2026 BEA OL

Today’s leading educators are empowering the next generation of storytellers to create engaging news, sports, entertainment, & virtual content with powerful live motion graphics solutions. Widely adopted production applications and successful instructional models adopting best practices will be reviewed.

This session will cover best practices for students in producing sports media coverage such as play-by-play and live game broadcasts, sports storytelling, and the use of social media in sports coverage. This session will also include best practices in designing any sports media classes on those concepts for academic curriculum.

This panel explores strategies, tools, and newsroom practices that enable local television stations to deliver effective hyperlocal news coverage. It is connected to the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont, that promotes and supports campus media as a means of serving underserved audiences, but also recognizes challenges for local market commercial TV stations in maintaining local audience engagement, recognizing that audiences seek information that directly impacts their neighborhoods, communities, and daily lives. Panelists will provide specific scenarios demonstrating that TV stations have a unique opportunity to strengthen engagement through localized and specialized storytelling. The session will examine how local broadcast-based news can identify community-driven topics, leverage digital and social platforms, use data and audience insights, and create content that reflects the concerns and interests of specific demographic categories. Attendees will learn practical approaches for building audience engagement, increasing audience loyalty, and positioning their stations as essential sources of timely, relevant, and community-focused journalism. The panel will also help student media managers learn more about how they can benefit from engagement with the Center for Community News.
Moderator: Tony DeMars, Texas Wesleyan University
Panelists: Mike Arnold, Indiana University
Kevin Swift, University of North Carolina-Pembroke
Tony DeMars, Texas Wesleyan University
Clejetter Cousins, University of North Carolina-Pembroke

Creating Radio’s “Farm System”: The Case for Shifting College Radio from “Student-Run” to “Student-Operated” in Instructional Settings; Len O’Kelly, Grand Valley State University

Me or Thee? An Examination of Lyrical Focus of 2025 CCM Songs; Casey Hart; Stephen F. Austin State University

Ears Across America: Establishing a National Ad Hoc Audio Drama Exhibition Network; William Anderson, Central Michigan University

From Sponsoring "BEA Days" to offering scholarships and internship opportunities, state broadcaster associations are invaluable partners in our work as media educators. This panel showcases best practices based on the experiences of panelists from five states. Some faculty have worked closely with local media in their markets while others have connected with other faculty state broadcast educator associations. These are all strategies we want to share and celebrate during this panel discussion. Attendees should plan to take away at least TWO (2) ideas that they can implement in their state.

Grab a lunch and head back to the lunchtime session or sit and talk to colleagues.t 

Join us for this lunchtime session!
This panel is designed for instructors teaching broadcast history courses with a specific focus on why history is relevant and necessary to understanding current seismic shifts in the business of making, distributing and regulating broadcasting. Panelists will discuss strategies and best practices for engaging students and helping them understand the through line from the enactment of policy (such as the Communication Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996) and the precedent set by early broadcast figures (such as Edward R. Murrow or Faye Emerson) to today’s broadcast ecosystem (using recent studies such as the battle over Jimmy Kimmel, the Nexstar-Tegna Merger, the adaptation of NextGenTV, and the controversy at 60 Minutes). Time will be allotted for engaged discussion with panel attendees.

Panelists will discuss the dual role of creating creative content while working in academic roles.

In a time when journalists are under greater scrutiny from the general public as well as those holding political power, the requirements of a journalist’s job continue to need reassessment. Several instances on the national level involving confrontational exchanges between President Donald Trump and mainstream media journalists have garnered national attention and sparked conversation regarding best practices for how journalists should respond and handle their composure during such confrontations. However, local journalists are and have been dealing with these same issues from hostile witnesses and lower-level politicians (e.g. county board members, city council members, etc.) across the political spectrum of ideologies who have been emboldened to treat the press in the same manner. In this panel, we will explore not only the well-known examples of Trump confronting journalists in public venues but local journalists experiences with confrontational sources and how, if at all, those journalists and those around them should respond. Tips for handling tense moments while gathering and reporting the news involving those in power will be discussed from both an academic and professional practice perspective.
Moderator: K. Megan Hopper, Illinois State University
Panelists: Bob Carroll, Illinois State University
Colleen Holden, Illinois State University
Steve Suess, Illinois State University

Gate-surfing: A new gatekeeping model to observe how local newsrooms are selecting stories and navigating the tsunami of mis-and disinformation in the age of AI; Grace Provenzano; Des Moines Area Community College

Persuasive Attack and Defense of the “Indiana Bears”:  Subverting the Rustbelt from Just Across the Street; Joseph Blaney, Illinois State University

Why Do Youth Listen to Celebrities as Spokespersons on Social Media in African Social Change Discourse?; Kuburat Ayinde, Illinois State University

The film festival as a course presents a unique opportunity for students to enrich their media education by helping plan and stage a centrally important media industry event while also developing transferable project-based skills. For emerging filmmakers, festivals provide valuable opportunities to engage audiences for their work while also offering professional development and networking exposure. But how might we understand the additional pedagogical benefits that programming such festivals create? In particular, producing a film festival in the classroom encourages students to consider a number of interrelated questions: What is the core function of a film festival and who is its intended audience? What are the various entanglements connecting the course to the university, community, and broader film industry? Is the film festival primarily a showcase of the program’s or school’s output or an opportunity to connect the program to other players beyond the university campus? How does the festival produce a uniquely curated experience? And relatedly, what methods of evaluation and judgment are used to curate a program whether that means establishing criteria of inclusion and exclusion or determining how films are to be ordered in programming blocks? This panel identifies the benefits of such efforts, which includes incorporating students into film curation practice, utilizing films as vehicles for instruction given their ability to enliven class content, and further connecting courses to the broader community through shared exhibition spaces.