New York Film Academy (NYFA) Broadcast Journalism Update – June 5, 2019

June 5, 2019

Three years ago, New York Film Academy (NYFA) Broadcast Journalism students Alisa Arvind and Urvashi Ward made history. They became fully credentialed White House reporters—not “student reporters,” but full-fledged reporters, just like the folks from ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC. 

They were reporting for NYFA News. That’s right, the news magazine produced by students in the 1-Year Broadcast Journalism Conservatory program! Not only that, they were also the first students of any journalism school to accompany the American President on an overseas trip. Think about that for a moment.—we/they accomplished something that had never been done before, or since.

Broadcast Journalism Update - June 6, 2019
Broadcast Journalism Update - June 6, 2019

What Alisa and Urvashi did speaks to the quality of the course-of-study here at NYFA. It is also an example of the type of persistence that journalism requires. It took them months of emails and phone calls to get official accreditation. Then, one morning they started to receive the President’s daily schedule in their NYFA email account. Truly amazing…

It’s also the first anniversary of Karen Hua starting as a reporter at KGET in Bakersfield, California. Karen is a graduate of our 12-Week Evening Broadcast Journalism workshop. That’s where she learned how to report, shoot, write, and edit. (Of course, she also needed determination, but she had already walked through the door with that…)

To mark the past year, Karen put together a video of 365 “moments,” one for each story she reported. Most are wonderful, a few cringe-worthy, and a bunch are really funny. Watching it, you can see her build a body of work, which will eventually lead her to a job in a larger city/market.

Finally, it is just about six years since I responded to an online job posting for a new Broadcast Journalism department Chair at the New York Film Academy. Answering that ad, quite literally, changed my life. Today I get the chance to do the two things I love the most—teach and create compelling nonfiction video. So to everyone at NYFA—administration, faculty, staff, students—past and present…Thanks!

Broadcast Journalism Update - June 6, 2019
Stay Tuned,

Bill