartooned for the Optimist his first year at ACU, but over time he grew to love the art of writing more. He reported for a year af-ter graduat-ing from ACU before attend-ing Baylor Law School.

Amy Pybus, Kenneth’s wife, said her hus-band’s interest in journalistic

writing spiked while he was at Baylor Law.

“Even through law school, he didn’t really enjoy it until he took his First Amendment class,” Amy said. “I think that’s what made him so interested in it.”

After law school, Pybus moved his family to Houston, where he accepted the position of managing editor of the Hous-ton Business Journal. At the Journal, he learned both the pro-duction side of publication and the managerial side. Pybus’ di-verse experience in the field has given him an understanding of the importance of being knowl-

edgeable in multiple areas.Pybus has already noticed the

converged atmosphere’s effects on the newsroom.

“Students who don’t empha-size video like to pay attention and watch how it’s done,” Pybus said. “It’s the proximity; you can’t help but absorb something.”

Cade White spent his summer months on the second floor of the Morris Center installing soft-ware, hardware and configuring the new video editing station.

White graduated from ACU in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in photojournalism.

“I was a photo hobbyist as a child, but it was just a phase like anything else,” White said. “Somewhere between dirt bikes and guitars.”

Once he arrived at ACU, af-ter receiving the fateful, high school graduation gift of a “de-cent” camera, White decided to take a photography class. By the time he completed the course, he knew what he wanted to pur-sue. Though he had direction, he would not develop a passion un-til taking two-week, photojour-nalism summer course taught by David Leeson.

In 2004, Leeson received a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. The award rec-ognized him and his colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyers for coverage of the invasion of Iraq as embed-ded journalists. Also, Leeson’s documentary film “War Stories” (2003) won a national Edward R. Murrow award and a National Headliners award.

“Cade was actually helping me out for a while … he was sort of my Deepthroat kind of guy; he kept me informed on what was happening in video,” Leeson said. “I don’t know if anybody knew on the campus just how ahead of the pack he was in video; he just did a fantastic job with his videos.”

Leeson recalled White’s fasci-nation with developing technol-ogy, but more importantly his dedication to the craft.

“[White] always and still is in-credibly passionate and energetic.

The guy still moves like he’s 16,” Leeson said. “He is a wonderful human being.”

“I didn’t see his name any-where, but I thought, ‘I know who’s behind that,’” Leeson said when he received an invi-tation to the unveiling of the converged newsroom.

Though Leeson never taught a university course before or after that summer class, he left a deep impression on White. White re-members Leeson making sure his students understood not only the inherent danger and alienation of photojournalism, but the un-matched satisfaction as well.

“He was incredibly inspira-tional,” White said. “Ever since he has been my mentor. David con-tinues to influence my life and everything that happens here in the newsroom.”

White’s use of his faculty po-sition to encourage students to think creatively and push the en-velope is nothing new. In 2002, as

Prickly Pear advisor, he designed the first video journalism ef-fort to record a companion DVD for the yearbook. Now, in 2008, White handpicked most of the newsroom’s software and, with the help of Nathaniel Jones and Technology Support Services, de-signed how the computers and network would be configured.

“I’m a bit of a perfectionist,” White admitted. “As everything started taking shape, I realized I cared very much about the tech-nical aspects of the newsroom.”

Throughout his time at ACU, White said he has been fortunate to be on the front lines of JMC’s transition from old technology to the latest in news technology. The converged media space is some-thing many never thought would be conceived, much less material-ized on ACU’s campus.

“I could never have imagined it would be like this back in 1996,” White said. “This is incredible.”

White

Pybus

Photo courtesy of Creative ServicesKenneth Pybus, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication, instructs Laura Acuff, opinion editor, during a deadline day.

Photo courtesy of Creative ServicesCade White, instructor of photojournalism, coaches Ryan Self, staff broadcast assistant on how to use Final Cut Pro.Pg. 10

eager pursuit of journalistic excellence The delivery systems are changing. What we’ll have 25 years from now is not go-ing to look like today.

:: Dr. Charlie Marler, professor emeritus and senior faculty of JMC Department

“”

2008

The Optimist begins its 97th year of providing news to the ACU campus.

2006

With the popularity of online video sharing on the rise, the Optimist starts to post brief student-produced videos to YouTube.com.

1968

Robert English and Mary Grady became the first African-American staff members to work for the Optimist. The university had first admitted black students three years earlier.

1972

The administration pulled and destroyed the 1972 edition of the Prickly Pear because of its supposed counter-culture themes.

1990

The JMC department receives new Macintosh computers.

Pg. 3

Pg. 4

Welcome to the NetworkHere’s what JMC students have

done with their convergedmedia space so far.

Above: Colter Hettich, features editor, enters the newsroom. Below right: Sommerly Simser, multimedia management editor, edits video. Below mid-dle: Laura Acuff, opinion editor, and Ryan Self, broadcast assistant, work on their latest assignments. Below left: DeLaina Parker, broadcast manager, watches the camera’s monitor as Pete Koehn, senior electronic media major, operates the camera. Left: Kimberly Prather, broadcast assistant, films a newscast with fellow broadcast assistant, Ryan Self.

Left: Kelline Linton, chief copy editor, edits a page of the Optimist for errors. Above: Michael Freeman, managing editor, works. Right: Zak Zeinert, chief photographer, sorts through the day’s photographs. Far right: Daniel Johnson-Kim, editor in chief, assists Lydia Melby, arts editor, with her design.

Pg. 9

JMC joins global shift toward convergence mindsetBy Sara SnelsonStudent Contributor

Print journalists used to only write, photographers only took pictures, and broadcasters gath-ered and wrote news to air for their stations. Now, a journalist must be able to do all of these.

“A single journalist must be able to do all sorts of things. We are no longer experts in one area,” said Kenneth Pybus, assis-tant professor of journalism.

Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, said the department took notice of future journalists’ needs to be equipped in numerous areas more than a

decade ago.“Students have

to be prepared

to tell stories in more than one way,” Bacon said.

Thus, the JMC Network Stu-dent Media Lab was built and technologically equipped for the converged media era. Just as the JMC curriculum touches every media format, a functional, stu-dent-run newsroom was needed to bring all of it together and give students a real life feel of the con-verged media era.

In 2003, Dr. Susan Lewis, assis-tant professor of journalism and mass communication, presented her idea of this converged news-room to faculty and the JMC Visit-ing Committee.

“We began planning a process no one was doing in journalism education in an integrated way,” Lewis said.

To get inspiration for the converged newsroom Lewis and

Bacon took trips to the Tampa Tribune in Florida and to the Uni-versity of South Carolina before its Newsplex was built.

Lewis had begun researching converged media in 2001.

“I was thinking in the future tense about converged media in the marketplace and what that meant for media education,” Lewis said. “I wrote a scenario that placed students in a futur-istic world in order to under-stand the vision.”

Lewis explained it as the learn-ing theory of constructivism — the act of creating knowledge by collecting input from a vari-ety of sources. When a student participates in constructing his or her own knowledge, he or she is more likely to retain it and ap-ply it later. The newsroom allows students to apply what they are

learning in the classroom to cre-ate all types of media and have a deeper understanding of what they have learned. Then they can apply that knowledge in the JMC Network and in their future jobs. The students get a real newsroom experience before they enter the professional field.

“This type of convergence is happening in the industry,” Lewis said. “The goal of the multimedia newsroom is to provide student learning opportunities in a pro-gressive media environment that is functional, attractive and sup-ports the curriculum.”

Pybus said with all of the out-lets working together, readers can pick and choose how they want to receive their news.

“Younger people gather in eclectic ways, and now we are al-lowing them to choose their me-

dia preference based upon their own interests,” Pybus said. “We are recognizing this trend in jour-nalism, forcing different mind-sets to share space and breaking down those walls and being one of the first universities to do it.”

Bacon, Lewis and Pybus agree that so far the converged news-room is everything they had hoped it would be. Although the school year has just begun, Pybus said regular online posts are hap-pening (even on the weekends), more videos are being made and posted than ever before and more TV segments have been made this year so far than the last three years (youtube.com/acuvideo).

“We are taking on less of a newspaper mentality and more of a news mentality,” Pybus said.

By Grant AbstonSports Editor

As ACU integrates new tech-nology at a furious pace through-out its campus, the university sets the standard for colleges across America, offering two words to any competitors: keep up.

The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at ACU has transformed the way it deliv-ers news to students, expanding its range well beyond print news to other forms of communica-tion and providing students the opportunity to access their news through newly developed iPhone or iPod touch interfaces.

“When we learned that all the freshmen would have iPhones, we quickly realized we would have to change how we reached them on-line,” said Kenneth Pybus, assis-tant professor of journalism and student media adviser. “We knew that many would read their news over the iPhone so we would have to develop some sort of iPhone in-terface specifically to serve them

and students who had iPhones.” The JMC Network began devel-

oping the iPhone interface after Pybus and Cade White, instruc-tor of journalism and student media adviser, were chosen to participate in the university’s Mobile Learning Initiative in the fall of 2007. ACU’s iPhone initia-tive was created to put iPhones or iPod touches into the hands of all incoming freshmen, providing students the opportunity to use the latest in mobile technology to aid them in everything from class schedules and maps to in-class, real-time surveys.

ACU was named a 2008 Campus Innovator in the area of Mobile Technology by Cam-pus Technology magazine for its Mobile Learning Initiative launched this semester.

Because the iPhone would be in the hands of more than 900 freshmen, Pybus and White real-ized the opportunity of distrib-uting news through the iPhone.

Pybus and White began re-searching the technology be-hind iPhone interfaces through

html, xml and the different Apple user guidelines.

“The beta site we experi-mented with was written in ba-sic html, but the next version was authorized using dash code and to do that we sought the as-sistance of an outside program-mer,” White said.

They hired alumnus Darby He-witt to take on the project during his off hours when he was not working on the iPhone develop-ment team for the university. He-witt was shown other interfaces from other news organizations and was given the task of devel-oping a user-friendly interface.

“The real challenge for a news organization is to allow the user to navigate through a great deal of information and make it easy to find what they want to se-lect,” White said.

Students may access the in-terface from a Web site using their phone, exactly like the my-ACU icon that was developed for all students. The interface was scheduled to launch Friday and can be accessed by logging

on to m.jmcnetwork.com A pro-motional campaign also will be launched after the interface goes live to inform students of the new interface and encour-age students to add the icon to their iPhone desktop and re-ceive news e-mails.

“We don’t know what it looks like on other phone applications, but I can imagine you can see it on other phones,” Pybus said. “We haven’t tested it, knowing the vast majority of our readers our accessing it through the iP-hone, and that’s where we direct-ed most of our attention.”

While the interface was being developed, developers faced the task of finding ways to in-corporate other things into the interface such as advertising, convincing outside advertisers that the iPhone platform will reach a large audience.

“We know more and more people will access their news and info electronically, and we want to stay up to date with the technol-ogy that allows that,” Pybus said. “[The interface] will be easier to

read and students will be able to access it anywhere.”

White also added another goal for the interface. “One of the ar-eas that we are going to focus on is looking for ways to provide in-teractivity opportunities for read-ers to comment on stories or par-ticipate in discussions. We want to make that as easy and seam-less as possible.”

Mobile interface to increase exposure

Pg. 8 Pg. 5

News Lab designed as converged settingBy Kelline LintonChief Copy Editor

Professors who work in the Morris Center had a difficult time finding their old offices last fall because the interior renovations to the second and third floor transformed the building into a construction zone. Cables and wires hung from gutted ceilings, concrete floors and half-painted walls resounded with the echoes of saws and nail guns and piles of wooden frames and ladders tripped the unwary.

A local architect and ACU gen-eral contractor completed the renovation of the far south end of the Morris Center just in time for the start of the spring semes-ter; they built offices and a large smart classroom on the third floor and an interior design space and the JMC Network Student Media News Lab on the second floor.

The Morris Center undertak-ing began in January 2001 when the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication faculty began discussing the renovations of its facilities. Two years later, on Sept. 10, 2003, department rep-resentatives first talked with an architect. Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the department, and Dr. Susan Lewis, assistant professor of jour-nalism and mass communication, met with Jack Harkins, one of the five partners of the Title Luther Partnership Architecture firm in Abilene. They actually began to conceptualize floor plans and a design layout in early 2006.

Harkins, an graying man with a large smile, has worked for Title Luther since 1969 and drew the original Morris Center blueprints in the 1970s; he was the principal in charge of the innovative mul-timedia newsroom job, which he thought was simple to design.

“They wanted a big open space that was multi-tasking and brought all the media together in one spot,” he said.

The hardest challenge he

faced was in splitting the avail-able second floor area between the JMC newsroom and the in-terior design program in the Art and Design Department.

“He had a very difficult task to find a way to satisfy the competing interests of two pro-grams,” Bacon said. “He was open and creative and came up with a solution that none of us would have imagined.”

He balanced the square foot-age between the two; satisfying both parties.

Harkins began the construc-tion project by striving to un-derstand the media needs for the space and used the sug-gestions and comments given by the representatives of the JMC Department.

“We redesigned that space two or three times; it wasn’t some-thing we did once and moved on down the road,” Harkins said.

The department represen-tatives wanted the newsroom designed for more visibil-ity and visitors, generating a need for an outside entrance and stairs, he said.

Without an exterior entrance, visitors and students would walk up the main stairwell and down the hall to find their way to the room or enter through the back entrance by way of the harshly lit concrete stairwell.

“Once we settled on trying to find a way to bring people in through a new entrance, it flip-flopped everything,” he said.

The offices and conference room switched places, an exterior stair was added and a window was removed.

“That became a major issue, trying to get them their own en-trance that people could use and come into a nice entry point,” Harkins said.

Another challenge he faced with the project was the broad-cast area near the back entrance. The department wanted to shoot video in a space with a low ceil-

ing, so the construction team removed the ceiling, painted it black and added volume.

After finalizing the general design layout, Harkins began the design development where he talked with the department about specific needs like special light-ing, cabinetry and case work and the locations of electrical outlets, power outlets for equipment and telecommunications for comput-ers. Once all the specific elements were confirmed, he made con-struction documents, the detailed drawings used by the general contractor to solicit bids for the actual construction work.

ACU stayed in house for this project, meaning it used its own employee as the general contrac-tor, because the projected costs for renovations exceeded budget by $100,000, and an in-house general contractor would save the university money. The adminis-tration chose Eddie McFadden for the role because of his experience and abilities: he headed the con-struction for the Learning Com-mons in 2006.

McFadden implemented Title Luther’s architectural plans for the newsroom by organizing and supervising the construction. He managed the construction crews and hired subcontractors to reno-

vate such specifics as the walls, ceiling and electrical systems.

“I was very pleased to have a general contractor in house; I already knew Eddie, and he worked very hard to take care of us,” Bacon said.

McFadden finished a little be-low budget with a final price tag of more than $1 million, but the hardest challenge he faced was staying on time with the develop-ment. Construction began in Sep-tember of 2007, and the depart-ment representatives wanted the project completed by November. He finished the job in December, which was still acceptable because the spring semester had not yet begun, he said. Although McFad-den was the project manager, Title Luther remained involved in the renovations.

“We don’t do supervision, but we do observation of the work as it’s being done just to make sure it is being done in compli-ance with the plans and specifica-tions,” Harkins said.

The firm hired Crim & Brad-shaw Engineering in Abilene as the consultant for the me-chanical, electrical and plumb-ing aspects, and Donna Fowler, Title Luther’s interior designer, used her expertise to decorate the transformed areas after

McFadden completed the con-struction aspects.

Fowler initially met with Bacon and Lewis in May 2007 and discussed how the space would be used.

“We talked about what need-ed to be purchased to go in those rooms to fulfill the occu-pants’ needs,” she said. “[Bacon] wanted it to be a space that was contemporary in feel like it’s happening now.”

They started with the carpet choice because it had the least amount of options and set the tone and color for the space. Bacon suggested blues, browns and greens for highlights, and they used a natural maple wood finish, light blue, lime green and off whites on the walls. The paint choice had personality, Fowler said.

After they chose the carpet and paints, they focused on fur-niture selection. Bacon wanted the seating area near the news-room’s entrance to be slick and fashionable, to set the tone for the space and capture people’s eyes, Fowler said.

“The ultra modern look was a style new to the campus,” McFadden said.

All demolition, design, place-ment and technology installation for the project was finished more than seven years after the depart-ment first started discussing ren-ovations. With construction now complete, visitors can explore the new rooms and watch students use the innovative amenities.

They wanted a big open space that was multi-tasking and brought all the media together in one spot...

:: Jack Harkins, Title Luther Partnership Architect

“”

By Camille VandendriesscheAssistant Copy Editor

If newspapers were an army, they would be fighting an in-surgency of unsatisfied read-ers right now.

The number of readers is di-minishing because people are more interested in modern me-dia like the Internet. In response to this disaffection, newspapers have strategically invaded the Web territory and they now abun-dantly use videos and podcasts as powerful weapons.

For David Leeson, ACU alum-nus and 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner in breaking news pho-tography for his coverage of the Iraq War, the comparison be-tween newspapers and armies illustrates the crucial situation newspapers face: traditional methods do not work anymore. To stay competitive, newspa-pers need to become more like the insurgents, Leeson said.

“There is not a whole lot of fu-ture in print newspapers,” Leeson said. “Less people are buying, but it’s not going to die. Newspapers need to be more like the people, they need to listen to [them], to be part of the social fabric.”

A photographer at the Dal-las Morning News for 15 years, Leeson became a videographer in 2000, becoming a pioneer in the print industry.

“The Web is not showing just one photo, one point of view; it’s more inclusive,” Leeson said.

In 2005, Leeson switched to video consulting and started training new videographers at the Morning News.

But on Sept. 8, Leeson left the Dallas Morning News after 25 years at the newspaper. He said he now wants to focus on his own company, “Protege Films,” which already produced At War, a 120-minute documentary about the war in Afghanistan.

“Video is powerful: it trans-lates a still image into motion and sound. Still image is a mo-

ment; video is an extended mo-

ment,” Leeson said. “In 1998, I was already posting videos on my Web site. I knew it would only get bigger.”

Leeson said like every pioneer he encountered skepticism and trouble because people thought it was crazy at the time. He said videos did not become important for newspapers until 2005.

Newspapers have now signifi-cantly embraced video podcasts; 92 percent of the biggest newspa-pers in the United States offered video podcasts on their Web sites, according to a study conducted in September 2007 by the Bivings Group, a firm specialized in on-line communications.

Since August 2005, the Op-timist staff has posted its own videos on YouTube.com under an ACU account. With the technolog-ical support of the JMC Network Student Media News Lab, which includes a new TV studio, student journalists now record a newscast every Tuesday and a sportscast every Thursday and post them on YouTube.

However, Kimberley Prather, senior broadcast journalism ma-jor from St. Louis, Mo., said very few people on campus know about the podcasts.

“It should be more advertised,” said Prather, one of the four Op-timist’s anchors. “We don’t have enough visibility.”

In addition to the newscasts, a crew of four to six students shoots videos about activities on campus. Sommerly Simser, ju-nior broadcast journalism major from Las Vegas, said three to four videos are posted every week on YouTube. Video topics need to be timely, have good visual and cor-respond to what people want to see, Simser said.

Cade White, instructor of jour-nalism and mass communication and director of the photojournal-ism program, said the Optimist is waiting on its online publisher, Collegepublisher.com, to upgrade its system and allow video pod-casts on the Optimist’s Web site. He said the YouTube channel is very effective though.

“We had political videos that have received more than 20,000 views, but it’s not the norm,” White said. “A steady flow of visitors watches our videos every day.”

The two most popular ACU videos feature students sharing their political views before the primary elections in Texas. Inter-estingly, the video about conser-vative students on campus was viewed almost twice as much as the one on liberal students, which illustrates a fair representation of political trends online.

More recently, an interview of SA President Daniel Paul Watkins about the noose incident record-ed 63 views on YouTube just five hours after its release. Twelve days later, the interview had been viewed 410 times.

“Online videos is not just a growing trend; it’s a tremendous transition in the industry,” White said. “Internet opened the door for new forms of story telling and new audiences. There is a mas-sive audience for online videos, especially the youngsters. News-papers are discovering that news-rooms can do much more than just a newspaper.”

White said the new genera-tion does not mind where they get their information.

“The time will come when [newspapers’] Web sites will be-come primary and newspapers secondary,” White said.

A study conducted by the ad-vertising consulting firm Borrell Associates in June 2007 revealed that newspapers develop and so-phisticate their online newscasts to obtain more local ads than television Web sites. Newspapers’ newscasts target the young audi-ences and do not offer the same content as television newscasts; they also compete with televi-sion hours and geographical coverage. Although newspapers’ newscasts reach an extremely small percentage of audiences, they do seem to contribute to an increase of the overall online traffic, according to the study.

However, Leeson said newspa-pers should not try to compete with television.

“If newspapers want to be like TV, they will lose because they are not like TV,” Leeson said. “Why would they like to emulate TV since TV stations are struggling themselves?”

Leeson said newspapers must adapt their offerings to the people’s interests and hab-its but keep in mind their mis-sion of truth, facts, criticism and story telling.

“If newspapers lose sight of their mission, they will lose,” Leeson said. “People still turn to newspapers for what they trust. We should not be about hit counts. Our privilege is to stand on the side of the truth. We need truth, and there is no champion of the truth. The key to keep read-ers interested is transparency.”

Leeson said he once argued at a meeting with managers of the Dallas Morning News because their goal was to try to make hit counts. He said he spoke up and told them ironically that he would shoot porn clips in or-der to boost online audiences. Leeson said they acted like they did not hear him.

While the future addition of videos on the Optimist’s Web site may boost the audience size, White said the main goal is to give journalism students an “effective, working experience.”

“We want them to stay on the cutting edge of mass me-dia,” White said.

Leeson agrees the news-room is a wonderful addition to ACU.

“It sets [ACU] apart from any institution,” Leeson said. “It is ab-solutely important to equip stu-dents technically for tomorrow.”

Zak Zeinert :: chief photographer

Colter Hettich, features editor, speaks into a microphone in the podcasting room in the JMC Network Student Media News Lab.

Network mirrors professionals on Internet

Student Media News Lab

TV Studio

Pg. 6

Broadcast branches out, on campus and onlineBy Rachel DavisStudent Contributor

The newsroom is not just for print journalism majors any-more — now all majors in the department of Journalism and Mass Communication can play a role in getting news out to the ACU campus, thanks to the con-struction of the new JMC Student Media News Lab.

Before completion of the new newsroom, broadcast journalism majors really had no place to call their own. Video editing comput-ers were in separate locations, and there were no places to re-ally shoot a newscast because the TV studio on the first floor of the Morris Center was frequently used for other productions.

Now, broadcast majors can shoot, edit and package their stories all in the same area. But it was not always that way, said ACU alumna Shelby Coates.

“We only had one place to edit video,” Coates said. “And if someone was there, we had to wait on them or come back at re-ally random times of the day.”

Coates, who is now a reporter

and weekend anchor for KRBC-TV in Abilene, said she was of-ten editing video at 1 a.m. or during Chapel.

“And the upstairs computers had different software than the [KUF] TV station computers, so we always had to export video files and it was definitely crazy,” Coates said.

John Best, director of broad-cast operations, said he is re-ally excited to see where the new newsroom will take ACU’s jour-nalism program.

“We’re breaking new ground every time we go up there,” Best said.

Best also described the once-disjointed broadcast area of the department, saying it was difficult to get any form of news on the air.

“Before now, from a pro-duction standpoint, shows like Abilene City Magazine and McCa-leb and Company were all done

on the first floor — all TV was confined to one location unless we were able to get out and shoot on scene,” Best said. “Including a studio for news broadcasting in the newsroom makes it evident that we’re dedicated to produc-ing a high quality newscast.”

Now, students have the op-portunity to participate in news-casts for the first time. Under the direction of multimedia man-aging editor Sommerly Simser, students put together two news-casts a week as JMC Network News on Tuesdays and Thurs-days. Each newscast runs about five minutes and covers three to five stories.

Simser, junior broadcast jour-nalism major from Las Vegas, Nev., said the newscast has defi-nitely increased broadcasting ca-pabilities of the department.

Along with the new newscasts, all cameras are now hi-definition, and students get the benefit of shooting and editing HD video.

“We’re really working hard to differentiate from stories we’ve done in the past,” Simser said. “Instead of the big picture, I want to focus on the unique things that people are interested in.”

For example, Simser thought an interesting angle would be to cover someone who has served communion at Summit.

“It’s a great human interest angle and who knows what kind of story they’d have to tell?” Simser said.

The newscasts are posted on YouTube, said Kenneth Pybus, as-sistant professor of journalism.

“We’re trying to figure out, along with other major news outlets, how the Internet works with people on camera,” Pybus said. “TV news is different than the on-demand Internet — we have to make stories shorter and more concise to keep the audi-ence interested.”

Not only do broadcast majors need to learn to work with the Internet, they also must figure in

podcasting, Pybus said. “I foresee a time where we do

several podcasts a week, and it’s good for radio and broadcast majors to engage in that kind of conversation,” Pybus said.

At first, it took quite a while to piece together the newscast, but the last one took them just 30 minutes.

Coates wished she could have had this kind of training.

“I learned how to write well while at ACU, but I never got on-air training,” Coates said. “I don’t think we did a single news-cast while I was there. They’re so lucky to have all of that now.”

By Molly ByrdPage 2 Editor

The ugly purple wall is gone.In the old third floor news-

rooms, a purple wall divided the Optimist from the Prickly Pear. The mentality of keeping student media from crossing paths is no more thanks to the new JMC Net-work Student Media News Lab.

One thing ACU’s Network Staff can agree on this semester is the close-knit community the updated news lab has created. Regardless of title, photogra-phers, editors and videographers are taking advantage of the inte-grated newsroom.

Daniel Johnson-Kim, editor in chief and senior journalism ma-jor from Abilene, said he cannot believe how blessed he is to be a part of the opportunities the JMC department is providing stu-dents.

He said he is looking forward to graduating in May because he has had experience dealing with convergence this year and he will be confident discussing the topic with future employers.

“I love our meeting room because we get to act a lot old-er than we really are by plan-ning out important things,” Johnson-Kim said.

He said the whole facility is an incredible improvement over the old newsroom and tempo-rary location.

“They were so small and cramped that we didn’t have room to blink, let alone work,” Johnson-Kim said.

Grant Abston, sports editor and senior journalism major from Rockwall, said he thinks the most beneficial thing about the integrated newsroom is hav-ing everyone in the same place. It’s easier to work together as a group and the staff is capable of getting things done more ef-ficiently with the way things are set up, he said.

Other staff members, Zak Zein-ert, junior photojournalism major from Spring, and Ryan Clark Self, sophomore broadcast journal-ism major from Lubbock, agree the best part of the new facility is the community it has created amongst the news staff.

Self, broadcast assistant, said the environment and layout of the facility feels the way a profes-sional newsroom is always por-trayed because it is constantly buzzing with activity.

“It’s helpful having video, photography, and print all in one place because you can just yell across the room to talk to

anyone when-ever you need them,” Self said.

Staff mem-bers also have b e n e f i t e d from the new e q u i p m e n t the newsroom provides. Ab-ston said the equipment is some of the best, and he thinks ev-erything will only get bet-ter once the staff is com-pletely com-fortable with the new comput-ers and cameras.

Self is new to the staff this year. He said although he puts forth a lot of effort and things get frustrating at times, in the end, he comes out knowing more than he had imagined each day.

“You learn a lot more through trial and error than you do just sitting in a classroom,” Self said.

Zeinert, chief photographer, mirrored Self’s statement by say-ing he thinks the main point of joining the news staff is to learn as you go along. Whether a per-

son is new to the staff or not, ev-eryone is encouraged to ask ques-tions, to learn something new each day, he said.

As for future staff members, Abston said it is good to stay on top of things and to take advan-tage of all the cameras and pod-casts because that experience will benefit students when they try to find a job in the future.

Camille Vandendriessche, se-nior print journalism from Ant-ony, France, said the newsroom brings more professionalism into the work of journalism students.

He said it puts the staff into con-ditions that they may find later on when they get a job.

“I have worked in different newsrooms in France and ACU’s newsroom doesn’t look any dif-ferent,” he said. “I think the at-mosphere of the newsroom is convivial; the quality of the equip-ment helps us to not stress out too much because we know we can rely on it.”

Vandendriessche, assistant copy editor, said many stu-dents are not aware the Opti-mist has a team that produces videos and posts them on You-Tube for viewing.

“The staff does a great job, es-pecially about picking interesting stories and topics to cover,” Van-dendriessche said.

The new JMC network allows the news staff more opportuni-ties to learn as a community. Though it has had a few techni-cal difficulties, the network has made headway toward provid-ing more efficient news for stu-dents in a way most convenient to them, Zeinert said.

“I love how we’re this group of people all working together to-ward a common goal,” he said.

Responsibility falls on student-lead staff

Photo courtesy of ACU Creative ServicesJMC’s new broadcast is equipped with two, industry-standard cameras with teleprompters, three flatscreen TVs, a green screen and lighting controls.

Pg. 7

JMC Network StAFF

n Daniel Johnson-Kim, editor in chiefn Michael Freeman, managing editorn Kelline Linton, chief copy editorn Yuri Sudo, online editorn Sommerly Simser, multimedia managing editorn DeLaina Parker, broadcast managern Zak Zeinert, chief photographern Cody Veteto, chief videographern Camille Vandendriessche, assistant copy editorn Molly Byrd, page 2 editorn Laura Acuff, opinion editorn Grant Abston, sports editorn Colter Hettich, features editorn Lydia Melby, arts editorn Chandler Harris, assistant sports editorn Alex York, cartoonistn Tanner Anderson, page designer

acuoptimist.com

For video of the JMC Network Staff in action, visit acuoptimist.com.

acuoptimist.com

Check out our Web site to watch the JMC Net-

work’s latest broadcast and videos.

Pg. 6

Broadcast branches out, on campus and onlineBy Rachel DavisStudent Contributor

The newsroom is not just for print journalism majors any-more — now all majors in the department of Journalism and Mass Communication can play a role in getting news out to the ACU campus, thanks to the con-struction of the new JMC Student Media News Lab.

Before completion of the new newsroom, broadcast journalism majors really had no place to call their own. Video editing comput-ers were in separate locations, and there were no places to re-ally shoot a newscast because the TV studio on the first floor of the Morris Center was frequently used for other productions.

Now, broadcast majors can shoot, edit and package their stories all in the same area. But it was not always that way, said ACU alumna Shelby Coates.

“We only had one place to edit video,” Coates said. “And if someone was there, we had to wait on them or come back at re-ally random times of the day.”

Coates, who is now a reporter

and weekend anchor for KRBC-TV in Abilene, said she was of-ten editing video at 1 a.m. or during Chapel.

“And the upstairs computers had different software than the [KUF] TV station computers, so we always had to export video files and it was definitely crazy,” Coates said.

John Best, director of broad-cast operations, said he is re-ally excited to see where the new newsroom will take ACU’s jour-nalism program.

“We’re breaking new ground every time we go up there,” Best said.

Best also described the once-disjointed broadcast area of the department, saying it was difficult to get any form of news on the air.

“Before now, from a pro-duction standpoint, shows like Abilene City Magazine and McCa-leb and Company were all done

on the first floor — all TV was confined to one location unless we were able to get out and shoot on scene,” Best said. “Including a studio for news broadcasting in the newsroom makes it evident that we’re dedicated to produc-ing a high quality newscast.”

Now, students have the op-portunity to participate in news-casts for the first time. Under the direction of multimedia man-aging editor Sommerly Simser, students put together two news-casts a week as JMC Network News on Tuesdays and Thurs-days. Each newscast runs about five minutes and covers three to five stories.

Simser, junior broadcast jour-nalism major from Las Vegas, Nev., said the newscast has defi-nitely increased broadcasting ca-pabilities of the department.

Along with the new newscasts, all cameras are now hi-definition, and students get the benefit of shooting and editing HD video.

“We’re really working hard to differentiate from stories we’ve done in the past,” Simser said. “Instead of the big picture, I want to focus on the unique things that people are interested in.”

For example, Simser thought an interesting angle would be to cover someone who has served communion at Summit.

“It’s a great human interest angle and who knows what kind of story they’d have to tell?” Simser said.

The newscasts are posted on YouTube, said Kenneth Pybus, as-sistant professor of journalism.

“We’re trying to figure out, along with other major news outlets, how the Internet works with people on camera,” Pybus said. “TV news is different than the on-demand Internet — we have to make stories shorter and more concise to keep the audi-ence interested.”

Not only do broadcast majors need to learn to work with the Internet, they also must figure in

podcasting, Pybus said. “I foresee a time where we do

several podcasts a week, and it’s good for radio and broadcast majors to engage in that kind of conversation,” Pybus said.

At first, it took quite a while to piece together the newscast, but the last one took them just 30 minutes.

Coates wished she could have had this kind of training.

“I learned how to write well while at ACU, but I never got on-air training,” Coates said. “I don’t think we did a single news-cast while I was there. They’re so lucky to have all of that now.”

By Molly ByrdPage 2 Editor

The ugly purple wall is gone.In the old third floor news-

rooms, a purple wall divided the Optimist from the Prickly Pear. The mentality of keeping student media from crossing paths is no more thanks to the new JMC Net-work Student Media News Lab.

One thing ACU’s Network Staff can agree on this semester is the close-knit community the updated news lab has created. Regardless of title, photogra-phers, editors and videographers are taking advantage of the inte-grated newsroom.

Daniel Johnson-Kim, editor in chief and senior journalism ma-jor from Abilene, said he cannot believe how blessed he is to be a part of the opportunities the JMC department is providing stu-dents.

He said he is looking forward to graduating in May because he has had experience dealing with convergence this year and he will be confident discussing the topic with future employers.

“I love our meeting room because we get to act a lot old-er than we really are by plan-ning out important things,” Johnson-Kim said.

He said the whole facility is an incredible improvement over the old newsroom and tempo-rary location.

“They were so small and cramped that we didn’t have room to blink, let alone work,” Johnson-Kim said.

Grant Abston, sports editor and senior journalism major from Rockwall, said he thinks the most beneficial thing about the integrated newsroom is hav-ing everyone in the same place. It’s easier to work together as a group and the staff is capable of getting things done more ef-ficiently with the way things are set up, he said.

Other staff members, Zak Zein-ert, junior photojournalism major from Spring, and Ryan Clark Self, sophomore broadcast journal-ism major from Lubbock, agree the best part of the new facility is the community it has created amongst the news staff.

Self, broadcast assistant, said the environment and layout of the facility feels the way a profes-sional newsroom is always por-trayed because it is constantly buzzing with activity.

“It’s helpful having video, photography, and print all in one place because you can just yell across the room to talk to

anyone when-ever you need them,” Self said.

Staff mem-bers also have b e n e f i t e d from the new e q u i p m e n t the newsroom provides. Ab-ston said the equipment is some of the best, and he thinks ev-erything will only get bet-ter once the staff is com-pletely com-fortable with the new comput-ers and cameras.

Self is new to the staff this year. He said although he puts forth a lot of effort and things get frustrating at times, in the end, he comes out knowing more than he had imagined each day.

“You learn a lot more through trial and error than you do just sitting in a classroom,” Self said.

Zeinert, chief photographer, mirrored Self’s statement by say-ing he thinks the main point of joining the news staff is to learn as you go along. Whether a per-

son is new to the staff or not, ev-eryone is encouraged to ask ques-tions, to learn something new each day, he said.

As for future staff members, Abston said it is good to stay on top of things and to take advan-tage of all the cameras and pod-casts because that experience will benefit students when they try to find a job in the future.

Camille Vandendriessche, se-nior print journalism from Ant-ony, France, said the newsroom brings more professionalism into the work of journalism students.

He said it puts the staff into con-ditions that they may find later on when they get a job.

“I have worked in different newsrooms in France and ACU’s newsroom doesn’t look any dif-ferent,” he said. “I think the at-mosphere of the newsroom is convivial; the quality of the equip-ment helps us to not stress out too much because we know we can rely on it.”

Vandendriessche, assistant copy editor, said many stu-dents are not aware the Opti-mist has a team that produces videos and posts them on You-Tube for viewing.

“The staff does a great job, es-pecially about picking interesting stories and topics to cover,” Van-dendriessche said.

The new JMC network allows the news staff more opportuni-ties to learn as a community. Though it has had a few techni-cal difficulties, the network has made headway toward provid-ing more efficient news for stu-dents in a way most convenient to them, Zeinert said.

“I love how we’re this group of people all working together to-ward a common goal,” he said.

Responsibility falls on student-lead staff

Photo courtesy of ACU Creative ServicesJMC’s new broadcast is equipped with two, industry-standard cameras with teleprompters, three flatscreen TVs, a green screen and lighting controls.

Pg. 7

JMC Network StAFF

n Daniel Johnson-Kim, editor in chiefn Michael Freeman, managing editorn Kelline Linton, chief copy editorn Yuri Sudo, online editorn Sommerly Simser, multimedia managing editorn DeLaina Parker, broadcast managern Zak Zeinert, chief photographern Cody Veteto, chief videographern Camille Vandendriessche, assistant copy editorn Molly Byrd, page 2 editorn Laura Acuff, opinion editorn Grant Abston, sports editorn Colter Hettich, features editorn Lydia Melby, arts editorn Chandler Harris, assistant sports editorn Alex York, cartoonistn Tanner Anderson, page designer

acuoptimist.com

For video of the JMC Network Staff in action, visit acuoptimist.com.

acuoptimist.com

Check out our Web site to watch the JMC Net-

work’s latest broadcast and videos.

Pg. 8 Pg. 5

News Lab designed as converged settingBy Kelline LintonChief Copy Editor

Professors who work in the Morris Center had a difficult time finding their old offices last fall because the interior renovations to the second and third floor transformed the building into a construction zone. Cables and wires hung from gutted ceilings, concrete floors and half-painted walls resounded with the echoes of saws and nail guns and piles of wooden frames and ladders tripped the unwary.

A local architect and ACU gen-eral contractor completed the renovation of the far south end of the Morris Center just in time for the start of the spring semes-ter; they built offices and a large smart classroom on the third floor and an interior design space and the JMC Network Student Media News Lab on the second floor.

The Morris Center undertak-ing began in January 2001 when the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication faculty began discussing the renovations of its facilities. Two years later, on Sept. 10, 2003, department rep-resentatives first talked with an architect. Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the department, and Dr. Susan Lewis, assistant professor of jour-nalism and mass communication, met with Jack Harkins, one of the five partners of the Title Luther Partnership Architecture firm in Abilene. They actually began to conceptualize floor plans and a design layout in early 2006.

Harkins, an graying man with a large smile, has worked for Title Luther since 1969 and drew the original Morris Center blueprints in the 1970s; he was the principal in charge of the innovative mul-timedia newsroom job, which he thought was simple to design.

“They wanted a big open space that was multi-tasking and brought all the media together in one spot,” he said.

The hardest challenge he

faced was in splitting the avail-able second floor area between the JMC newsroom and the in-terior design program in the Art and Design Department.

“He had a very difficult task to find a way to satisfy the competing interests of two pro-grams,” Bacon said. “He was open and creative and came up with a solution that none of us would have imagined.”

He balanced the square foot-age between the two; satisfying both parties.

Harkins began the construc-tion project by striving to un-derstand the media needs for the space and used the sug-gestions and comments given by the representatives of the JMC Department.

“We redesigned that space two or three times; it wasn’t some-thing we did once and moved on down the road,” Harkins said.

The department represen-tatives wanted the newsroom designed for more visibil-ity and visitors, generating a need for an outside entrance and stairs, he said.

Without an exterior entrance, visitors and students would walk up the main stairwell and down the hall to find their way to the room or enter through the back entrance by way of the harshly lit concrete stairwell.

“Once we settled on trying to find a way to bring people in through a new entrance, it flip-flopped everything,” he said.

The offices and conference room switched places, an exterior stair was added and a window was removed.

“That became a major issue, trying to get them their own en-trance that people could use and come into a nice entry point,” Harkins said.

Another challenge he faced with the project was the broad-cast area near the back entrance. The department wanted to shoot video in a space with a low ceil-

ing, so the construction team removed the ceiling, painted it black and added volume.

After finalizing the general design layout, Harkins began the design development where he talked with the department about specific needs like special light-ing, cabinetry and case work and the locations of electrical outlets, power outlets for equipment and telecommunications for comput-ers. Once all the specific elements were confirmed, he made con-struction documents, the detailed drawings used by the general contractor to solicit bids for the actual construction work.

ACU stayed in house for this project, meaning it used its own employee as the general contrac-tor, because the projected costs for renovations exceeded budget by $100,000, and an in-house general contractor would save the university money. The adminis-tration chose Eddie McFadden for the role because of his experience and abilities: he headed the con-struction for the Learning Com-mons in 2006.

McFadden implemented Title Luther’s architectural plans for the newsroom by organizing and supervising the construction. He managed the construction crews and hired subcontractors to reno-

vate such specifics as the walls, ceiling and electrical systems.

“I was very pleased to have a general contractor in house; I already knew Eddie, and he worked very hard to take care of us,” Bacon said.

McFadden finished a little be-low budget with a final price tag of more than $1 million, but the hardest challenge he faced was staying on time with the develop-ment. Construction began in Sep-tember of 2007, and the depart-ment representatives wanted the project completed by November. He finished the job in December, which was still acceptable because the spring semester had not yet begun, he said. Although McFad-den was the project manager, Title Luther remained involved in the renovations.

“We don’t do supervision, but we do observation of the work as it’s being done just to make sure it is being done in compli-ance with the plans and specifica-tions,” Harkins said.

The firm hired Crim & Brad-shaw Engineering in Abilene as the consultant for the me-chanical, electrical and plumb-ing aspects, and Donna Fowler, Title Luther’s interior designer, used her expertise to decorate the transformed areas after

McFadden completed the con-struction aspects.

Fowler initially met with Bacon and Lewis in May 2007 and discussed how the space would be used.

“We talked about what need-ed to be purchased to go in those rooms to fulfill the occu-pants’ needs,” she said. “[Bacon] wanted it to be a space that was contemporary in feel like it’s happening now.”

They started with the carpet choice because it had the least amount of options and set the tone and color for the space. Bacon suggested blues, browns and greens for highlights, and they used a natural maple wood finish, light blue, lime green and off whites on the walls. The paint choice had personality, Fowler said.

After they chose the carpet and paints, they focused on fur-niture selection. Bacon wanted the seating area near the news-room’s entrance to be slick and fashionable, to set the tone for the space and capture people’s eyes, Fowler said.

“The ultra modern look was a style new to the campus,” McFadden said.

All demolition, design, place-ment and technology installation for the project was finished more than seven years after the depart-ment first started discussing ren-ovations. With construction now complete, visitors can explore the new rooms and watch students use the innovative amenities.

They wanted a big open space that was multi-tasking and brought all the media together in one spot...

:: Jack Harkins, Title Luther Partnership Architect

“”

By Camille VandendriesscheAssistant Copy Editor

If newspapers were an army, they would be fighting an in-surgency of unsatisfied read-ers right now.

The number of readers is di-minishing because people are more interested in modern me-dia like the Internet. In response to this disaffection, newspapers have strategically invaded the Web territory and they now abun-dantly use videos and podcasts as powerful weapons.

For David Leeson, ACU alum-nus and 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner in breaking news pho-tography for his coverage of the Iraq War, the comparison be-tween newspapers and armies illustrates the crucial situation newspapers face: traditional methods do not work anymore. To stay competitive, newspa-pers need to become more like the insurgents, Leeson said.

“There is not a whole lot of fu-ture in print newspapers,” Leeson said. “Less people are buying, but it’s not going to die. Newspapers need to be more like the people, they need to listen to [them], to be part of the social fabric.”

A photographer at the Dal-las Morning News for 15 years, Leeson became a videographer in 2000, becoming a pioneer in the print industry.

“The Web is not showing just one photo, one point of view; it’s more inclusive,” Leeson said.

In 2005, Leeson switched to video consulting and started training new videographers at the Morning News.

But on Sept. 8, Leeson left the Dallas Morning News after 25 years at the newspaper. He said he now wants to focus on his own company, “Protege Films,” which already produced At War, a 120-minute documentary about the war in Afghanistan.

“Video is powerful: it trans-lates a still image into motion and sound. Still image is a mo-

ment; video is an extended mo-

ment,” Leeson said. “In 1998, I was already posting videos on my Web site. I knew it would only get bigger.”

Leeson said like every pioneer he encountered skepticism and trouble because people thought it was crazy at the time. He said videos did not become important for newspapers until 2005.

Newspapers have now signifi-cantly embraced video podcasts; 92 percent of the biggest newspa-pers in the United States offered video podcasts on their Web sites, according to a study conducted in September 2007 by the Bivings Group, a firm specialized in on-line communications.

Since August 2005, the Op-timist staff has posted its own videos on YouTube.com under an ACU account. With the technolog-ical support of the JMC Network Student Media News Lab, which includes a new TV studio, student journalists now record a newscast every Tuesday and a sportscast every Thursday and post them on YouTube.

However, Kimberley Prather, senior broadcast journalism ma-jor from St. Louis, Mo., said very few people on campus know about the podcasts.

“It should be more advertised,” said Prather, one of the four Op-timist’s anchors. “We don’t have enough visibility.”

In addition to the newscasts, a crew of four to six students shoots videos about activities on campus. Sommerly Simser, ju-nior broadcast journalism major from Las Vegas, said three to four videos are posted every week on YouTube. Video topics need to be timely, have good visual and cor-respond to what people want to see, Simser said.

Cade White, instructor of jour-nalism and mass communication and director of the photojournal-ism program, said the Optimist is waiting on its online publisher, Collegepublisher.com, to upgrade its system and allow video pod-casts on the Optimist’s Web site. He said the YouTube channel is very effective though.

“We had political videos that have received more than 20,000 views, but it’s not the norm,” White said. “A steady flow of visitors watches our videos every day.”

The two most popular ACU videos feature students sharing their political views before the primary elections in Texas. Inter-estingly, the video about conser-vative students on campus was viewed almost twice as much as the one on liberal students, which illustrates a fair representation of political trends online.

More recently, an interview of SA President Daniel Paul Watkins about the noose incident record-ed 63 views on YouTube just five hours after its release. Twelve days later, the interview had been viewed 410 times.

“Online videos is not just a growing trend; it’s a tremendous transition in the industry,” White said. “Internet opened the door for new forms of story telling and new audiences. There is a mas-sive audience for online videos, especially the youngsters. News-papers are discovering that news-rooms can do much more than just a newspaper.”

White said the new genera-tion does not mind where they get their information.

“The time will come when [newspapers’] Web sites will be-come primary and newspapers secondary,” White said.

A study conducted by the ad-vertising consulting firm Borrell Associates in June 2007 revealed that newspapers develop and so-phisticate their online newscasts to obtain more local ads than television Web sites. Newspapers’ newscasts target the young audi-ences and do not offer the same content as television newscasts; they also compete with televi-sion hours and geographical coverage. Although newspapers’ newscasts reach an extremely small percentage of audiences, they do seem to contribute to an increase of the overall online traffic, according to the study.

However, Leeson said newspa-pers should not try to compete with television.

“If newspapers want to be like TV, they will lose because they are not like TV,” Leeson said. “Why would they like to emulate TV since TV stations are struggling themselves?”

Leeson said newspapers must adapt their offerings to the people’s interests and hab-its but keep in mind their mis-sion of truth, facts, criticism and story telling.

“If newspapers lose sight of their mission, they will lose,” Leeson said. “People still turn to newspapers for what they trust. We should not be about hit counts. Our privilege is to stand on the side of the truth. We need truth, and there is no champion of the truth. The key to keep read-ers interested is transparency.”

Leeson said he once argued at a meeting with managers of the Dallas Morning News because their goal was to try to make hit counts. He said he spoke up and told them ironically that he would shoot porn clips in or-der to boost online audiences. Leeson said they acted like they did not hear him.

While the future addition of videos on the Optimist’s Web site may boost the audience size, White said the main goal is to give journalism students an “effective, working experience.”

“We want them to stay on the cutting edge of mass me-dia,” White said.

Leeson agrees the news-room is a wonderful addition to ACU.

“It sets [ACU] apart from any institution,” Leeson said. “It is ab-solutely important to equip stu-dents technically for tomorrow.”

Zak Zeinert :: chief photographer

Colter Hettich, features editor, speaks into a microphone in the podcasting room in the JMC Network Student Media News Lab.

Network mirrors professionals on Internet

Student Media News Lab

TV Studio

Pg. 4

Welcome to the NetworkHere’s what JMC students have

done with their convergedmedia space so far.

Above: Colter Hettich, features editor, enters the newsroom. Below right: Sommerly Simser, multimedia management editor, edits video. Below mid-dle: Laura Acuff, opinion editor, and Ryan Self, broadcast assistant, work on their latest assignments. Below left: DeLaina Parker, broadcast manager, watches the camera’s monitor as Pete Koehn, senior electronic media major, operates the camera. Left: Kimberly Prather, broadcast assistant, films a newscast with fellow broadcast assistant, Ryan Self.

Left: Kelline Linton, chief copy editor, edits a page of the Optimist for errors. Above: Michael Freeman, managing editor, works. Right: Zak Zeinert, chief photographer, sorts through the day’s photographs. Far right: Daniel Johnson-Kim, editor in chief, assists Lydia Melby, arts editor, with her design.

Pg. 9

JMC joins global shift toward convergence mindsetBy Sara SnelsonStudent Contributor

Print journalists used to only write, photographers only took pictures, and broadcasters gath-ered and wrote news to air for their stations. Now, a journalist must be able to do all of these.

“A single journalist must be able to do all sorts of things. We are no longer experts in one area,” said Kenneth Pybus, assis-tant professor of journalism.

Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, said the department took notice of future journalists’ needs to be equipped in numerous areas more than a

decade ago.“Students have

to be prepared

to tell stories in more than one way,” Bacon said.

Thus, the JMC Network Stu-dent Media Lab was built and technologically equipped for the converged media era. Just as the JMC curriculum touches every media format, a functional, stu-dent-run newsroom was needed to bring all of it together and give students a real life feel of the con-verged media era.

In 2003, Dr. Susan Lewis, assis-tant professor of journalism and mass communication, presented her idea of this converged news-room to faculty and the JMC Visit-ing Committee.

“We began planning a process no one was doing in journalism education in an integrated way,” Lewis said.

To get inspiration for the converged newsroom Lewis and

Bacon took trips to the Tampa Tribune in Florida and to the Uni-versity of South Carolina before its Newsplex was built.

Lewis had begun researching converged media in 2001.

“I was thinking in the future tense about converged media in the marketplace and what that meant for media education,” Lewis said. “I wrote a scenario that placed students in a futur-istic world in order to under-stand the vision.”

Lewis explained it as the learn-ing theory of constructivism — the act of creating knowledge by collecting input from a vari-ety of sources. When a student participates in constructing his or her own knowledge, he or she is more likely to retain it and ap-ply it later. The newsroom allows students to apply what they are

learning in the classroom to cre-ate all types of media and have a deeper understanding of what they have learned. Then they can apply that knowledge in the JMC Network and in their future jobs. The students get a real newsroom experience before they enter the professional field.

“This type of convergence is happening in the industry,” Lewis said. “The goal of the multimedia newsroom is to provide student learning opportunities in a pro-gressive media environment that is functional, attractive and sup-ports the curriculum.”

Pybus said with all of the out-lets working together, readers can pick and choose how they want to receive their news.

“Younger people gather in eclectic ways, and now we are al-lowing them to choose their me-

dia preference based upon their own interests,” Pybus said. “We are recognizing this trend in jour-nalism, forcing different mind-sets to share space and breaking down those walls and being one of the first universities to do it.”

Bacon, Lewis and Pybus agree that so far the converged news-room is everything they had hoped it would be. Although the school year has just begun, Pybus said regular online posts are hap-pening (even on the weekends), more videos are being made and posted than ever before and more TV segments have been made this year so far than the last three years (youtube.com/acuvideo).

“We are taking on less of a newspaper mentality and more of a news mentality,” Pybus said.

By Grant AbstonSports Editor

As ACU integrates new tech-nology at a furious pace through-out its campus, the university sets the standard for colleges across America, offering two words to any competitors: keep up.

The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at ACU has transformed the way it deliv-ers news to students, expanding its range well beyond print news to other forms of communica-tion and providing students the opportunity to access their news through newly developed iPhone or iPod touch interfaces.

“When we learned that all the freshmen would have iPhones, we quickly realized we would have to change how we reached them on-line,” said Kenneth Pybus, assis-tant professor of journalism and student media adviser. “We knew that many would read their news over the iPhone so we would have to develop some sort of iPhone in-terface specifically to serve them

and students who had iPhones.” The JMC Network began devel-

oping the iPhone interface after Pybus and Cade White, instruc-tor of journalism and student media adviser, were chosen to participate in the university’s Mobile Learning Initiative in the fall of 2007. ACU’s iPhone initia-tive was created to put iPhones or iPod touches into the hands of all incoming freshmen, providing students the opportunity to use the latest in mobile technology to aid them in everything from class schedules and maps to in-class, real-time surveys.

ACU was named a 2008 Campus Innovator in the area of Mobile Technology by Cam-pus Technology magazine for its Mobile Learning Initiative launched this semester.

Because the iPhone would be in the hands of more than 900 freshmen, Pybus and White real-ized the opportunity of distrib-uting news through the iPhone.

Pybus and White began re-searching the technology be-hind iPhone interfaces through

html, xml and the different Apple user guidelines.

“The beta site we experi-mented with was written in ba-sic html, but the next version was authorized using dash code and to do that we sought the as-sistance of an outside program-mer,” White said.

They hired alumnus Darby He-witt to take on the project during his off hours when he was not working on the iPhone develop-ment team for the university. He-witt was shown other interfaces from other news organizations and was given the task of devel-oping a user-friendly interface.

“The real challenge for a news organization is to allow the user to navigate through a great deal of information and make it easy to find what they want to se-lect,” White said.

Students may access the in-terface from a Web site using their phone, exactly like the my-ACU icon that was developed for all students. The interface was scheduled to launch Friday and can be accessed by logging

on to m.jmcnetwork.com A pro-motional campaign also will be launched after the interface goes live to inform students of the new interface and encour-age students to add the icon to their iPhone desktop and re-ceive news e-mails.

“We don’t know what it looks like on other phone applications, but I can imagine you can see it on other phones,” Pybus said. “We haven’t tested it, knowing the vast majority of our readers our accessing it through the iP-hone, and that’s where we direct-ed most of our attention.”

While the interface was being developed, developers faced the task of finding ways to in-corporate other things into the interface such as advertising, convincing outside advertisers that the iPhone platform will reach a large audience.

“We know more and more people will access their news and info electronically, and we want to stay up to date with the technol-ogy that allows that,” Pybus said. “[The interface] will be easier to

read and students will be able to access it anywhere.”

White also added another goal for the interface. “One of the ar-eas that we are going to focus on is looking for ways to provide in-teractivity opportunities for read-ers to comment on stories or par-ticipate in discussions. We want to make that as easy and seam-less as possible.”

Mobile interface to increase exposure

about 25 students enrolled in the program to about 125 stu-dents within a three-year peri-od. By the mid-1970s, a profes-sional journalism curriculum was formed in the Division of Mass Communication.

In 1978, Optimist editor Ron Hadfield and his staff moved from the musty base-ment of the Campus Center lined with lime green shag carpet to the third floor of the newly built Morris Cen-ter. With the move came new technologies. The staff began using Compugraphic’s Uni-fied Terminal System video display terminals instead of typewriters. Despite the new system, articles still needed to be printed out on film, cut up with X-Acto knives, run through a waxing machine and placed on paste-up sheets in order to be put to press.

“It was a lot of busy work,” said Doug Mendenhall, in-structor of journalism and mass communication and Op-timist editor in 1980-81 and 1981-82. “Most of it was done over two days.”

The staff grew busier as the Optimist added a second weekly edition on Tuesdays in August of 1981. Before, is-

sues ran only on Fridays.“In some ways, it was a

lot harder,” Mendenhall said. “But in some ways, it made things a little more sensible. You wouldn’t have to wait a week to report on certain things. It certainly helped in that way.”

The mid-1980s saw a pleth-ora of progress in the field of broadcast student media. In November 1983, ACU-TV be-gan broadcasting on-campus talk shows; the next year, it produced Visions, a video yearbook. On June 2, 1986, KACU-FM, which had changed its name from KACC to stay in concordance with the univer-sity’s name change in 1976, began broadcasting; two years later, the on-campus television station KUF-TV7 went on air.

In September 1990, the JMC department received a Macintosh SE computer lab complete with 17 computer stations. Four Macintosh IIex machines and several laser printers were then installed in the Optimist office, and staff members started to use QuarkXPress system software to produce the paper. Student media had reached the digital age, and on May 1, 2002, the

Optimist launched its Web site www.acuoptimist.com.

“The Internet was creat-ing a whole new medium,” said Cade White, instructor of journalism and mass commu-nication and director of the photojournalism program. “For the visual journalist and former photojournalists, it really presented an amazing opportunity to add some very powerful tools to your tool-box—the storytelling tools of sound and motion.”

Since then, the Optimist switched its focus to conver-gence, the combination of print, audio, video and online journalism. ACU student Jamin Blount, ’05, helped set up the Optimist’s server, which was stored in White’s office, for the hosting of online videos.

“It was very cool, very excit-ing,” White said. “There’s a lot of technology out there that really makes this a lot easier.”

However, as the server aged, it slowed down, forcing the Op-timist to look elsewhere to post videos online. On September 7, 2006, the Optimist began pub-lishing news videos on www.youtube.com/acuvideo.

After the renovation to the Morris Center in 2007, the JMC department now of-fers KACU-FM, a 33,000-watt National Public Radio station serving West Texas, KUF-TV, a LPTV station broadcasting to the Abilene area, the Op-timist online, a Web site that features articles, YouTube videos and podcasts, and the Optimist, a twice-weekly broadsheet newspaper that has been rated All-American every year since 1975 by the Associated Collegiate Press. The Prickly Pear published its final edition last year.

During the history of ACU student media, the program produced many alumni such

as minister and best-selling Christian author Max Lucado, ’83, CBS Emmy Award-win-ning producer Lance Barrow, ’81, and Pulitzer Prize-win-ning photojournalist David Leeson, ’78. The department as a whole also has won thou-sands of state, regional and national awards since the mid-1980s.

ACU’s student media has advanced significantly since its inception in 1912. And despite the sudden and rapid growth, students of journalism and mass communication always will be needed, Marler said.

“The delivery systems are changing,” Marler said. “What we’ll have 25 years from now is not going to look like today. But the basis is that the pop-ulation of people in a given community doesn’t have the time, so they need some insti-tution that’s playing the role of gathering, analyzing, syn-thesizing, reporting and eval-uating information for them,” he said.

Professors dedicate time to students, newsroom By Colter HettichFeatures Editor

With much of the focus on the JMC Network Student Media News Lab itself, students and visitors might easily overlook the elbow grease that went into realizing a ten-year dream.

Kenneth Pybus, assistant pro-fessor of journalism and mass communication, and Cade White, instructor of photojournalism, spent countless hours preparing for all aspects of the newsroom and even more piecing it together this summer. The two men, along with the JMC department, share a deep concern for giving students the highest quality student media experience possible.

“One of the hallmarks of this department is that we are con-stantly looking forward,” Pybus said. “[The newsroom] shows that we’re thinking about our students careers and less interested in pro-tecting the status quo.”

The idea of constructing a con-verged newsroom was introduced to ACU more than 10 years. Dr. Susan Lewis, assistant professor of journalism and mass commu-nication, made a presentation to a Visiting Committee on the ben-efits of a converged media space. Pybus was on that committee and took the presentation seriously.

“I was intrigued because I was at a weekly newspaper where we were trying to figure out how to put our news on-line,” Pybus said. “[Dr. Lewis’

presentation] hit home; It was the very the challenge I had as editor of a newspaper.”

Pybus’ interest in journalism began with car-tooning. Pybus cartooned for the Optimist his first year at ACU, but over time he grew to love the art of writing more. He reported for a year af-ter graduat-ing from ACU before attend-ing Baylor Law School.

Amy Pybus, Kenneth’s wife, said her hus-band’s interest in journalistic

writing spiked while he was at Baylor Law.

“Even through law school, he didn’t really enjoy it until he took his First Amendment class,” Amy said. “I think that’s what made him so interested in it.”

After law school, Pybus moved his family to Houston, where he accepted the position of managing editor of the Hous-ton Business Journal. At the Journal, he learned both the pro-duction side of publication and the managerial side. Pybus’ di-verse experience in the field has given him an understanding of the importance of being knowl-

edgeable in multiple areas.Pybus has already noticed the

converged atmosphere’s effects on the newsroom.

“Students who don’t empha-size video like to pay attention and watch how it’s done,” Pybus said. “It’s the proximity; you can’t help but absorb something.”

Cade White spent his summer months on the second floor of the Morris Center installing soft-ware, hardware and configuring the new video editing station.

White graduated from ACU in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in photojournalism.

“I was a photo hobbyist as a child, but it was just a phase like anything else,” White said. “Somewhere between dirt bikes and guitars.”

Once he arrived at ACU, af-ter receiving the fateful, high school graduation gift of a “de-cent” camera, White decided to take a photography class. By the time he completed the course, he knew what he wanted to pur-sue. Though he had direction, he would not develop a passion un-til taking two-week, photojour-nalism summer course taught by David Leeson.

In 2004, Leeson received a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. The award rec-ognized him and his colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyers for coverage of the invasion of Iraq as embed-ded journalists. Also, Leeson’s documentary film “War Stories” (2003) won a national Edward R. Murrow award and a National Headliners award.

“Cade was actually helping me out for a while … he was sort of my Deepthroat kind of guy; he kept me informed on what was happening in video,” Leeson said. “I don’t know if anybody knew on the campus just how ahead of the pack he was in video; he just did a fantastic job with his videos.”

Leeson recalled White’s fasci-nation with developing technol-ogy, but more importantly his dedication to the craft.

“[White] always and still is in-credibly passionate and energetic.

The guy still moves like he’s 16,” Leeson said. “He is a wonderful human being.”

“I didn’t see his name any-where, but I thought, ‘I know who’s behind that,’” Leeson said when he received an invi-tation to the unveiling of the converged newsroom.

Though Leeson never taught a university course before or after that summer class, he left a deep impression on White. White re-members Leeson making sure his students understood not only the inherent danger and alienation of photojournalism, but the un-matched satisfaction as well.

“He was incredibly inspira-tional,” White said. “Ever since he has been my mentor. David con-tinues to influence my life and everything that happens here in the newsroom.”

White’s use of his faculty po-sition to encourage students to think creatively and push the en-velope is nothing new. In 2002, as

Prickly Pear advisor, he designed the first video journalism ef-fort to record a companion DVD for the yearbook. Now, in 2008, White handpicked most of the newsroom’s software and, with the help of Nathaniel Jones and Technology Support Services, de-signed how the computers and network would be configured.

“I’m a bit of a perfectionist,” White admitted. “As everything started taking shape, I realized I cared very much about the tech-nical aspects of the newsroom.”

Throughout his time at ACU, White said he has been fortunate to be on the front lines of JMC’s transition from old technology to the latest in news technology. The converged media space is some-thing many never thought would be conceived, much less material-ized on ACU’s campus.

“I could never have imagined it would be like this back in 1996,” White said. “This is incredible.”

White

Pybus

Photo courtesy of Creative ServicesKenneth Pybus, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication, instructs Laura Acuff, opinion editor, during a deadline day.

Photo courtesy of Creative ServicesCade White, instructor of photojournalism, coaches Ryan Self, staff broadcast assistant on how to use Final Cut Pro.Pg. 10

eager pursuit of journalistic excellence The delivery systems are changing. What we’ll have 25 years from now is not go-ing to look like today.

:: Dr. Charlie Marler, professor emeritus and senior faculty of JMC Department

“”

2008

The Optimist begins its 97th year of providing news to the ACU campus.

2006

With the popularity of online video sharing on the rise, the Optimist starts to post brief student-produced videos to YouTube.com.

1968

Robert English and Mary Grady became the first African-American staff members to work for the Optimist. The university had first admitted black students three years earlier.

1972

The administration pulled and destroyed the 1972 edition of the Prickly Pear because of its supposed counter-culture themes.

1990

The JMC department receives new Macintosh computers.

Pg. 3

By Michael FreemanManaging Editor

In August 1912, student Arthur Slater of Clyde dis-tributed the first copy of the Optimist to Childers Classical Institute students. He worked on the first issue as a report-er, copy editor and typesetter. Ninety-six years later, the kind of dedication shown by Slater still materializes in modern Optimist staffs.

The history of student me-dia at ACU begins with that first issue Slater made, which mostly featured religious commentary, encouraging let-ters to the school and brief news pieces. For reasons un-known, he named the paper the Optimist. The name stuck as students joined to help produce the monthly newspa-per. Slater was the first editor for issues produced on the old campus on North First Street. D.L. Petty, who later died fighting in World War I, became the paper’s second editor the following year.

A few years later in May 1916, the first student year-book was published. Named

after the com-mon West Texas cactus with pear-

shaped fruit, the Prickly Pear, complete with 125 pages and a royal purple front cover, began being printed annually, high-lighting student groups and events. In the early 1920s, class editions of the Optimist were made as a competition, where each class of students elected a temporary staff to put together one issue of the paper.

As student media at ACC continued to grow on campus, so did its influence off cam-pus. In November 1919, mem-bers of the Optimist and Prick-ly Pear formed the Press Club and joined the Texas Intercol-legiate Press Association, the oldest collegiate press asso-ciation in the nation.

Although the newspaper was primarily an extracurricular ac-tivity, students devoted their time and effort to it, includ-ing Wendell H. Bedichek, who served three years as editor dur-ing 1921 to 1924—still the lon-gest tenure in school history.

In 1925, the staff moved out of the administration building and into the science building, thus beginning a trek around campus that included produc-ing the paper from Daisy Hall, Sewell Auditorium, the base-ment of McKinzie Hall, Cham-bers Hall, the basement of the

Library, in a barracks building where Christian Village Apart-ments currently stand, in the basement of the Campus Cen-ter and finally to the Don Morris Center in 1978, for 20 years on the third floor, and now in the new JMC Network Student Media News Lab on the second floor.

The constant moving did not pose the only obstacle to the staff; a few controversies arose along the way. On March 15, 1932, a faculty publications committee urged that a popu-lar column, called Hoots of the Owl, be canceled. The unsigned column began running in 1928 and was written by a variety of staff members. The article featured an owl who said he roamed the campus, spying on people. But the committee said the column “had become too juvenile and undignified for a college newspaper.” The col-umn was canceled. But a few weeks later, the Optimist start-ed a new tradition on April 1 called the Pessimist.

“The Pessimist was a hap-py tradition for many years,” said Charlie Marler, professor emeritus and senior faculty member of journalism and mass communication. “It was buffoonery, satire, slightly

veiled personal attacks and silliness all meant in fun.”

Early editions of the special issue had columns printed sideways and upside-down, and featured stories, often ridiculing faculty members and administrative policies. The edition died out when the potential for libel became an issue in the early 1980s.

In September 1941, the Op-timist began printing its issues on campus and continued un-til the late 1960s when the paper was shipped to various nearby towns, such as Stam-ford and Anson, before the Abilene Reporter-News took over the job.

The newspaper and year-book were not the only forms of student media on campus. In August 1950, on-campus ra-dio station KACC-AM began its inaugural year. The station’s first manager was Bill Teague, future president of the univer-sity. Three years later, KACC started serving live and record-ed broadcasts, ranging from political reporting to light-hearted comedy, to Abilene and surrounding areas within a 40-mile radius. Control rooms and equipment were located in the basement of McKinzie Hall and in Sewell Auditorium be-

fore being moved to the Morris Center in 1978.

As different media ap-peared on campus, so did an official department of jour-nalism. In September 1955, Drs. Heber Taylor and Regi-nald Westmoreland directed the creation of the Depart-ment of Journalism, which was spun off from the English Department, but the depart-ment was short-lived. In June 1964, Taylor and Westmore-land left ACU, resulting in its closure four years later.

But the department would not stay dead for long. Marler, along with Dr. Chapin Ross, Dr. Lowell Perry, Dr. B. Edward Da-vis and Clark Potts worked to establish a mass communica-tions degree within the Depart-ment of Communication, an im-portant step in the process of building a nationally accredited journalism program.

“We needed journalism and mass communication,” Mar-ler said. “The church needed it; the Christian universities needed it, and the secular me-dia needed more Christians on their staffs because they had good work ethics and they were committed to truth.”

After the degree was added, student interest shot up from

ACU community expects more from staffBy Sondra RodriguezStudent Contributor

The new broadcast and pub-lishing capabilities of the JMC Network Student Media News Lab will improve the final product for readers on and off campus.

The newsroom is equipped with all new computers for video editing, page designing and pub-lishing news, said Cade White, in-structor of journalism and mass communication and director of the photojournalism program.

The newsroom also includes a Podcasting room.

Outside the podcast room, the rest of the newsroom runs on the standard university software, but also has added Adobe Creative

Suite 3 Design Pro software. This includes InDesign and Photoshop for publication design and pho-tography purposes and Final Cut Pro—used for video editing.

“All of these are industry-rel-evant tools,” White said. “What we have right now might be as nice as or even nicer than what students will see in the profes-sional world.”

White said because of the expe-rience students will gain through working in such an environment, he expects ACU graduates to out-shine others, post graduation.

Dave Hogan, instructor of journalism and mass communi-cation, also said working in the newsroom will better equip stu-dents for a career in journalism.

He said publications will be look-ing for students with the broad range of experience this facility will provide.

“The news business is chang-ing and multimedia is becoming much more important. I think it’s important for students to under-stand how to run a video or pro-duce a podcast, as well as how to write a story in the traditional way,” Hogan said.

Because drastic technological advances were made for JMC stu-dents, readers will see changes in the final product. Readers are the ones who take an extra few seconds twice a week to grab a copy of the Optimist while tread-ing through the masses after Cha-pel, and the ones who continue to

grant reporters insight into their lives and routines for the sake of a story.

“A certain event will hap-pen and they pick up on it right away, like the noose incident. I hadn’t heard anything about it until I picked up a copy of the Optimist that day,” said Gregory Martin, junior interdisciplinary major from Cibolo.

Martin was unaware of the construction and opening of the newsroom but now anticipates the content and quality of this year’s issues with the upgrades.

Aundi Brown, senior ac-counting major from Wichita Falls, said as a student outside the JMC department, she thinks the newsroom will have a posi-

tive effect on both students and the newspaper.

“I know journalism is a hard field to get into, and hopefully this newsroom will give them the edge they need to break into it,” Brown said.

Ben Fulfer, junior sociology major from Memphis, Tenn., agreed with the decision to im-plement and practice multiple forms of media in JMC students’ education.

“Converged media makes ev-erything quicker and easier for both the department and read-ers,” he said. “It’s all you see in professional journalism now. This will definitely help out grad-uates in that are once they gradu-ate and get out there.”After 97 years, student media continues

Donors provide funds for student media roomBy Daniel Johnson-KimEditor in Chief

Dr. Charlie Marler returned to Abilene Christian College in the fall of 1974 to find an Abilene “newspaper man” eager to re-ignite the ill-equipped mass com-munication program.

Marler, professor emeritus and senior faculty member of the Journalism and Mass Communi-cation Department, came back to Abilene after completing his doctoral studies at the University of Missouri, and the publisher of the Abilene Reporter-News, A.B. “Stormy” Shelton, donated $10,000 to equip the program with 15 “state-of-the-art” IBM Se-lectric typewriters for reporting and copy-editing courses.

Before Shelton’s generos-ity, journalism students at ACC had only pens, paper and four dated, manual typewriters to record and report campus news — Marler said the IBMs were a gift from above.

“The 15 IBMS were delivered fairly early in the semester; it was like Christmas morning,” Marler said.

Fast forward to 2008, and it is

Christmas again for journalism students at ACU as the Morris Center is now equipped with cut-ting-edge technology and a JMC Network Student Media News Lab. But beneath the new toys and fresh paint on the walls lies the faith of foundations and the individual donors willing to put their wallets behind the JMC De-partment and its vision to rethink and revamp how journalism is taught to prepare students for the ever changing industry.

“It had to; it just had to hap-pen,” said Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the JMC department. “I just be-lieved that we would eventually make it happen.”

The university approved a proposal Dr. Susan Lewis, assis-tant professor of journalism and mass communication, wrote for the construction of a converged student media news lab in Janu-ary 2001. After approval, the JMC faculty estimated it would take nearly $1 million to make their dream of a converged me-dia news lab a reality. The only problem was figuring out where to find the funds.

“The university has a policy that doesn’t allow you to begin

a construction project until it’s fully funded, and we were living under that policy,” Lewis said.

The first victory in the battle to raise funds fittingly came from The Shelton Family Founda-tion, named after the same West Texas philanthropist and former Abilene Reporter-News publisher who gave Marler his “state-of-the art” typewriters. The Board of Trustees for the foundation begun by the late Shelton ap-proved a challenge grant the ACU development office applied for in 2004. The foundation initially committed to give $250,000 to the department’s project.

“They said we’ll give you a cer-tain amount of money if you raise ‘x’ number,” Bacon said.

After the Shelton Foundation’s initial donation, several individu-al donors and other foundations began to join the JMC dream. The Ethics and Excellence in Jour-nalism Foundation and the Zoe Foundation followed in the Shel-ton Foundation’s footsteps. In addition to the foundation funds, Russell C. and Jane Varner Beard of Abilene, and Paula and Sterling Varner of Wichita, Kansas, and other individual donors made

substantial gifts to the cause. But the funds were still not all there for construction to begin in the five-year time frame the depart-ment had initially planned for.

In the end, it was the foun-dation named for Shelton that put forth the funds to begin the planning, construction and fine tuning of the converged media news lab, putting the grand to-tal it donated to the project at close to $900,000 of the more than $1 million project and ending the fundraising effort in February 2007.

“I kind of look at it as it all hap-pened when it was suppose to happen,” Lewis said, adding that although it took the department longer than expected to raise the funds, the longer time period was a blessing in disguise; without the delay the newsroom could not have been equipped with the technology that was available when construction began.

David Copeland, president of the Shelton Family Foundation, said the foundation’s donation is miniscule when compared to what the money was used for and what students will be doing in the new newsroom.

“The real focus really ought to be on the university and what they’re trying to do because that’s really the hard part,” Copeland said. “To make a grant is in the big scheme the easy part; the hard part is taking the money, building the right facilities and really equipping the students with state-of-the-art knowledge as they go out in the world.”

Although the donors are hum-ble, Bacon said the department will be forever indebted to the list of donors for their kindness and courage to support this project.

“It was essential to provide [students] with what they need,” Bacon said. “I didn’t see it as op-tional. To me having this facility and using it well is a great oppor-tunity and it’s also a absolutely essential opportunity.”

The IBM typewriters Shelton provided increased the quality of Marler’s students’ education and training. Bacon was one of those students, and in 2008, Marler hopes students also turn their “Christmas morning into producing great journalism.”

Pg. 2

1912

Arthur Slater worked as a reporter, copy editor and typesetter to distribute the first edition of the Optimist.

1921

Wendell Bedichek begins his eventual three-year tenure as Optimist editor.

1916

The first copy of the student yearbook, the Prickly Pear, debuts. It was named after the pear-shaped fruit of a common West Texas cactus. The yearbook had 125 pages and highlighted student groups and events.

1957

The Optimist office moves to Chambers Hall. The office has been housed in several buildings during the years.

Pg. 11

1950

KACC-AM first goes on the air with first general manager Bill Teague, future ACU president.

Arthur Slater distributed the first edition of the Optimist at Childers Classical Institute

in August 1912 and since that momentous day, students on this West Texas campus have pro-duced award-winning journalism.

In 2008, the Optimist remains, but student me-dia at Abilene Christian University has evolved into something Slater might never have been able to imagine. Where before student journal-ism was limited to the pages of a newspaper, new technology and new platforms to reach our audience bring the opportunity and necessity of evolution, just like the professionals.

This special section is not an attempt to boast, but to explain and explore the evolution of ACU student media. From its history on the printed page to its future on the World Wide Web. From the con-struction of the JMC Network Student Media News Lab to the structure of the student staff. From our dedicated advisers to the generous gifts that made this all possible. We are the JMC Network, and we proudly present the future of ACU student media.

Special News Lab Dedication Section