The Importance of Radio News -- Yellow Team

Saturday June 29th, 2013, students from all over the state flocked to the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida to experience the Summer Journalism Visitation Program.

Students heard from different speakers who either attended or are still attending the university and are enrolled in the UF College of Journalism and Communications.

Two of the speakers included the hosts from Noticias WUFT FM, a Spanish-speaking radio show. The two girls explained that it was a blast to help create the show, but it was also a long and hard process. They also said that it was tough to try and translate the news from Spanish to English. After talking about the radio, it was onto other subjects, and social media was a big one.

“I really liked the diverse topics that the speakers had brought up. I especially liked the social media part of it,” Shannon Bowker, 17, said.

One of the speakers included Andy Selapak, who discussed social media with participants. He started out with everyone standing up after a long hour of listening to other speakers and had everyone take out their phones, if they owned one. After that he went onto explain that the smartphone is the best asset news reporters possess. He also went on to show how student journalists could use social media to their advantage.

“Twitter is a great way to break news,” Selapak clarified. “Collect news, share the news, and learn from it.”

All in all, students really enjoyed the SJVP and hope to come back next year for another day of learning all about multimedia.