Meeting Murrow

More than 15 communication professionals visited WSU on Thursday as a part of the annual Murrow Symposium to give insight and tips to students interested in the field.

Speakers from around the nation discussed creating multimedia packages, network careers, and the latest digital trends.

“Very informing for sure, the big thing I took from this is how much ambition you have to have. You need to be fully committed,” said junior communication major William Cheshier, regarding a seminar about anchoring and reporting in front of the lens.

Senior communication major Rachael Trost said she found the workshops like the Art of Storytelling very useful but would have liked to have seen younger professional speakers who could have provided more pertinent insight with how to break into their fields.

The two main events of the symposium were a panel with two professionals from Al Jazeera America and a keynote speaker from the Knight Foundation.

The panel featured John Seigenthaler, the prime-time news anchor for Al Jazeera America (AJAM) and Marcy McGinnis, the senior vice president of newsgathering at AJAM.

Seigenthaler was also the first anchor ever for MSNBC.

“Whenever I tell people I work at Al Jazeera America, I get a pause. A long pause,” Seigenthaler said.

Seigenthaler and McGinnis described some of the earlier challenges the network faced when it launched back in August 2013 because of its Middle Eastern origins.

McGinnis said their network differs from mainstream networks like MSNBC and FOX because they don’t pander to the left or right side of political ideologies, and instead they focus on intelligent and productive conversation.

One question, which the audience asked repeatedly and in various ways, was how the network would handle a story that was negatively reflected in the interests of the royal family of Qatar, which owns the network.

“I’m not sure how many times we’ll be asked this but I’ll say it again: We’re independent,” Seigenthaler said. “And if it wasn’t that way, I wouldn’t be here.”

The final event was a keynote address from Eric Newton, the senior adviser to the president at the Knight Foundation, after he was presented the Distinguished Achievement Award.

Newton discussed the origins and success Mosaic, an internet news program turned cable channel that packaged news reports from across the Middle East and gave a different perspective into the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

“The U.S. media covered in no way near how these Middle Eastern networks did,” Newton said.

Newton also discussed how media has changed over the years as well how it will change in the future.

“Every generation since the revolutionary war has grown up with a new form of media in ascendance,” Newton said.

After the all-day event ended, founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication Lawrence Pintak said he was pleased with how the symposium went.

“I think it was great. It gets better every year,” Pintak said. “Having top professionals here is always gratifying.”