Free Labor Academy
My alma mater*, the University of Missouri-Columbia, owns and operates its own commerical NBC affiliate for the Columbia-Jefferson City market (DMA # 137). The station is staffed by paid, professional anchors (who also help teach students).
But the reporting staff is made up of college broadcast journalism students. For the kids, (who technically pay to be there), the station provides invaluable experience of doing real reporting/broadcasting on an actual affiliate, responsible not only to viewers but to advertisers and ratings and competition and the normal stresses of a real world job.
For the station, it's a steady - and unending - supply of free labor.
 Strama and academy kids |
I bring this up because the same kind of two-way-street works for State Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, and his biennial Campaign Academy, in which high school students are selected to work on his campaign for one month during the summer. The students get to learn, hobknob with political types and earn actual campaign experience for their lives... or their college applications. Strama gets free labor.
It works for Missouri, regarded as one of the top broadcast journalism programs in the land. It seems to work for Strama, too. He did get re-elected.
*Also the alma mater of the Houston Chronicle's RG Ratcliffe and Janet Elliott, The Dallas Morning News' Karen Brooks and Terry Stutz, and KXAN's Jenny Hoff and Matt Flener.
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