On Friday, October 20th, the Slippery Rock Area High School Journalism and Yearbook students attended a field trip at Slippery Rock University for the first annual Rock Media Expo. The Expo contained a tour of the campus, a live broadcast session in Maltby TV Studio, and a panel session with two SRU Communications graduates.

The day began with a trip to the Maltby TV Studio, which is where WSRU-TV films and edits all of their broadcasts. These broadcasts are available to view on social media sites, such as Facebook and YouTube by searching for WSRU-TV. In the studio, students were able to use some of the equipment that SRU students use to film their broadcasts, including the tri-caster, cameras, and teleprompter. Some students, including Grace Bell and Megan Brackett, become newscasters and practiced broadcasting previous news stories with the help of WSRU-TV staff members.

Junior Jordan Longdon, who served as a camerawoman, explained that “We learned how to zoom in and out and how to focus the camera.”

Junior Emily Tasker was able to work with the tricaster. She explained that the tricaster allows the technician to switch between cameras, add overlays to the footage, and insert segments of outside video to the news broadcast. She said that “It was intense. There were a lot of buttons to push, and Sami Edwards helped me.

After the visit to the studio, students ate a catered lunch at Weisenfluh Dining Hall and awards were given out to students from Grove City High School, Kiski Area High School, and Slippery Rock Area High School. Many students from Slippery Rock won an award, including Ava Marini’s news feature photograph, Olivia Elliot’s outstanding photo spread, Alexis Schrecengost’s outstanding sports story, Megan Brackett’s outstanding sports photograph, and Emily Tasker’s outstanding feature story. Overall, the Hi-Rocket newspaper and SARN Yearbook won awards for outstanding overall newspaper and outstanding overall yearbook.

Following the luncheon and awards ceremony, students went on a guided tour of the SRU campus, with notable stops at the university’s newspaper room for their award-winning college newspaper, The Rocket. The tour ended at Weisenfluh, where Slippery Rock’s students sat down at a panel session with two graduates from SRU who have gone on to successful careers in the Communications Industry. Carly Krouse of the Indiana Gazette and Bridget McClure from WJAC TV were there to discuss their experiences in the news industry and to answer questions from students.

At the panel, senior Michael Kiefer asked both of the SRU alumni many questions about their careers in the news industry. He said, “I thought it was interesting to hear about what Carly and Bridget had initially thought their careers would be and how it compared to what they are doing now.” He explained that Bridget is a news broadcaster, but she did more than talk on camera. In addition to public speaking, Bridget also arranges all of her interviews, films shorts to splice into her news package, and then edits all of the footage and audio together all on her own.  He added that “I’ve never met any broadcasters or sports writers before, so it was all very interesting.”