ABC News opens bureau at Weimer Hall
For five students, doing what they love now comes with a $2,500 salary.
The writing and producing they typically do for class is part of their job with ABC News.
At the start of the fall semester, ABC News On Campus opened a bureau at the College.
Now, a converted Weimer Hall ground floor office serves as home base for telecommunication students Robert Bradfield, Marilia Brocchetto, Miles Doran, Patrick Fleming and journalism senior Dominick Tao.
Under the supervision of News Director Mark Leeps, the students have been producing multimedia stories for abcnews.go.com/oncampus. The On Campus Web site has sections for both video and written stories.
The Web site is also a forum for college students nationwide, with blogs and polls that encourage students to exchange ideas. ABC News also opened bureaus at Arizona State University, Syracuse University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Texas at Austin.
The bureaus give ABC News a college edge and help mold college students into journalists, said John Green, ABC’s executive producer for special programming and development.
“We’re trying to train these students to operate like a real news bureau,” Green said.
The UF bureau produces content for several platforms of media. One of the bureau’s most memorable pieces, about UF’s biannual Great Underwear Dash, even aired on ABC News Now and the World News Webcast. Reporter Doran fronted the piece, which showed UF students stripping down for a midnight run down University Avenue and donating their clothes to the Salvation Army.
“We had to run or drive quickly to different locations,” photographer and editor Fleming said. “The shoot went by in a flash.”
Four bureau staffers put in a required 15 hours each week, while Bradfield puts in 20 as the bureau chief. But they usually spend more time than that.
“I would take this opportunity in a heartbeat even if it wasn’t paid,” Bradfield said.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2008 issue of communigator.
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