By Emily Sheftman
In the rural state of Montana, providing legislative news to the states’ rural counties and small community papers can be a challenge. And over time, statehouse reporters have declined reducing legislative coverage.
Student reporters in the University of Montana Legislative News are one part of the solution, according to Courtney Cowgill, a professor at the University of Montana and the new director of the student staffed, faculty directed Legislative News Program.
With funding and support from the Montana Newspaper Association, Greater Montana Foundation and the Montana Broadcast Association, the University of Montana sends two students each session to live in and work in Helena – the state’s capitol.
These students spend an entire legislative session living in Helena, file daily stories from the statehouse and are members of the professional press corps in the capitol city. Cowgill provides editorial support and direction but the students are the reporters.
“I really put it in their hands because they're the ones who are there on the ground, they know what's happening,” Cowgill said.
The Legislative News now has nearly 250 news partners across the state. There is a mixture of broadcasters, both TV and radio, commercial and public, and daily and weekly newspapers and some online only publications, Cowgill said.
Student stories focus on issues important to Montanans, including education, land use, environmental stories and agriculture, said Cowgill. The interest in these types of stories is indicated in an annual survey that is sent out to all partner organizations to find the gaps that the student reporters will set out to fill. As statehouse reporting has declined, the student reporters have taken on an increasingly important role, Cowgill said.
When broadcast was added into the statehouse coverage by the University of Montana it was through a separate program, but in recent years they have been merged into a single program, Cowgill said. What was once two separate media lists for broadcast and print reporting, is now one, with Cowgill describing that “the radio reporters are creating daily radio reports from the capital, which then we flip into daily print reports for everybody, so now everybody gets everything.”
The uniquely immersive nature of the University of Montana Legislative News has given students a competitive edge when they enter the workforce following graduation, Cowgill said. “We have a one hundred percent placement rate,” Cowgill said, “because the students have been on the front page of most major newspapers, as well as all the weeklies, or because they have been on the air of many of the major radio stations in the state.”
One place that the program is hoping to evolve is in photography, Cowgill said. Currently the print and broadcast reporters are responsible for providing photos and captions to go along with their stories, as well as providing photos for partner organizations. “Photography is one area where even some of the news organizations who have beefed up their capitol coverage still need photographs,” Cowgill said.
For more information:
Courtney Lowery Cowgill, director of media and engagement, adjunct professor and editor of the UM Legislative News Service, 406-214-0164, courtney.cowgill@umontana.edu.