Indiana University School of Journalism

Home » News » American Student Radio launches

Photo by Dalton Main

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies Michael Evans tells students about the advantages of working for American Student Radio during the new group's call-out meeting. The Web-based station will involve collaboration with students around the nation.

Related PRSSA team wins Contiki contest (May 14) Crunch time video: Students offer internship, job advice (April 17) Journalists for Human Rights chapter seeks photos for calendar (April 15)

Senior Olivia Corya has a clear goal for her radio show: to bring hard-hitting investigative journalism to an audience of her peers, to help college students understand current events.

That’s how she got involved with the podcast “Stuff You Pretend to Know,” part of a new School of Journalism venture, American Student Radio. The new project launched with a call-out meeting Oct. 18 and will involve collaboration with college students around the nation, according to organizers.

“It’s a way to get students thinking about a national audience rather than just writing a story they know only I will hear,” said adjunct lecturer Sarah Neal-Estes, former public radio producer and reporter who teaches J360 Audio Storytelling and J460 Radio Innovation. “It’s about broadening our audience and broadening their experience.”

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies Michael Evans and Neal-Estes said they wanted to bring NPR-style radio to a student audience, and worked together to create a model for a student-run radio project they hope will eventually be a 24-hour online-streaming, national radio station. Using a website, which will be launched at the end of fall semester, as the “station,” students will upload their podcasts and reporting projects, and host and produce shows.

At the call-out meeting, students such as Corya, who have been working on the concept, wore shirts that said “founder” and presented ideas for shows. The first four prototype podcasts include a show similar to Chicago Public Radio’s "This American Life" that uses word association to unite stories; "Sportsmanlike Conduct," a laid back sports talk show; and a music show geared toward focusing on exposing bands from local areas.

Photo by Dalton Main

Adjunct lecturer Sarah Neal-Estes, left, with students during the kick off of the new project. She teaches two radio reporting classes that will provide the first material for the new station.

“The past few months working on the project have been flying by,” Corya said. Much of the groundwork for ASR is under way in Neal-Estes’ classes. Corya said she will finish with class at the end of the semester but hopes to contribute to the project further next semester.

Neal-Estes said students will pitch their show ideas, then other students may work as producers or on-air voices. The collaboration allows students to learn many parts of multimedia production, including maintaining the website, which is the home of the station.

And, the project will accommodate not only new ideas, but also new students. Students may get involved several ways, such as taking Audio Storytelling to learn audio reporting; taking Radio Innovation, where student work will be published direction to the station; or by pitching their own ideas to the station at americanstudentradio@gmail.com.

“Obviously, when we graduate it will be someone else’s responsibility to run the shows,” Corya said. “I just hope that we have a really strong prototype to launch in January and that we’ve really infused the character of the show into it so that students in the future can follow it.”

Questions? Comments? Email the Web editor.