OFFER YOUR
THOUGHTS TO:
Ms. Becca Reed
bkingreed@kteh.org
or call
408-795-5407
During the
week of
March 9th, 2009
KQED
notified the
SJSU Journalism
School that
a decision
had been made
to end the
telecast of
UPDATE NEWS
on their sister
station KTEH,
Channel 54.
Subsequently,
broadcast news
faculty would be
made aware that
KQED was
unaware of the
long standing
relationship
Channel 54 had
with our television
journalism degree
program.
We have invited
our former
students and
media colleagues
to offer KQED
their
insights about
what this unique
and valuable
public service and
learning experience
has meant for
thousands of
viewers, students
and
working media
professionals
nationwide.
OFFER YOUR
THOUGHTS TO:
Ms. Becca
Reed
bkingreed@kteh.org
or call
408-795-5407
Over the years...
UPDATE NEWS
has won top
state and national
honors for being
the best
student newscast.
Distinguished
UPDATE NEWS
Alums
KIET DO
TV News
Reporter
for CBS 5 here in the
Bay Area
WILL THOMAS
A TV News Anchor
& Reporter
for FOX 5 News
in Washington D.C.
These two SJSU
TV News students
in the 1990s
won the
prestigious
William Randolph
Hearst
national student
competition
as the top
student TV
journalists in the
nation.
Some of the thousands of
Radio/TV Journalism
Distinguished Alums:
Jane
McMillian
KCBS Newsradio Anchor
San Francisco
Ysabel
Duron
KRON-TV 4 Anchor
San Francisco
SJSU
Students/Graduates -
Bay
Area
Media Professionals:
Egan Schulz
Apple
- Creative Development
Rigo
Chacon
Retired Emmy
Award Winning
ABC 7 News Reporter
Anna Duckworth, CBS 5
Damian Trujillo,
NBC 11
Len Ramirez,
CBS 5
SJSU
Students/Graduates -
NATIONWIDE
Media Professionals:
Coleen Odegaard
Devin Fehely
Karla Castillo
Henry Wofford
Laura Burstein
Dennis Ackerman
Tommy Tran
Aaron Pickering
This list
goes on
and on
and on!
We are very proud
of all of our former
students!
PLEASE OFFER YOUR
THOUGHTS
about UPDATE NEWS
BEING TAKEN OFF
LOCAL TV:
Ms. Becca
Reed
bkingreed@kteh.org
or call
408-795-5407
|
|
 |
Gordon Greb
Emeritus
Professor
Radio-TV Journalism,
San Jose State University.
Former KQED-TV on-air newsman
and program producer. |
Please help save the broadcast
of the Update News for SJSU students!
KQED-TV is planning to take UPDATE off-the-air!
Your help is needed to persuade it not to do this.
As you know,
San Jose State is a recognized leader in
broadcast news
education.
It produced award-winning graduates in TV News for the last
fifty years because the curriculum called for giving them
air time. From its inception in l956 it's never been
theoretical, but for real.
Because it was founded and taught by experienced
broadcasters who came from the media
it has always had the admiration and support of local and
regional stations.
 |
Case in point: Valerie Coleman,
RTV graduate of SJSU in l968, went on to
Columbia
University for her MA. She told me afterward,
"Professor Greb, I consider your program at
San Jose State far superior to that at
Columbia because you gave us on-the-air experience
week after week when we needed it." Valerie anchored the
news for KGO-TV as well as
KCBS
Radio before joining the staff of CNN in New York.
Please e-mail KQED or call to persuade KQED-TV to
reconsider taking UPDATE off the air!
The reason is plain. KQED and San Jose State are both
working toward the same end
-- to create an informed and enlightened community by
providing the kind of
help unavailable anywhere else. Please contact:
Ms. Becca Reed
bkingreed@kteh.org
or call:
408-795-5407
|
|
Charles C. Bullock, Ph. D.
Dean and Professor
College of
Applied Sciences and Arts
|
Dear Ms. Reed,
I recently heard that KQED was planning to take
our award-winning student newscast,
UPDATE NEWS, off your air. As Dean of the
College,
I
was glad to hear from Diane Guerrazzi,
our current TV news professor, that you are
reconsidering. As you know, for more than 25
years, this outlet has proven to be an
incredible learning experience as well as a
great community service. Taking UPDATE
off of the air would strike a serious blow to
our educational mission in radio and TV
journalism. UPDATE has been real world
experience for your our
journalism students.
I feel that it is vital that Update News
continue to air on your local PBS station.
Residents from
all over
Northern California watch and respond to
our broadcast. The university has prioritized
this effort for three decades as being important
to our educational mission, and it has made
sure, over those years, new technology be
purchased to support the growing needs of the
Update News staff and the PBS station, KTEH,
channel 54.
I sincerely hope that we can work out a way to
continue our student newscast. I will leave the
particulars of the negotiation to the faculty
who know it the best, but please know that I
will do anything I can to help UPDATE continue.
Dr. Charles Bullock
|
Distinguished Alum |
Andy
Ludlum
Director of
News Programming
KNX 1070
KFWB News 980
Los Angeles
|
Email
to Ms. Becca Reed:
I was disappointed to
learn of the decision to take
San Jose State
University's Update News off
Channel 54. I urge you to reconsider.
The actual broadcast
experience I gained through the
San Jose State's
unique program has proved invaluable to me in
what is now a 34 year career
in radio and television news.
I recently attended a
taping of Update News and I was impressed by the
quality of the production and the skills shown
by the student journalists.
In addition to
providing programming that would be of interest
to your viewers, you have an opportunity to
continue a partnership supporting a program that
has been producing fine
broadcast journalists for over 50 years.
Consolidation and budget cutting in commercial
and
public broadcasting has made it harder
than ever to develop new talent and to give
young journalists the experiences they need
to master their craft.
These are challenging
times, both in our industry and for the country
as a whole.
I hope your station will continue to see the
enormous value we all get from giving these
young journalists the opportunity to develop
into the communicators
we'll count on in the future.
Thank you for your
consideration.
Andy Ludlum
|
Distinguished Alum |
Steve Scott
News Anchor
WCBS Newsradio 880
New
York City
|
Dear Ms. Reed:
As a proud
product of the outstanding School of
Journalism and
Mass Communications at
San Jose State University, I am
asking you to please reconsider the
decision to remove the
SJSU Update News
program from the air on KTEH-TV.
Although the
focus of my professional career has been
radio news, I was a member of the
Update News staff more than
25 years ago. I saw first-hand the
valuable training
Update News provides
students preparing for a career in
television journalism. And, I worked
side-by-side with enterprising students
who, thanks in large part to their
Update News training,
have gone
on to outstanding careers in television
news. These Update News alums
have won scores of awards and honors
reserved for the best of the best in
broadcast journalism. Ask any of
these fine journalists where they
received the foundation for their
career...and they will tell you
it was Update News.
To those who
would argue the students can do the same
stories in a "lab class" that does
not actually air on television, I would
say...wrong! Sure, you can go through
the motions.
But, one of the keys to the success of
Update News...and the success of these
students-turned-professionals...is the
real-life sense of deadline pressure and
the
heart-pounding excitement of knowing you
are going on the air!
I still feel
that same heart-pounding excitement
every afternoon when I anchor the news
on
WCBS Newsradio 880 - it's
the same sensation I felt on the
campus radio station,
KSJS-FM, more than 25 years ago.
Believe me, you can't duplicate that in
a lab class.
At a time when
many in the general public have
questions about the news media,
we need our
broadcast journalism students to
receive every possible advantage...
every bit of training and real-life
experience that exists. Having their
newscasts
televised on KTEH-TV is part of that
equation for the Update News
students at SJSU.
Please, Ms.
Reed, I implore you to reconsider the
decision to remove Update News
from the
Channel 54 airwaves. I know the
fine Radio & TV News Coordinator at SJSU,
Professor Bob Rucker (who is cc'd on
this email) stands ready to do whatever
he can to continue the current
arrangement of airing Update News
on KTEH-TV. As a former correspondent
for CNN-turned-educator, Professor
Rucker knows how important this is for
his students.
I proudly join
Professor Rucker and the entire SJSU
School of Journalism and Mass
Communications community in asking
you to please keep Update
News on KTEH-TV.
Thank you very
much for your time and for your
attention to this matter.
Steve Scott
|
Distinguished Alum |
George Sampson
News Director
KLIV
News Radio
San Jose
|
Dear Ms. Reed,
My name is George Sampson and I am writing
to you as a
San Jose State Journalism grad, working
journalist and former KTEH employee with deep
ties to both the
San Jose
community and
public broadcasting. For 16 years, I was
"the voice of KTEH," co-hosted and produced "PetPourri"
and rattled the cup on pledge nights, auctions,
etc. I currently work in
radio news and also manage the
community access TV station in Los Gatos.
I am what you
might call a "True Beliver" in the cause of
community-based
(and supported) public broadcasting.
I am very disturbed by the news that
Northern California Public Broadcasting
plans to drop
San Jose State's "Update News" from the
KTEH schedule.
I respectfully ask that you consider the
following:
KTEH currently produces very
little in the way of local programming specific
to the
San Jose Area. Update News is a "freebie"
for NCPB and gives you 30 minutes of local
production each week with absolutely no
production cost to NCPB.
At the time Northern California
Public Broadcasting was formed, essentially
merging KTEH and KQED, the San Jose community
was given numerous assurances that local
programming would not suffer and that KTEH would
continue to offer services to the local
community. We reasonably expect those
commitments to be honored. Dropping Update
News would run contrary to those assurances.
Journalism is in crisis. NCPB
should not add to that crisis. San Jose
State
has a proud history of turning out stellar
journalists who occupy positions throughout the
industry incuding many who, like myself, have
enjoyed the privilege of working for PBS
affiliates,
NPR, PRI, etc. KTEH has a long history
of airing Update News as an
on-the-air program that also serves as a unique
learning lab. If you take away the over-the-air
training provided by Update News you will
perform a disservice to journalism education,
and to the communities that will ultimately
depend on it.
Update News airs at 12:30 AM. I
cannot imagine that there are many demands
on this slot. If so, I'm sure San Jose State
would be open to a new time slot.
It is my understanding that
there may have been an issue between NCPB and
San Jose State involving the delivery of
programs for air. You, as a broadcaster, have a
resonable right to expect timely delivery and I
can understand any resulting frustration if the
show dosen't arrive on time. However this is an
easily-solved problem with solutions ranging
from video file transfers (hi tech) to human couriers (low tech). It is my
understanding that
San Jose State is willing to assume this
responsibility at no cost to KTEH.
Northern California Public
Broadcasting receives much of its annual
support,
both individual pledges and corporate grants,
generated from the San Jose Area.
The reasonable quid pro quo is that NCPB provide
a local programming service to San Jose. Please
understand that in San Jose our local
University is a centerpiece of our community.
Update News showcases the university, it's
academic programs, professors and student life.
In short, this program has strong community
value to an area that is key to your funding
base.
It is my hope that whatever issues exist
between NCPB and San Jose State can be
resolved and airtime will continue to be made
available for Update News on KTEH.
Please accept my best wishes for the work
that you and your staff perform.
George Sampson
|
Distinguished Alum |
Dr. Harvey
Gotliffe
Professor Emeritus
SJSU Magazine Journalism
Coordinator
|
Dear Becca Reed:
As long-term supporters of KQED, we were
dismayed to discover that there's a very
real possibility that you will be
dropping UPDATE NEWS from your programming.
We have enjoyed watching future journalists do
an admirable job in researching, interviewing
and reporting on that program.
As supporters of public television, which is
aimed at helping the community
with programming not found elsewhere and at the
same time helping to make the viewers
feel that their financial contributions are
perpetuating the growth of fellow community
members,
we wonder what will come next.
We also wonder if our financial contributions
should instead be given to our local
public
radio station here in
Santa Cruz rather than make those
contributions to a
public television
station miles away.
We ask you to reconsider your plans and keep
UPDATE NEWS as one of our
choices of programming.
Sincerely yours,
Harvey and Carmen Gotliffe
|
More letters to be posted here soon!
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