By Chris Moore

chris.moore@panews.com

 

BEAUMONT — Students at Lamar University had a chance to walk around the C-SPAN tour bus on campus Friday.

According to C-SPAN’s website, The C-SPAN Bus has been traveling around the country since 1993, visiting schools, political events, book festivals and state capitals. Over the last 25 years, it has been featured at 8,000 events and hosted 1.5 million visitors, which includes 40,000 teachers and 800,000 students.

“I think it’s always great when students are able to talk with industry professionals,” Assistant Director of Student Publications Stephan Malick said. “They get to frequently interact with local professionals, but C-SPAN has a little cache to it with national and international recognition. It’s was good to hear directly from the source about what they do and how they do it.”

Malick, who has been a journalism adviser for more than 20 years at the high school and college level, said members of the media and those teaching journalism haven’t always done a good job cultivating the next generation.

“We’ve had different programs where you pair students up with professionals, but if you don’t encourage the next generation, they don’t see any importance in it,” Malick said. “I think we’re as much to blame for that. It also allows people who aren’t as trustworthy to come out and say a bunch of nonsense, and it gives them some traction.”

The instructor said the students were able to see how C-SPAN runs in comparison to other outlets.

“They have four cameras set up and it runs for however long it runs,” he said. “There’s no editing, no commentary or anything. There might be some vote counts or something like that, but it is what it is.”

Malick said the bus operator showed the students how to find the station’s archived footage, which does not have a copyright.

“Students can use that in their own broadcast as long as they give proper credit,” he said. “That’s what’s it is there for. It’s a public service.”

Many classes on campus are still getting through the basics after starting the semester a couple of weeks ago. Being able to tour the bus allowed Malick to reteach some fundamentals.

“Some of the students would say, ‘Oh did you know that?”’ Malick said. “I would respond with ‘Yeah, I’ve been trying to teach you that.’ It was a good way to hear stuff from other people.”

Malick was able to turn the tour into a teaching moment by making the students treat it as a news story.

Director of Student Publication Andy Coughlan said he was pleasantly surprised by how engaged the students were. Coughlan also teaches media writing.

“The C-SPAN people did a really good job of explaining what they do and what their mission is,” he said. “The students were really intrigued and following up with questions. I think it’s a really valuable resource when it comes to town again. Everyone who is interested in the media in general should go see it.”

The tour bus will make its next stop in The Woodlands on Monday.