Omaha baseball has had its best start in D-I program history, winning their first 12 conference games. They played a mid-week game against Kansas State University on April 23^rd, looking to extend their hot streak. They fell 9-2 in a game that Kansas State won early on.

Kansas State scored eight of their nine runs in the first three innings of the game and never looked back. Omaha struggled to convert with runners on base and went hitless for the first five innings in the game, making it a bit of a blowout early. Creighton Prep grad, Dylan Phillips, led the way for Kansas State going 3-4 and scoring two runs. Four Kansas State players finished with at least two RBI’s. Keil Krumwiede and Matt Bondarchuk each had an RBI a piece for Omaha. The Mavs play next this weekend inn a three-game-series against South Dakota State.

Ben Helwig, the play-by-play commentator for MavRadio.fm, felt the Mavs would play like this from the get-go.

“The fact that it’s a mid-week, non-conference game, I don’t think any team was particularly worried about the result,” Helwig said. “Both teams started pitchers that don’t really start much, and they put in many different young guys to get experience. The Mavs fought hard, but it just wasn’t their night.”

My coverage itself appeared on MavRadio’s twitter account. I took videos of specific plays and provided inning-by-inning coverage of the game from start to finish. The link to their twitter account is here: https://twitter.com/MavRadioUNO

Everything on April 23rd from that event was tweeted by myself.

The left picture is Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and the right picture is Sunil Tripathi. Many people reported Tripathi as a suspect because of the similarity of their look. The false reporting caused a lot of controversy.

An example of an older newspaper staff. It helps illustrate the timeframe they had to meet deadlines while still reporting factual information

In today’s society, anyone can be a journalist with their phone. They can record big incidents, post it to their social media, and have news organizations use those pictures and videos. Making sure you get all the information is critical.

In the current state of journalism, there is a debacle with the efficiency of news coverage. There is a race between being first, and being factual. The fact of the matter is that this has always been around in the industry, but it has escalated recently with new forms of social media and citizens having the ability to post anything they want at the touch of a button. With sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram constantly giving real-time updates on all things news-related, it can be a very good idea considering people are constantly in-the-loop. However, especially early on in story’s development, quick coverage can be sneaky and dangerous. We think that in today’s day in age, a balance of both is the most ideal, but getting factual information trumps timeliness.

In the day’s when the primary form of news coverage was done in daily newspapers and nightly newscasts, it was a lot easier to publish stories error-free. Many times a story would be written in print with the main sources and facts nailed down, but then a source would turn out to be incorrect and the publication would have to make edits to the story, and potentially change the entire direction of it to make it factual (Buttry). The beauty of it was because the deadline wasn’t until later in the day, they had time to make these changes to avoid mistake in their articles; but if the deadline had come earlier, then the publication would have been wrong.

With digital journalism nowadays, and the fact that any witness at a given scene with a camera can post what they think to be true, a lot of stories can be skewed before the facts are all generated. A prime example of this was during the infamous Boston Marathon Bombing.

When the bombing occurred on April 15^th, 2013, news organizations scrambled to find sources, facts, anything they could to piece the puzzle together of what exactly happened. This was also at the same time that the social media era really exploded, with virtually anyone having a voice on the matter at hand.

At the time of the bombing, a Brown University student named Sunil Tripathi was missing and hadn’t been located yet, and users on Reddit drew comparisons from Tripathi’s face to the FBI’s pictures of one of the two bombing suspects. It began to snowball after the Reddit thread was started (Morgan). News organizations began calling and leaving voicemails to the family asking for information. Enough buzz circulated from these rumors from different news organizations that the Boston Police Department released a statement identifying Tripathi as the second suspect to the bombing. It was discovered a little over a week later that Tripathi was found dead in the Providence River, and he had been dead for some time, which ruled him out as a suspect. Many journalists and news outlets were forced to apologize to the Tripathi family for making him out to be a suspect prematurely based off of pictures and pictures alone (Morgan). This is just one instance of modern journalism trying to be the first to report it, and not actually gathering the correct information.

We’ve identified a few ways that journalists in today’s culture can balance timeliness and also get the base facts correct so there is no confusion or misunderstood facts. The first way is to simply publish the certain facts, whether it be through social media or an article online, and make a note in the article that the information is still being gathered and you will be providing an updated story as things are uncovered. That way you can be one of the first to report the issue, and still maintain your credibility (Buttry). Another way to accomplish the same thing is to make sure you get more than one source. This one is more of a preventative measure, but by getting more perspective and taking it all in before you report your gathered information will greatly reduce the chances of reporting false information (Ifill).

In conclusion, news organizations in today’s culture are more focused on being the first to report issues and stories that they are less cautious on reporting factual information, and often mislead their viewers. There are preventative measures that journalists can take to balance timeliness with reporting the facts, but as a whole we must be more focused on reporting correct facts than being the first to report it to avoid misinterpretation.

Works Cited

Buttry, Steve. “A False Choice – and an Excuse – for Journalists: Better to Be First or Right?” The Buttry Diary, 16 Dec. 2013, stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/a-false-choice-and-an-excuse-for-journalists-better-to-be-first-or-right/.

Ifill, Gwen. “Journalism 101: When Getting It First Trumps Getting It Right.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 19 Apr. 2013, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/journalism-101-getting-it-right.

Morgan, Rachel. “A Journalist’s Dilemma: Being First versus Being Right.” The Times, The Times, 4 Aug. 2013, www.timesonline.com/article/20130804/Opinion/308049947.

A tweet from Jay Bilas, an ESPN broadcaster and advocate for student-athlete compensation. This tweet shows easy, effective ways to begin letting athletes earn money for their efforts.

An infographic describing the work that a student-athlete must put in behind-the-scenes. It illustrates effectively the amount of schoolwork these athletes must balance along with their professionalized sports

An image of the 2017 Final Four. The NCAA signed an $8 billion extension with CBS for TV rights in 2016, while the players don’t even see a minute fraction of the immense revenue from TV deals, ticket sales, etc.

The world of college athletics is a big business, generating over $1 billion in the 2017 fiscal year. It was the first time the NCAA surpassed $1 billion in a single year (Axson). Prominent figures in the industry reap the rewards from this. A vast amount of Division-I football and basketball head coaches make salaries of the same caliber. In 2019, the highest-paid college basketball coach was John Calipari of the University of Kentucky, who made just over $9 million. The 69 highest paid college basketball coaches all had salaries of at least $1 million, many with bonus opportunities exceeding $1 million. College football tells a similar story, with the top 82 coaches having salaries surpassing $1 million with Nick Saban earning the most money per year at just over $8 million. All of this is occurring, while student-athletes, who are by federal law full-time employees from their competition, are not compensated fairly. A study in 2012 found that the average University of Texas football player was worth $578,000 to the school, which is fifteen times more than the scholarship they receive of about $37,000. Student-athletes should have the ability to receive compensation for their efforts in competition because with the money universities bring in from athletics annually, the payment returned to these athletes for their primary efforts in obtaining that revenue are not met equally or fairly.

There isn’t much justification from the NCAA for these athletes not being able to receive compensation, other than compromising their amateur status, and the potential change in the level of competition coming from athletes being paid. The most common argument is that by letting players receive additional money, less people would tune into these sporting events due to the professionalization of the sport. The narrative is that people enjoy the consumption of college athletics solely because of the amateurism aspect of it. The traditions linked with these acclaimed athletic programs along with the fact that it’s played by students, and not paid professionals, creates a higher demand for intercollegiate competition.

Cristian J. Santesteban and Keith B. Leffler argue in Assessing the Efficiency Justifications for the NCAA Player Compensation Restrictions, that the Olympic Games prove that thought process wrong, however. Until the 1980’s and 1990’s, professionals were not allowed to compete at the Olympics and the only money allowed to be earned by these athletes were for their traveling and time spent at training camps. Slowly, this began to change across all sports in the Olympics. Viewership saw either no change, or growth during these transitions. For example, the 1992 Olympics were the first to allow professional basketball players to compete at the games and earn money while competing. According to the NCAA’s logic, ticket demand and viewership should have gone down—it actually did the exact opposite, creating record numbers for both on-site turnout and television viewership. Similarly, professionals were allowed to compete in soccer at the Olympics in 1984, and the average attendance of games has risen 88% in that timeframe, with the 2012 Olympics having the highest average attendance in Olympic history. The same trend continues across the board for every Olympic sport that transitioned to allow athletes to profit. Therefore, there is no factual evidence to support that amateurism correlates with fan demand in sports.

Regardless of the many ill-informed counter arguments, the payment to players is simply the right thing to do. College athletics is one of the only “jobs” in the United States where one cannot profit off of their own hard work—and these “workers” happen to generate a lot of cash. Looking at just college basketball, the NCAA signed a $10.8 billion deal with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting in 2010 for just the NCAA Tournament, and was extended in 2016 for another $8.8 billion. Simply making the tournament is a payoff for the universities involved. If a team loses in the first round, the school still earns $1.7 million over the next six year spread following their appearance. Making it to the final adds up to about $8.3 million. For the “Cinderella” schools, that kind of revenue can add up to about 70% of the university’s average annual income.

The NCAA isn’t putting these student-athletes in a position for success either. There are many restrictions against these players for how much part-time work they are allowed to do, what type of work they can do, and how much money they can earn in a given period. On top of that, these players aren’t allowed to generate money from their own image or likeness.

In 2015, the University of Texas signed a $250 million deal with Nike for apparel sponsorship—it’s the third largest deal in NCAA history. Texas reproduced tens of thousands of jersey’s in local retail stores with the #4 on the back, which happened to be the number of Texas player and NBA prospect, Mo Bamba. People purchased those jersey’s knowing that even though Bamba’s name wasn’t on the back of it, that it still represented him. So while parents are spending money on these jersey’s for their children to pretend to be one of the best up-and-coming players in the United States, Bamba is not allowed to see any of that revenue from those jersey sales. The NCAA continues to tie the hands of college athletes behind their backs while they, along with their member institutions, take advantage and profit off of these athletes.

Times are changing, and with the monopoly that the NCAA is becoming, it is time that the primary providers of the NCAA’s revenue start benefiting. The NCAA’s definition of amateurism needs to be changed, because they are taking advantage of hard-working students who volunteer their time to play the sport they love at a very-high level. It’s time they reap the rewards, too.

Sources:

Berkowitz, Steve, and Jim Varney. “USA TODAY Sports.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/.

Casagrande, Michael. “Alabama Quietly Extended Nike Deal That Missed Gold Rush.” Al.com, Al.com, 8 Aug. 2018, www.al.com/alabamafootball/2018/08/alabama_quietly_extended_nike.html.

Parker, Tim. “What Does the NCAA Really Net from March Madness?” Investopedia, Investopedia, 12 Mar. 2019, www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/031516/how-much-does-ncaa-make-march-madness.asp.

Santesteban, Cristian J., and Keith B. Leffler. “Assessing the Efficiency Justifications for the NCAA Player Compensation Restrictions.” The Antitrust Bulletin, vol. 62, no. 1, 2017, pp. 91–111., doi:10.1177/0003603×16688838.

Vanderford, Ryan. “Pay-for-Play: An Age-Old Struggle for Appropriate Reform in a Changing Landscape Between Employer and Employee.” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law, vol. 24, no.3, Apr. 2015, pp. 805-838. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com.leo.lib.unomaha.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=110207684&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

It was the second quarter against the Denver Nuggets, the Lakers weren’t really able to knock down shots against one of the top teams in the Western Conference. Nobody in the Staples Center seemed to care, because something more important was going to happen that night.

On March 6th, LeBron James made a left handed layup in the second quarter to officially surpass Michael Jordan for fourth all-time on the NBA Scoring List. This is no small feat, LeBron actually said its one of his best accomplishments to date.

“This ranks right up there at the top with winning a championship,” James said.

Here is a list of the Top-Ten scorers in NBA history, led by Kareem Abdul Jabbar who has been the all-time leader since he retired in the 1980’s. Each one of these players played at least 10 seasons in the NBA, led by Dirk Nowitzki who played 21. Every player on this list has won an NBA Championship, except Karl Malone.

As LeBron’s career trudges on, he continues to march on up in the all-time list. If he stays healthy, and can stay competing in the league for another 3-4 seasons, he might just be on pace to get near Kareem for the most points in NBA history. A torch that one man has owned for decades, might just be handed off soon.

The first story I read was from Medium.com and was about brain stimulation through a process called DBS. DBS has been used to help treat Parkinson’s disease, but now research is showing that by sending electronic pulses to a part of the brain known as “area 25” (also known as the hub where people with depression see brain activity) that it can actually also cure that depression as well. The article shows that after initial disbelief from the medical community, that many people are starting to see the results from this. Additionally, it is also potentially treating other things such as Tourette Syndrome, Epilepsy, and many others. https://medium.com/proceedings-of-the-national-academy-of-sciences/can-deep-brain-stimulation-find-success-beyond-parkinsons-disease-bed9bafe4004 (I couldn’t pull any pictures from the article because the website would not let me, but the link will lead you to them)

The second story I read was from ESPN.com, and it discussed the NBA MVP race right now between James Harden and Giannis Antetokounmpo. They get the analysis from multiple ESPN writers/analysts to see not only what they think of the current state of the MVP race, but also how they go about deciding what needs to be taken into consideration deciding the MVP. They give their cases for each player and why they should win AND why they should not win, which shows their unbias. http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26415151/nba-mvp-debate-how-decide-giannis-harden

I like the story from Medium. I think it was very well-written and formal. There was a lot of medical information in there and it did a good job describing what the current situation is of DBS. It gives a timeline of when it was first started being put into use, and goes into all the different things it can potentially be used for now. The audience was anyone interested in health and wellness, and I clicked on the article because the headline about brain activity intrigued me a bit. I wanted to know more. I couldn’t find any cons to this story, it was very informative and well put together (in terms of flow), and included two REALLY good pictures to help illustrate the article and what it was about. The first picture was real DBS pulsation pictures from a real brain, and the second was a picture from an actual procedure done to implement DBS. For someone like me that doesn’t particularly read health articles, this was a very good read.

The ESPN article was more in my field of play (no pun intended), because it had to do with sports. It included not only a video about the topic as well (with a thumbnail picture being the two players playing against one another) but also a picture of the two together as well. It was thorough and got a lot of different perspective on the MVP race and how the outcome could potentially end up. The audience was more for people like me, who are NBA/basketball fans. It was more of a casual writing style, not super serious but also tried to get a specific point across.

Overall, I found the Medium article more interesting, but the ESPN article was easier for me to articulate (because I am a fan and consumer of the sport) but both articles were very well put together and used different forms of multimedia to try to further advance their point.

Stacy Revere/Getty Images. This is Harden and Antetokounmpo playing against one another this season, and helps add a little extra to the article.

My name is Matt Kirkle. I am a student at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. I am currently a junior and my major is in Journalism and Media Communications, with a concentration in Creative Media. I am the Assistant Sports Director for MavRadio.fm, UNO’s college radio station, where I do play-by-play commentary for Omaha men’s and women’s basketball, and I also do color-commentary for Omaha women’s soccer.

I am a sports media nut. I am a consumer in many different outlets; whether its print, TV, online, I just try to keep up with sports in the United States at all-times. My favorite sports are football and basketball, but I also really enjoy baseball, golf, and soccer. I follow a lot of sports writers on social media to keep up with the latest updates, and I watch different sports talk shows such as “The Herd”, “First Things First”, and listen to different sports podcasts as well.

I hope to gain more perspective on different forms of multimedia in this portion of the class. I want to understand more on different approaches media outlets take to effectively reach their audience through video, audio, and text. I am excited for this last portion, and look forward to the end of the semester (c’mon summer!)

On Monday, November 26^th, our own professors, Professor Wendy Townley and Professor Bowen, gave a presentation on the occupation of Public Relations and Marketing and how it relates to the field of Communications.

Professor Townley related our Media Storytelling course to the Public Relations field, and how it is becoming much more prevalent in this class.

She also discussed with us her beginnings in Public Relations, and how she didn’t expect to ever be where she is. She went to school for five years at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, and she changed her career path three different times. In all of her career changes she stayed in the alley of communications, but none of these changes resulted in her getting into Public Relations and Advertising.

She then took the Public Relations class at UNO, taught by professor Karen Weber. I have Professor Weber for a class this semester actually, and she is a very informative professor who wants each individual student to push themselves beyond what they imagined they would’ve, to make them better in her class. Weber’s class inspired her to start pursuing a job in the world of Public Relations. After being an accountant and working for places like Scooters Coffee, and U.S. Cellular, she took a job in UNO Public Relations.

She joined at a very interesting time as well. She had to work on the Public Relations project of the upgrade for MOST sports to go Division I. That is, all but two. The football program who was consistently Top 25 in Division II, and the wrestling program…who had just won a national championship.

She had to detain the media from getting too crazy from the whole situation of terminating two great athletics programs. However, she also dealt with the positivity of advancing the rest of athletics up to Division I.

Lastly, she talked about how Public Relations is a changing field and how five years from now, it will be completely different from even 15 years from now. It is constantly changing. She also discussed the many different routes people take to end up in Public Relations.

I thought it was a very informative discussion that helped me learn a little more about the life of my own professor and her interactions with the world of Public Relations.

Advisor Jodeane Brownlee and Program Director Ben Phillips for MavRadio.fm came into my Media Storytelling class on November 5^th to discuss UNO’s college radio station, MavRadio.

MavRadio is a student-run radio station on Omaha’s campus, and started as KBLZ in 1997. KBLZ operated out of the Milo Bail Student Center, but didn’t have too much interaction with the students of UNO. It wasn’t until Jodeane Brownlee took over that she wanted the station to become something every student on campus is aware of. In 2008, the station was rebranded to MavRadio.

Brownlee worked as a daily talk show host at a radio station in Sioux City for over a decade, and Phillips currently works at iHeart radio as a producer/editor.

MavRadio covers news all around Omaha’s campus. More importantly, staff members gain critical knowledge of producing and editing audio and video that will be used in the broadcasting profession.

The station has many different aspects to it. They play songs in the Top 100 billboard charts that span through many different genres including hip hop, country, and rock. They are constantly going through their song lineup to keep it updated with the most popular songs in America.

They cover all Maverick sports as well. The sports announcers on the staff call games for Omaha soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball, and even for the Omaha Beef. They have traveled to some of the most premier centers in the country, such as Allen Fieldhouse, to cover Maverick sports.

Additionally, they cover news around the Omaha area. This includes interviews with notable figures around the metro-area, as well as covering the midterm elections, and reporting on issues challenging citizens of this city.

MavRadio has participated in many events that garner national attention. These events include the College World Series, World Championship boxing matches, NCAA Tournament games, and local music festivals. They have had exclusive interviews as well, including with Adam Beach who acted alongside Will Smith in the movie Suicide Squad.

The station looks to keep growing through many different media outlets. They want to expand through social media, television, and hosting social events. MavRadio hopes to continue to be a credible, respected organization on campus.

A decoration in the CPACS studio, promoting “Haunted Heartland” for MavRadio.fm

A wall of photographs of fellow MavRadio staff members

Devon Maline focused on his work in the CPACS studio

Devon Maline editing a soundbyte from their radio show

Harrison Popp. Popp is a junior looking to go into sports media

Right to left: Harrison Popp, Isaac Graff, and Devon Maline are doing a show on MavRadio.fm

MavRadio sign hanging in the studio of CPACS 104

Devon Maline producing the radio show on their producing board

Isaac Graff. Graff is a junior who helps with compiling stats for Omavs during games

Devon Maline. Maline is a sophomore who hopes to become a successful video game streamer

MavRadio is the student-run radio station for the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and has been since 2008. They are giving students opportunities to practice skill sets that will be used daily in the professional field of radio.

MavRadio covers news all around Omaha’s campus. More importantly, staff members gain critical knowledge of producing and editing audio and video that will be used in the broadcasting profession.

Harrison Popp, pictured above, is the assistant general manager of MavRadio.fm and serves in many different aspects for the station. He works with commentary for many sports, such as men’s soccer and baseball. With that, he gets to work with Maverick athletics to help produce content for the athletics department through many different mediums, while also practicing working with producers to put together a call.

Devon Maline, also pictured above, is another staff member at MavRadio, who holds an expertise in producing and editing audio. MavRadio has given him the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art programs that edit and record audio and video. He produces the sports radio show at MavRadio, First Warning, and hosts his own show where he talks about many different aspects of movies and video games.

MavRadio staff members have worked at high-profile events in the past. These events include the College World Series, World Championship boxing matches, NCAA Tournament games, and local music festivals. They have had exclusive interviews as well, including with Adam Beach who acted alongside Will Smith in the movie Suicide Squad.

MavRadio continues to grow through many different media outlets, including production of video and social media. They strive to continue to report all the news on Omaha’s campus and help promote all things Maverick.