BYU advertising student Valentina Rodriguez de Almeida has been awarded the Allen Rosenshine Minority Education and Training Fund internship by BBDO, one of the leading advertising agencies in the world. The internship is awarded each year to minorities, women and individuals protected under the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act. It aims to improve the level of diversity in the advertising industry by encouraging the pursuit of careers in the field. Interns receive a $4,000 stipend for the ten-week internship.

Almeida was honored by the opportunity to with BBDO.

“I felt like I was up on a cloud,” said Almeida. “I can’t really put into words how excited I was.”

Almeida joined Energy BBDO in Chicago in June for a two-month-long internship where she was mentored as she worked on advertising campaigns. For her, representing BYU was always top of mind.

“BYU has a reputation of excellence,” Almeida said. “The advertising faculty have always taught us to represent ourselves and what we stand for.  My plan was to show nothing less.”

BBDO Worldwide is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. and specializes in advertising, public relations and other specialty communications services.

Three BYU Communications graduate students were awarded top ethics paper at the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) Conference on Friday, March 5.

Master’s students Austin Cameron, Sara Shawcroft and Holly Wallace contributed to the award‐winning paper, Getting Religion Right:  Toward an Ethical Model for Media Coverage of Religion in Elections, as a part of a mentored group project under the direction of Dr. Sherry   Baker, associate professor of communications studies. Wallace accepted the award at the 19th annual conference‐wide banquet in Cincinnati.

Their paper sought to offer an ethical guide for religion reporting in political campaigns. The students addressed issues such as a journalist’s responsibility to accurately recount how religions and religious leaders view themselves, to treat all candidates the same, to not focus on doctrinal issues, to not require candidates to be spokespersons for their religion, to provide the perspective of the believer and to provide the public with the information they need to make informed voting decisions.

“Numbers of our Communications Master’s student colleagues have had research accepted into conferences around the nation this year, and our award is another testament to the quality of the faculty and instruction in the Communications Department Master’s program,” said Cameron, one of the paper’s authors.

APPE was founded in 1991 to encourage interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching of high quality in practical and professional ethics by educators and practitioners who appreciate the practical-­‐theoretical aspects of their subjects. APPE holds an annual conference accepting submissions on ethical issues in various fields such as public administration and research ethics, as well as on issues that cut across professions. The meeting provides an opportunity to meet practitioners, professionals and scholars and discuss common concerns in practical and professional ethics.

“For me, this award is a highlight on my resume and shows that my research abilities are   recognized outside of BYU as being of high quality,” Wallace said. “This, I believe, sets me apart from many others applying for the same jobs I am currently pursuing.”

“…To get ready for the future you need to start accessing different tools now.” Wise words from University of Florida professor Mindy McAdams, who spoke to communications students during a campus visit in February.

As UF’s Knight Chair for Journalism Technologies and the Democratic Process, Mindy McAdams talked to journalism students about the essential tools they need as they prepare for the future.

“You don’t have to be an expert in [multimedia applications] for people to see it,” McAdams said. “But to get ready for the future you need to start accessing different tools now.”

“We wanted to invite someone who was on the forefront of multimedia journalism and could talk about it with today’s students while also giving us some suggestions about our overall programs,” said Professor Ed Carter, Associate Chairof the Department of Communications.

With the recent downsizing of major newspaper companies there is a need for a single person to be much more skilled in a lot of different areas. “You always have to be accountable. You have to be the one who brings back the quotes, the audio and the images.”

Journalism students were able to benefit greatly from McAdams’ visit. “The one thing that stood out the most for me was her advice to try and use several different new media and not give up if they seem a bit difficult at first,” said Justin Ritter, a print journalism major and one of the attendees of the lecture. “It was really timely advice for me.”

Classes may be out for most, but several communications students have traded their textbooks and spare time for a chance to get hands-on experience working with clients in the Bradley Public Relations Agency.

Nick Barnes, a sophomore PR student from Irvine, Calif., has been working in Bradley for over a year. He is currently the account executive over a national campaign known as The Big Fitness Walk.

“The Big Fitness Walk is a campaign aimed at reversing the growing trend of childhood obesity by raising money for elementary school physical education programs,” Barnes said.

The idea behind The Big Fitness Walk started when 33-year-old, Salt Lake resident Matt Livermanne lost his job.

“I was walking all over town trying to find work. I didn’t even have enough money to take the bus,” Livermanne said.

While inside Workforce Services reviewing job postings, Livermanne came across a Guinness Book of World Records and a noticed a land-walking speed record set in 1973 by John Lees. Lees walked from New York City to Los Angeles in only 53 days and 14 hours.

“When I saw that record, I knew I could break it,” Livermanne said. “I’ve been walking my entire life.”

He’s been training ever since, walking as many as 40 miles in one day.

Soon after Livermanne decided to break the world record, Kevin D. Gulledge, a former BYU PR student and graduate of the communications program, approached Bradley Agency Director Jeff DuBois with the idea to combine Livermanne’s record attempt and a campaign against childhood obesity.

“I saw The Big Fitness Walk as a great opportunity to promote a worthy cause and give our students the chance to work on an account with national potential,” DuBois said. “This has been and continues to be an amazing learning experience for everyone involved.”

Since that meeting, students have been hard at work trying to make the idea a reality. Students have been writing press materials and pitching the story to national and local media, as well as looking for sponsors and planning a 5K run/walk to help fund the transcontinental trek.

Frank Tovar, a PR student from Salt Lake who is heading up the 5K event, has been working on the account since April. He doesn’t hesitate to say the account has it challenges, but said he enjoys it because he’s helping [Livermanne] do something extraordinary.

“We’re helping Matt break a world record and helping to raise awareness of one of the biggest health issues in America.” Tovar said.

In conjunction with Livermanne’s walk, schools along his route will have the opportunity to host walk-a-thons to raise money for the respective school’s PE program. Students in Bradley are providing each of these schools a packet which includes everything school administrators need to host a successful walk-a-thon. Students have also provided schools with information about healthy habits, calorie fact sheets and a page on how to pitch their local media to get press coverage of their event.

Livermanne is set to start his walk in New York City on September 6, 2010. He will have to travel more than 2,800 miles and walk through 13 states to beat the record.

“Walking from New York to LA is the easy part. Doing it in less than 53 days is the challenge,” Livermanne said.

Click here for more information about The Big Fitness Walk.

Chalk advertisements at the location of the 5K

Each weekday there is a flurry of activity in the Brimhall building on campus—typing on keyboards, straightening of ties and moving of equipment. The activity accelerates until the students begin broadcasting The Daily News, a student-run news program. Their work continues to receive national recognition. In fact, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation recently recognized BYU’s broadcast journalism program as the sixth best in the nation out of 112 accredited journalism programs.

“It was an honor to be recognized as one of the top 10 broadcast journalism programs in the country this year,” said Brad Rawlins, Department Chair of the BYU Communications program. “It was especially meaningful because of the 50th anniversary of the Hearst Awards. These awards are considered the Pulitzer Prize for college students.”

The broadcast program has a long-standing tradition of competing very well in these types of awards. This is the fourth time in the past five years that the BYU broadcast journalism program has been ranked in the top 10 in the nation by the Hearst Foundation.

“With the experience and knowledge of our broadcast faculty, Daily News administration and staff, and our friends at KBYU, our students receive an excellent education to help channel their talent into award-winning performances,” Rawlins said.

The Hearst Journalism Awards Program was founded in 1960 to provide support, encouragement, and assistance to journalism education at the college and university level. The program awards scholarships to students for outstanding performance in college level journalism, with matching grants to the students’ schools.

The scholarship money is awarded to the top 10 students in four different broadcast categories. Each school receives points based on how many of their students are recognized in those categories. The schools with the top point count are given a national ranking.

This year marked the most entries the Hearst Journalism Awards Program had ever received with more than 1,100 college students around the country vying for a spot in the top 25. BYU was represented by seniors Logan Daniels and Garrett Tenney. Tenney won first place in the Television feature category and Daniels won fourth place in the radio feature category.

“It was a big privilege to be among people who love doing what I love doing,” Daniels said.

Tenney described his experience as “neat and humbling.”

“It presented me with a lot of opportunities to meet famous professionals from the field of journalism,” Tenney said.

The recognition from the Hearst Foundation is a notable accomplishment for the BYU broadcast journalism program.

“I think it’s fantastic that we had an opportunity to have our students participate in this competition,” said Chad Curtis, manager of the BYU Daily News. “For me the ultimate take away is that BYU students can compete on any stage when it comes to broadcast journalism and do exceptionally well.”

Nearly half of the first-year BYU Department of Communications graduate students were selected to present their research at this year’s 94th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).  Six students contributed to three research projects that were selected by the association and presented at the conference which took take place in Denver, Colo. Aug. 4-7.

AEJMC is a nonprofit organization that promotes the association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals. The annual conference brings in top authors, publishers and researchers to demonstrate and teach about the latest industry research and current issues. It is an honor to be selected to attend the conference.

Dave Mecham, Ashley Stevens, Aymara Jimenez, Jessica Danowski, Lincoln Hubbard, and Kenny Trent represented BYU at this prestigious conference.

“I was excited to go to Denver to present this paper,” said graduate student Ashley Stevens “It represents a lot of hard work from my classmates Dave Mecham and Lincoln Hubbard as well as our professor Dr. Tom Robinson and Dr. Mark Popovich out of Ball State who helped us.”

Stevens, Hubbard, and Mecham wrote a paper detailing the effectiveness of internet advertising. Their research used a unique procedure called the Q-method, which allows the researcher to separate respondents into different groups.

Kenny Trent and Jessica Danowski wrote a paper about doctors in the media. They showed that the real world doctor-patient relationship can be affected by how doctors are portrayed in the media.

“We are very excited about our research and hope to do a follow-up study this fall related to this project,” said Trent. “The opportunity to present at AEJMC, one of the most prestigious mass media conferences in the nation, is exciting, to say the least.”

Dr. Tom Robinson worked with the students on their research papers.

“I think the acceptance of these papers into the AEJMC conference is a strong indicator of the quality of students we have in the communications graduate program and their desire to be scholars,” said Dr. Robinson, associate professor in the BYU Department of Communications and co-author on all three papers. “It’s exciting to see so many of our students present their research at such a prestigious conference. This is no small feat.”

The Daily Universe brought home 24 awards from the Society of Professional Journalists Headliners Awards dinner on June 11. Twelve of the 24 awards won by BYU’s campus newspaper were first place honors.

Kaye Nelson, the editorial lab manager, said she entered the Daily Universe in all 28 of the competitive categories offered this year.

“We had three students take first place on a story they collaborated on, but all others were individual awards,” Nelson said. “We had 24 wins out of 28 categories entered—not bad for a year’s worth of work.”

The Daily Universe Facebook page, a graphic design from New Student Orientation, and 10 students’ individual pieces earned first-place awards.

Hailey Keller’s profile article on local artist Erasmo Fuentes warranted her spot with the other nine writers who took first-place recognitions for their work. Other students who received this top honor include David Mortimer with his story about the Flash’s Michael Jordan scam, and Stephanie Rhodes’ photo essay on the Passover.

Nelson lauded the recognized Daily Universe students, calling them the cream of the crop.

“They are great students with a desire to write interesting, in-depth articles,” Nelson said.

The Daily Universe is known locally and nationally for its outstanding performance. The number of awards received by these students grabbed the attention of Allison Barlow Hess, president of the Utah SPJ chapter, who congratulated the winners and acknowledged their success this year.

Articles on Charles Darwin, a Max Hall design, and coverage on the murder of a BYU professor won second place awards at the local SPJ contest. The Daily Universe received third-place recognition for Best Newspaper and for articles on missing people. Student McKay Coppins was third in the overall Best Reporter category.

The Daily Universe editor-in-chief Ed Carter said that the purpose of The Daily Universe is to provide a quality campus lab experience in journalism.

“We measure the success of the campus lab experience in several ways, including external awards on state, regional and national levels,” Carter said.

The Daily Universe is well-read amongst students, faculty and staff. Most of the 18,500 published copies are read on a daily basis.

“Our students at the Daily Universe compare favorably with the best I have seen,” said Carter. “They are mature and talented. They want to make a positive difference on campus and in their communities.”

The BYU Ad Lab’s July 23 accomplishment can be summed up in two figures: 3,927 and 120,021. These tallies—the former of people and the latter of water balloons—blasted BYU into the record books for the world’s largest water balloon fight in history. BYU’s Student and Academic Advisement Services commissioned the Ad Lab to liven up the semester with an event, an endeavor at which they more than succeeded.

But the Ad Lab didn’t just promote an on-campus activity. It teamed up with McCann Erickson, an ad industry titan, to create a music video for one of its clients.

Jordan Wheeler, a 2008 BYU graduate and account manager at McCann Erickson New York, was promoting musician Kyle Andrews, who has appeared on a number of Holiday Inn commercials. With plans for a music video and a limited budget, Wheeler knew the Ad Lab could help so he pitched the idea to his creative team.

“I told them I knew some people that can do great work,” Wheeler said. “I showed them what they had done in the past and the clients they’d worked with, and it was an easy sell for me.”

After a few conference calls, Wheeler’s team decided on the water balloon fight as the backdrop for the music video.

“We were really excited about it,” said Sara Martinez, a senior from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. “We pitched a lot of different ideas, and the water balloon fight already happened to be going on. We knew we had to take advantage of it.”

Martinez, an account manager at the Ad Lab, coordinated the project between the Lab and McCann Erickson.

“This has been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had,” she said. “Not only being able to work on something so big for BYU, but also something so big for the Ad Lab itself. It’s just been amazing.”

“We’re really happy with the way everything has come together,” Wheeler said. “We were happy to be able to use this stage for Kyle and his song.”

Martinez said the success of the event and the partnership with McCann Erickson showcased what the Ad Lab can do.

“Check us out,” she said, extending an invitation to alumni and agencies alike. “Come and see what we’ve done. Even though we’re students we’re capable of doing something great.”

New York University professor Jay Rosen compares the mass media profession to that of a tribe that, when it discovered it had exhausted the land, packed up and moved on in search of more fertile fields. However, upon arriving, the professional tribe found the new land was already occupied—by the People Formerly Known as the Audience— and they were already busily creating their own content and distributing it on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube. Rosen’s metaphor aptly illustrates the changing communications landscape in which many of the distinctions between professionals and amateurs or, for that matter, between print and broadcast journalism or advertising and public relations, are disappearing.

It is a confusing and uncertain time for communications. The economic model in which advertising has subsidized mass media since 1833—a remarkably mature business model by any measure—is unravelling. As Craig’s List robs newspapers of classified advertising revenues, online and mobile content erodes mass audiences, and DVRs relieve us of the obligation of sitting through 30 second television commercials, we’re uncertain what the future holds. Scholar Mark Dueze, among the most pessimistic of academic prognosticators, suggested in 2007 that journalism, as we now know it, “is coming to an end.” Similarly, author Clay Shirky in 2008 raised the possibility that contemporary professional communicators are becoming as outdated as were the scribes immediately after the invention of the printing press. According to Shirky, we are in the midst of a similar revolution in which “old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.”

The question, of course, is “What’s the new stuff?” In his latest book, Cognitive Surplus, Shirky argues that much of the free time Americans once spent passively watching television is now being used to contribute to and participate in social media. Just a few years ago, Facebook was a playground primarily for college students. Now, with more than 500 million users worldwide, Facebook is a ubiquitous social media utility, its Facebook Connect is the common log-in tool for an increasing number of web sites and its application programming interface (API) enables interaction with countless other applications and web pages. For some age groups, Facebook’s chatting and messaging features join telephonic texting in supplanting email as a preferred means of communications. And Facebook is far from the only game in town. Seemingly every week brings a new mobile app or potentially game-changing API.

It’s unsettling, but it’s also exciting. Opportunities abound for entrepreneurial, hard-working students who are energized by being on the ground floor of new and developing media platforms. The old stuff is being broken, but the new stuff has potential for diverse and civil dialogue and enriching public participation. Meanwhile, as our students are learning about viral marketing, curating, aggregating, and search engine optimization, there’s still a demand in traditional media for excellent communicators. Yes, an increasing number of people consume media on mobile platforms—smart phones, tablets, and notebook computers—but many others are sitting in front of 52-inch television screens or listening to radios in their cars. That means there’s still a need for strong and thoughtful writers, compelling storytellers, and bright communications analysts. It’s a tall order—for faculty and students—but today’s curriculum must embrace both innovation and tradition. The faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Communications are working to strike that balance. All ideas are welcome.

The BYU Adlab thrives because of students who think outside the box. One example of a success from this creative thinking is the award-winning Doritos commercial that portrays wild animals thwarting chip thieves.

“Brilliancy is not easily recognized,” said Jeff Sheets, the faculty advisor of the Adlab. “Convention may say no; history may say it’s a bad idea. But if it resonates with truth, if it’s fresh and original, and if it conveys a solution in an impactful way, then you know you have something good.”

And “something good” is definitely what the Adlab produces. In addition to creating advertisements for companies such as Nike and Butterfinger, the Doritos commercial has won one competition after another.

“Accolades and awards reinforce what we’re doing,” Sheets said. “It’s the best kind of peer review because judges at competitions don’t have to give a first place. Getting first means our work achieved a level of merit on its own.”

Patrick Koelling, Nathan Wigglesworth, Derek Pueblo, Brad Hall and David LuBean were the Adlab students who worked on the commercial that won 12 regional and state ADDY awards before gaining international recognition with a first-place Golden Pencil from Design and Art Direction.

“To be able to be a part of something so large, and for people to see my work and admire it for its artistry and creativity, helps me to know that what I’ve learned in school at BYU and the experience I received in the Adlab have made a real difference for my professional development,” said LuBean, the art director for the commercial, in a news release.

The Ad Lab spends its time teaching students to solve problems creatively by teaching them how to think and then letting them loose, so when Koelling pitched his idea for the Doritos commercials, Sheets knew it could be just crazy enough to work.

“I knew it had a ton of potential,” Sheets said. “It was just crazy enough to catch attention, but it still had enough to back it up. They took it and went all the way.”

Doritos Guardian from Patrick Koelling on Vimeo.