The events on the University of Missouri campus on November 9, 2015 made news worldwide, as UM System President Tim Wolfe resigned amidst protests by black students calling for his resignation. By the end of the day, MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin would also resign amidst pressure from faculty and students.
As the NPR member stations in Columbia, Missouri, KBIA-FM covered the breaking news thoroughly, later winning a regional Edward R. Murrow Award, a national Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists and a first place award from the Public Radio News Directors, Inc for that coverage. Judges in the PRNDI contest said KBIA put on, “a Breaking News clinic by reacting to the story with professionalism, insight and context.”
But beyond that breaking news coverage, the entire KBIA news team dedicated itself to diving deep into the issues surrounding the events on campus, providing valuable context like no other news outlet has. You will hear a portion of that coverage in this entry. KBIA aired dozens of hours of content related to this story over the past year. Many of the segments included in this entry are shortened for the purpose of the competition. The first 40 minutes of this entry would be considered breaking news or continuing coverage material. The rest of the submission is an in-depth series that may best be described as an audio documentary (and was also distributed as such).
Below you will find a playlist detailing the official submissions, with time codes in bold that denote where you will hear the stories in the audio file, and with links to the original stories posted online. You will hear short beeps to denote the separation between pieces. The stories are in chronological order.
Graduate Students Discuss Next Steps After Losing Health Insurance Subsides (00:00 – 02:29) http://kbia.org/post/graduate-students-discuss-next-steps-after-losing-health-insurance Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
Even After Renewal of Benefits, the MU Graduate Student Health Insurance Issue is Not Resolved (2:29-3:19)
http://kbia.org/post/even-renewal-benefits-mu-graduate-student-health-insurance-issue-not-resolved Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
Student-led protests were fairly common on the University of Missouri campus during 2015 long before the demands of Concerned Student 1950 were issued in November. One of the first incidents of student activism happened in August of 2015 when, just a few days before classes started, graduate students were told via email that their health insurance subsidies were being canceled due to an obscure ruling by the IRS.
We reported on this event the day it occurred, and over the next few days the story become more involved. So we spoke with experts from the American Council on Education and other organizations, numerous graduate students and the University administration. After a few days, we put together an explainer radio feature about the complex nature of the story, but within hours of the story airing the university decided to reverse their decision in regard to health insurance subsidies – and just like that, subsidies were restored.
But the story did not end there. We had conversations with the University’s administration and attended a student forum about the subsidies because the University didn’t re-implement the subsidies for good, but instead created a Task Force to look at the options the school had. For the course of five months, we made sure to stay on top of this story and report the periodic progress that took place. We tried to provide context on this complex subject matter and tried to let the voice of disgruntled and concerned graduate students be heard. These protests laid the groundwork for the Concerned Student 1950 protests.
Tim Wolfe Responds to MU Grad Student’s Hunger Strike (3:19 – 4:09)
http://kbia.org/post/wolfe-responds-mu-grad-students-hunger-strike
KBIA covered the first in-person conversation between Tim Wolfe and members of Concerned Student 1950, and included the raw audio of the conversation online. The conversation played a large role in what was to come. Shortened for the purpose of this competition.
(4:09-5:29) November 9 10:00 a.m. newscast that aired just before Wolfe’s resignation. Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
(5:29-6:06) November 9 10:05 a.m. Live broadcast of the resignation of Tim Wolfe. Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
(6:07-15:09) WNYC’s The Takeaway interviews KBIA News Director Ryan Famuliner around 11:00 a.m. on November 9, providing much-needed context to the story that was not present in much of the national reporting in the immediate aftermath of Tim Wolfe’s resignation. http://www.wnyc.org/story/racial-tensions-inflame-missouri-campus/
(15:09-16:30) November 9 Noon newscast, Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
(16:31 -17:32) November 9 4:30 p.m. newscast, aired just minutes before Loftin’s resignation. Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
(17:33-18:09) November 9 4:40 p.m. Live coverage of the UM Curators meeting where Loftin’s resignation is announced. Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
(18:09-18:31) November 9 5:30 p.m. newscast. Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
(18:31-21:00) Excerpts from the half hour program “Intersection,” which aired at 6:30 p.m. November 9, the same day as the resignations and demonstrations. Shortened for the purpose of the competition. Complete show here: http://kbia.org/post/intersection-voices-historic-monday-university-missouri
(21:00-24:59) Reporter Reflects on Being Inside Confrontation Between Reporters and MU Demonstrators
A first-person account by KBIA reporter Bram Sable-Smith, detailing his presence in the confrontation between journalists and demonstrators over efforts to document the students on campus. Aired the morning of November 10.
(24:59-25:41) A Conversation with Tim Tai
http://kbia.org/post/conversation-tim-tai
KBIA’s Bram-Sable Smith spoke with Tim Tai, and they discussed what it was like finding themselves in the middle of a struggle over First Amendment Rights that garnered national attention. Half hour interview shortened for the purpose of the competition. Aired November 11
(25:41– 29:45) Mizzou Football Sets Precedent for Student Athlete Activism
http://kbia.org/post/mizzou-football-sets-precedent-student-athlete-activism
Shortened for the purpose of the competition. Aired November 12.
KBIA also sought to correct some misreporting by other news outlets in the immediate aftermath of the breaking news. The web-only post “4 Things You Might Have Wrong About the Mizzou Story” had more than 100,000 page views in 3 days: http://kbia.org/post/4-things-you-might-have-wrong-about-mizzou-story
(29:45 – 32:20) MU Student Voices: “I Want Mizzou to Be a Brighter Campus”
http://kbia.org/post/mu-student-voices-i-want-mizzou-be-brighter-campus Shortened for the purpose of the competition.
(27:44 – 34:43) Intersection: Inclusivity and Diversity at MU http://kbia.org/post/intersection-inclusion-and-diversity-mu
An Interview with Mike Middleton, the Interim UM System President. Half hour interview shortened for the purpose of this competition.
KBIA’s continuing, day-to-day coverage of these issues has continued far beyond the content included in this entry. Some more stories on this issue can be found here:
http://kbia.org/term/mizzoubreaking
(34:43 – 39:03) An interview with Melissa Click http://kbia.org/post/interview-melissa-click
Melissa Click is the MU Communications professor at the University of Missouri who was seen shoving a student’s camera and calling for muscle to have him removed from a place where student demonstrators were gathering. She did not respond to requests for interviews for months after the confrontation. KBIA had the second interview with Melissa Click, and posted the raw interview and a transcript to our website immediately, which was quoted in stories internationally. KBIA also had the opportunity to have the first interview with Click, but declined because it created an ethical conflict: http://kbia.org/post/explanation-kbias-involvement-mark-schierbecker-and-melissa-click
(39:04-1:58:31) Mizzou at a Crossroads part 1-3
As you can tell, KBIA covered the breaking news and the aftermath on campus and in our community regularly and with depth.
But, as often happens in these situations, the national narrative of what happened at the University of Missouri made a complex situation look simple. While national reporters and bloggers focused on things like whether or not small incidents that triggered the outcry actually happened (spoiler alert: they did), journalists were depriving an audience that wanted to understand this story the context about the systemic, long-term issues that brought this all to head in Columbia.
While KBIA continued its day-to-day coverage of the aftermath in late 2015 and early 2016, the entire staff also began work on a long-form series that would seek to provide that much-needed context. The result was “Mizzou at a Crossroads.”
“Mizzou at a Crossroads” is an in-depth analysis on the history of race relations at MU, the efforts to start conversations about race on campus, the process behind hiring former University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe, and an overview of what might be in store for the future of UM leadership. The analysis of the “ghosts” of the University’s past present and future explored issues rarely touched by other media after the events of November 2015, and never to this layer of depth. Three stories, between 20-30 minutes each, aired on KBIA in February 2016.
KBIA also sought to convey this story digitally in a meaningful, impactful way. When creating online experiences for our special projects, KBIA’s Digital Content Director Nathan Lawrence was struck by the lack of flexibility available in tools like Atavist, Divi and Layers. Though they did a great job of making things look nice, they got in the way when writers and editors were looking to focus on content and frequently stymied creative decisions for presentation. So, Lawrence decided to build his own tool for this project.
As a result, he created our unique Jekyll-based interactive layout for Mizzou at a Crossroads. It contains audio reports, photographs and text for an immersive informational experience, all intended to serve as a source of information on university funding and policies, state politics and student demands. The project went live online February.
Then, in March, KBIA also distributed the three parts as serialized podcasts. (Search for “Mizzou at a Crossroads” in the iTunes store and you will find it). KBIA also released a version of the project as a hour-long documentary, providing more flexibility for it to be aired at KBIA and other members stations.
You can find the special build out of the project here:
http://apps.kbia.org/mizzou-crossroads/
And you can find the individual story posts listed here:
http://kbia.org/term/mizzou-crossroads
And the one hour long version:
http://kbia.org/post/mizzou-crossroads-one-hour-special-report
KBIA had considered submitting “Mizzou at a Crossroads” individually as a documentary for consideration for the DuPont Awards, but decided to include it with some of our other coverage, thinking it would give a larger picture of KBIA’s contributions in covering this important story that had impact beyond our community. So, if the judges believe the series/documentary is worthy of an award and the breaking news coverage is not, we would ask it be considered as a separate body of work as well.
The station’s commitment to this reporting and to this project in the last year was substantial. KBIA has only 6 full time newsroom staff, who all contributed to this reporting consistently. The in-depth series essentially took all of the reporters and editors off of their usual beats to focus on this comprehensive project. The rest of the contributors listed on the project were students working at the station as part of their coursework at the Missouri School of Journalism, under the guidance of the KBIA professional staff.