Shalah:  Good evening, I'm Shalah Sasse, thanks for joining us.

Announcer:  Now, local news about local people.  This is Newslink Indiana.

Bob:  More than half of the people who watch those news briefs have read the morning paper.  You need to be coming up with things before the paper has them.  You know, creative theft only gets you so far.  You can figure that more than half of those people read the morning paper.  So, you got to tell them something they don't know.  Okay, we're in class.

Tricia:  Typically, I wake up at 6:45 in the morning.  So, I'm not a morning person.  I'm not used to that at all, but I'm getting used to it because I've had to do it for a couple days now.  We get in here around 8:00 in the morning.  We have story ideas that we have to shoot out. So, we look through press release web sites, anything that we can think of.  We listen to people talking on the street and get story ideas.  So, we bring those in, we compile them.  We decide what's the best stories.  Then that's when you start making your calls, trying to get the story done for that day. 

Chris:  Immersion was sort of a new concept a few years ago.  I'm Chris Bavender, managing editor of Newslink Indiana.  I came here in fall of ‘03 from WRTV in Indianapolis.  Ball State decided that the direction of higher education is to have immersive experiences for students to put them in a situation on a day-to-day basis.  They're going to become more experienced. 

Tricia:  This is completely different than a class.  You're actually doing this stuff.  It's not theory.  You're doing it every single day.

Bob:  What we're doing is immersing students in the field.  My name is Bob Papper; I'm professor of telecommunications at Ball State University.  All they're doing for one semester is news.  They come in in the morning just like you would at work.  They spend all day gathering news and information, they produce that, and they go home at the end of the day.  They don't have other classes.  They don't have a typical student schedule.  What they have is a typical work schedule for which they get credit for a variety of classes.  So, it's learning not by sitting in rows in a typical classroom.  It's learning by doing under the supervision of both staff and faculty. 

Tricia:  This summer I did an internship at 13 ABC in Toledo, Ohio.  So, I actually got some real world experience there and there were students from other colleges there too.  They didn't have the programs. They had a 9:00 show; they had a student-run show like that, but they didn't have any kind of immersive programs that every day, all day you work.

Chris:  Watching interns come through different stations I've been at, you usually don't get to write a story.  You tag along with the crew, we let you do a stand-up, we'll let you put together the story, but it's never day-in, day-out experience.  You're there to learn from the others, but you don't get to actually do it.  Here, you're doing it and they can use this as their internship experience because they will write the stories, they will shoot the stories, they will edit the stories.  The stories they do have to be professional looking and sounding because they air on PBS.

Tricia:   It's like we're not even students. It's like we're reporters.  After interviewing some of the guys that I interviewed yesterday they came up, shook my hand, and were like, "Good job, you did great."  I don't even think they thought I was from Ball State.   I think they thought I was an actual reporter just going in there and asking them the questions, getting the real story out there and putting it on WIPB. 

Chris:  This is our wall of fame.  We had these up in the newsroom but nobody could ever see them.  We're always talking about, "Our grads get these great jobs," and "So-and-so went here and here."  (pointing at photograph) Photographer, photographer, dental school, law school, Sony Records.  He had a little rap group here and Sony Records signed him.   Our alums get great jobs.  Well, now they can stop and say, "Well she's a photographer at the Fox station in Louisville; she's a producer in Ohio."  You could stop at each picture, and I guarantee you that the majority of them are working in TV. 

Bob:  Ball State's strength is in its practicality.  I mean, this is a professionally oriented program and you come here because what you want to do is go in this business and you want the best preparation possible to do that.