By Nina Payne
Trinity Times Correspondent
As Trinity student Corey Best edits the video story he’s preparing for the university’s student news outlet – Trinity Times – he runs into a snag and calls out to the multimedia newsroom director to help him figure out how to solve the technical issue he’s encountered.
“The audio on my b-roll is too loud and it’s overpowering my speaker,” Best said to Chaz Muth, director of the Trinity Multimedia Newsroom, located in the basement level of the university’s Main Hall, during a video production session July 17, 2023. “Can you show me how to lower just that portion of the b-roll audio?”
Muth quickly shows him how to make that change and he continues with his work.
Best is one of a few student journalists learning how to shoot, edit and produce video stories for Trinity Times during the summer of 2023, in what will become the first visual storytelling content to grace the digital platform since its launch last February.
Trinity began building its new multimedia newsroom in August 2022, shortly after Muth was hired as its director and to teach in the university’s Journalism and Media Studies program, better known as JAMS.
Then, after more than a decade long hiatus, the Trinity Times student newspaper reappeared at the school Feb. 1, 2023, this time as a digital media platform, capable of delivering content in the form of articles, video, podcasts and photography.
“This new iteration of Trinity Times has been able to help the students at the university gain real practical experience in journalism,” Muth said, “in the way we consume news in the 21st century. Not only are the students gaining reporting, writing and photography skills, they are learning the technical aspects of shooting and producing video and the effective ways of telling stories visually and through audio.”
For nearly 13 years Trinity was without a student news organization, after the original Trinity Times – established Feb. 18, 1926 – ceased publishing in 2010.
“Some people may say ‘my God, the college president should love not having a student newspaper.’ No, I hate it because students should have a voice,” said Trinity President Patricia McGuire. “Students should have a way to produce their stories about themselves, about their achievements. Stories, whether they are complimentary or critical of the administration of the college, that’s all a part of student life. We should have that.”
In the seven months since Trinity Times was relaunched, student journalists have explored topics as diverse as gun violence, racial disparity, sports, movie reviews, campus life, social activism, mental illness, climate change and the challenges of maintaining university buildings that are more than 100 years old.
When the campuses of Trinity and neighboring Catholic University of America were locked down April 13 during false shooter alerts, then Trinity senior Miriam Barcenas grabbed her camera and note-taking device and went to work in reporting the event.
Barcenas discovered there were more than a dozen such hoax calls – called “swatting” in reference to the SWAT teams of armed police that respond to active shooter incidents – on campuses throughout the U.S. that day.
Parts of her story were used in an article written that day by an international news service and Barcenas was given a contributing line.
The relaunch of the Trinity Times has given students a voice, but it’s also given them a new outlook on journalism.
Students studying Journalism and Media Studies may have been learning about a free press in their coursework, but the creation of the multimedia newsroom and the revival of the student news outlet provided them with a venue to do real practical reporting.
For Barcenas, this media laboratory came in her final year at Trinity and gave her a place to develop her craft before graduation.
The experience also allowed her to build her digital portfolio and shortly after Trinity’s May commencement she landed a job at the PBS NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service’s nightly news program known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events.
Barcenas said the newsroom was a defining resource for her at a pivotal moment in her college studies, adding that it gave her real experience being a reporter, practical skills she believes allowed her to find a job in her field as soon as she did.
Re-establishing the Trinity Times and building the multimedia newsroom was made possible when the university was awarded a $200,000 grant in 2022 from the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation.
It was enough money to hire Muth, renovate parts of the former convent in Main Hall and furnish it with workstations, computers, cameras, and digital-media gear that can be used for both multimedia content production and educational learning tools.
The university received a second $200,000 grant from the same foundation in the spring of 2023, money that will allow the university to enhance the newsroom and built a professional-grade studio capable of producing television and audio programs, Muth said.
The newsroom is the home of Trinity Times, but several journalism classes are also held in that space, including podcasting and video storytelling for journalists, as well as a summer internship program.
Trinity student Janet Platt spent part of her summer in the newsroom learning how to shoot video with a variety of cameras, conduct on-camera interviews, and how to edit and produce a visual story in the Adobe Premiere Pro software.
Sporting a black headphone set covering her ears, Platt stares intently at the multiple computer monitors in her newsroom workstation while piecing her video story together on the Premiere Pro timeline.
“It’s nerve-wracking, because I’m so afraid I’m going to blow something up and ruin my project,” she said as she navigated the system while producing her first solo project. “But it’s also exciting to see it all come together.”
The current newsroom’s 21st century digital media technology resembles something out of the space age compared to the ramshackle newsroom that McGuire worked in as an editor for Trinity Times in the early 1970s, in the basement of Cuvilly Hall, in what she describes as a smoke-filled room “with old clackity typewriters.”
Although the newsroom caters to Trinity’s journalism program, there is room for students majoring in other disciplines who have a variety of interests, said Thomas Mostowy, dean of Trinity’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies, which runs JAMS.
Though many of the students who currently work in the newsroom and contribute to Trinity Times are journalism students, some are not and have interests in areas they want to explore and write about in the student news outlet, Mostowy said.
He hopes the newsroom will encourage students in all fields of study to create their own extracurricular activities, such as newspapers, podcasts, and special projects to advance their own programs as well.”I would also like to see the Trinity Times become a multimedia voice of the concerns for the students at Trinity,” Mostowy said. “Our unique perspective and just a way to promote the inclusive excellence that’s become Trinity’s motto in recent years.”