A broadcast news program is now available for Tech students on the ResLife channel.Students operate a majority of the program, which has been named W-TLN. Production, news gathering and writing are all done by Tech students.
“W-TLN is a broadcast news program that we film and produce in the Media Center Studio,” said Brittany Ritzman, anchor and one of the producers of W-TLN. “All of the stories are gathered and written by students.”
Ritzman and fellow anchor and producer Emily Weinzetl have been working alongside professor Russ Witcher and Gary Bradford, electronic and multimedia specialist, to get W-TLN on air and available to students.
“Emily and I have been working on the program since the beginning of this semester,” Ritzman said, “but it has been in the works since spring ’10. Russ Witcher and Gary Bradford have been trying to get everything set up for it to start this fall.”
Ritzman and Weinzetl gather news from a variety of sources, including Tech press releases, Oracle stories and personal reporting and interviewing.
“We try to gather as many on-campus stories as we can,” Ritzman said, “but it sometimes proves difficult to find enough of them. We try to gather local stories that are pertinent and interesting to the student body.”
The students working on the program not only receive credit for being involved, but they also gain experience in the field they are studying.
“This semester we have met many challenges,” Ritzman said, “but also gained more experience than I ever expected. Getting that first program finished and on the air definitely made it worth the little bumps along the way.”
W-TLN airs at the top and bottom of every hour on the ResLife Channel, channel 72.
