Carolina News Studio allows faculty to share expertise
around the clock

Melissa Sowry, studio coordinator, right, helps Phil Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism, prepare for an interview last month in the Carolina News Studio. The compact, 460-square-foot studio, with its two Sony XDCAM HD camcorders specially outfitted for studio use, provides a state-of-the-art facility for live or taped interviews with faculty members. The studio is also equipped with ISDN connectivity for recorded or live feeds to radio stations. Studio décor reflects the University’s historic commitment to scholarship and service. Whenever a person is interviewed, a framed photograph of the Old Well is visible over the person’s shoulder, creating a setting that is instantly recognizable as Carolina.

In the increasingly competitive, ever-changing world of network news, cable television, satellite radio and Web broadcasting, the demand for relevant, timely content is constant.

And when news breaks, producers and editors scramble to find an expert, preferably one with national credentials who can speak with authority on the issue at hand.

Often, it isn’t simply what the expert knows that can determine whether he or she gets airtime; the person’s availability is also a key factor.

In response to these needs, the Carolina News Studio was born.

The new studio on the third floor of Carroll Hall is a joint venture between the Office of University Relations and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Jean Folkerts, journalism school dean, and Nancy Davis, associate vice chancellor for University Relations, proposed the studio to Chancellor James Moeser and the Budget Committee. They saw the benefit to the University in the form of increased national exposure for Carolina faculty experts and a teaching and learning opportunity for journalism students.

With the studio, the University has a fully equipped production facility and editing equipment available around the clock. An adjacent control room handles technical operations for interviews and can provide recorded and live feeds to radio stations.

National visibility
Folkerts said the studio is an investment that, in different ways, will serve both the needs of the school and the wider University community. “We were sending people to Duke or to Raleigh to be interviewed because we didn’t have an uplink,” she said.

In fact, television producers told the University’s media relations staff that they often chose to interview Duke professors over Carolina professors because Duke had a studio uplink and Carolina did not.

Now, with the University’s state-of-the-art studio, it will be easier for producers to interview professors here.

The studio is also a learning laboratory in which journalism students can be involved in producing live and live-to-tape interviews for news programs, Folkerts said.

Davis said the studio equips the University to feature the depth and breadth of Carolina’s scholarship on a national level.

“With the Carolina News Studio, our scholars and researchers can easily, and frequently, share their expertise with a broad audience and have a prominent presence in the news of the day at any time, day or night,” she said.

Jonathan Oberlander can attest to that.

Last month, National Public Radio’s Julie Rovner interviewed Oberlander, an associate professor of social medicine and health policy and administration, on the future of the Medicare health program. And last week, he was part of a discussion with two other panelists for an ongoing series, “My America 2008,” on “The Tavis Smiley Show.”

“It is fantastic to have this new studio at UNC,” Oberlander said. “The facilities are wonderful, the staff is great, and most importantly, the studio is extraordinarily convenient. This is a terrific addition to Carolina that will make life easier for many faculty and open up new possibilities for the University to engage with the media and public.”

Providing a quick response
In her role as studio coordinator, Melissa Sowry schedules live and recorded interviews with UNC experts, often on short notice. The University’s ability to respond quickly to news requests enhances its national visibility.

Consider, for instance, the ascendant importance of the May 6 North Carolina primary, and with it, national news organizations’ need to interview someone who understood the nuances of North Carolina politics.

Sowry arranged for Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life, part of the Center for the Study of the American South, to be interviewed by four news organizations the day before the primary. Guillory appeared live on ABC News Now’s “Politics Live” with Sam Donaldson, FOX News and Bloomberg News, and was interviewed by an ABC producer from “World News with Charles Gibson.”

Other interviews conducted in the studio since it opened in March include:

Joseph Piven, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, was interviewed by the NBC News Channel on World Autism Day, April 2;

Bart Ehrman, professor of religious studies, was interviewed April 29 by Interfaith Voices on his latest book, “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Questions”;

Phil Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism, appeared live via satellite May 1 for France 24’s program “The Debate.” Meyer joined a panel of journalists to discuss whether daily newspapers were becoming obsolete;

Miriam Labbok, professor of maternal and child health, was interviewed May 6 by ABC News medical contributor Marie Savard for ABCNews.com’s “Health Life” on breastfeeding and its influence on an infant’s IQ; and

Matthew Ewend, chief of neurosurgery in the School of Medicine, was interviewed June 2, the day Sen. Edward Kennedy underwent surgery for a brain tumor at Duke University Medical Center, by “ABC News with Charles Gibson” and by reporters from local news stations News 14, WTVD and NBC-17.

Internally, the studio has also been used for special projects such as a video tribute to Chancellor James Moeser, which was produced April 25, and again when Holden Thorp was named as Carolina’s 10th chancellor on May 9.

Understanding the needs
Running the news studio is a team effort. Sowry splits her time between the News Services office and the journalism school. Television engineer Terry Hill and television directors and producers Dylan Field and Dan Siler, all of whom are based at the journalism school, round out the studio staff.

One of the biggest challenges the staff faces is helping faculty members to be comfortable in front of a television camera.

“It takes time and practice,” Sowry said. “A big part of what we do is to help our faculty feel at ease so they can focus on talking to the person on the other end as if he or she was in the same room.”

Only a few universities in the country have this kind of studio, including Duke, Princeton and Vanderbilt, while the University of Chicago is studying the idea.

For information about using the news studio, refer to uncnews.unc.edu/unccommunity.html.

An adjacent control room handles technical operations for interviews. The Carolina News Studio is staffed by engineers and producers with decades of combined experience in live and taped interviews. Daniel Siler, left, and Dylan Field oversee studio interviews and can shoot interview subjects and supporting footage out in the field. Engineer Terry Hill, not pictured, rounds out the studio staff.