By Carolyn Shapiro
Missouri University journalism students start their shifts in the KBIA public radio newsroom at 8 a.m. Within eight hours, they produce 45-second-long news stories to air in the local evening newscasts during National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” or “Morning Edition” the next day.
It’s an immersive, hands-on experience for the students in the Missouri School of Journalism. The “Missouri Method” of learning by doing takes place in multiple “labs” of working newsrooms that deliver coverage of the community. KBIA is one of those labs, available to journalism students who choose a concentration in audio reporting for their junior and senior years.
After a semester of reporting, some of them will work up to anchoring, or hosting, those NPR morning and evening programs. The student who anchors “Morning Edition” receives regular pay because of the consistent early schedule, said Ryan Famuliner, KBIA’s news director. In the afternoon, it’s a “carousel” shift, with a different student every day of the week.
“I think it's a super valuable skill for a lot of reasons,” Famuliner said. “Obviously, it gives live on-air experience. It improves their writing. The thing I think it does more than anything else is it strengthens their news judgment, because there aren't a lot of other tasks that actually work that news judgment muscle.”
It’s not unusual for a university to hold the license for a public radio station. It is unusual that a local station in a community the size of Columbia, Mo., would have enough student reporters covering daily news to allow the station’s own reporting staff to concentrate on other stories.
“That can buy you the opportunity to really do the kind of work that you really think serves your community better,” Famuliner said.
At KBIA, which depends on listener donations and subscriptions, two of the six full-time staff members wear second hats as Missouri faculty, including Famuliner. He teaches the newsroom content creation class and advanced audio producing.
The rest of the staff are working journalists. They include two reporters – devoted to health care coverage – who are paid by grant funding.
It’s “the purest form of the Missouri Method,” for the students to report alongside professionals and meeting true professional standards, Famuliner said.
Amid the high-quality journalism produced by those reporters and National Public Radio, the student reporters have to reach a high bar in terms of quality to get on the air. Each of their stories replaces an NPR report at that time.
“It has to meet some standard for me to justify for my audience denying them some great NPR story,” Famuliner said.
As a junior, Mizzou student Sarah Petrowich began anchoring Thursday evening for KBIA. With every shift, she had to find regional stories to use on the air and cut them to proper time to fit the local newscast of three minutes and 29 seconds.
“I realized that this is a really big responsibility,” said Petrowich, who is now a senior. “It's up to me; I'm a college student. You have to decide, like, what news the area gets. Of course, I go to my editor, and we check everything out. But it was still cool to take on so much responsibility.”
She had to choose the topics of most importance to local listeners, such as innovations in science or trends in local K-12 education, she said. It forced her to understand the community well beyond her realm as a student. “Your audience is everybody.”
At more advanced levels, KBIA student reporters produce longform feature stories in the style of the popular NPR program “This American Life.” Some work on podcasts for their capstone experiences. One of those podcasts, called “Show Me the State,” is currently on pause but included 20 episodes of narrative journalism on a unique aspect of Missouri history.
Students’ work routinely wins national recognition, including multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards for excellence in broadcast and digital journalism.
According to Famuliner, each of those accomplishments “has to do with the high-caliber students that we work with and just the creativity and energy that we can channel.”
For more information: