Brief 9 - College Media

As a person who has worked with The Bray, I have firsthand experience with college media. I worked as a Videographer, who made videos to be shared on social media for The Bray. I also submitted some photographs.

My role at The Bray focused mainly on "fluff" pieces, rather than hard news Most of what I did was a series called "Meet the Students." I interviewed students (and in one case an alumni, but I had to make an exception for my sister of course.) about their 'college careers' as it were.

Meet SAU's Talia Burton

I also created and published trailers for SAU's theatre productions. I also created what I like to call a "Weather mood" video. This video is basically nature shots that show how the weather feels like on SAU at any given day. I also submitted photographs to The Bray as I took them on other news-worthy projects I was involved in, which was nice.

As a videographer, I had to be careful about what I put in my work. The majority of my music was under the creative commons liscense. If I was going to do a story about a piece of music I could use that under fair use. But the one story I did, which was an interview with Aaron Philip about his music, I just asked him for permission and he was happy to give it to me.

Meet SAU's Aaron Philip

A big factor in my role as a college media personnel--if that's not to pretentious to call myself that--was the casual atmosphere coupled with professionalism. Most of my interactions with my boss, Kayla Baugus, were done through the groupme application on our phones, and often times during what you wouldn't consider normal business hours. I have no frame of reference on whether this is normal in regular media as well, but I feel the flexible nature suited me well during my stay with The Bray.

I would say the second biggest notable factor in college media is that I was given a lot of levity when it came to harsh deadlines. I tried to give Kayla an Accurate time frame for my work, but as the semester dragged on, and I struggled more with sustaining my workload, I would sometimes not make the deadlines when I said I would be able to. And I know in the professional world this does not cut it at all, but because we're all also full time students she cut me a lot of slack, which I greatly appreciate.

But the biggest takeaway from my time in The Bray is that even though the atmosphere can be casual, and the bosses lenient, is that we are still a legitimate news organization. I discussed a concept with Kayla called "SAU news" where I would write and create a fictional comedy sketch poking fun at the college. Kayla made sure to let me know that even if I did step on a few toes at the administration (not that I ever would, of course.) that The Bray would have my back, because we cannot be censored by the school. There was a case in the past where The Bray wanted to publish something that made the school look bad, but the president actually tried to stop the story. If I remember correctly, The Bray actually took it to court and won, so the precedent has been set for reporters at The Bray. So even though we are a school organization, and a bunch of rag-tag students with cell phone cameras, we still get the benefits of free speech and freedom from influence.