UNLV students get taste of TV

The most awkward moment comes halfway through the newscast.

The weatherman, a skinny guy named Chris Sekerak , does his thing up in front of the green screen. "What we have coming in is just a bunch more clouds," he says.

News anchors Carrie Sullivan and Michael S. Jackson banter about the weather and an upcoming UNLV Rebels basketball game.

Sullivan smiles pleasantly, turns from Jackson and faces the camera.

"A teenage girl was shot in the head and killed last night after attending a friend's birthday party," she tells viewers.

The transition from friendly anchor banter to tragic reality is exactly the kind of clumsy moment people like to make fun of about the TV news.

And everybody here knows it.

"Let's not come out of the weather with murder anymore," says Gary Larson, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor in charge of the news team.

"My bad. Sorry," says Ashley Hoppe, the producer who put the newscast together.

She stayed late last night, came in early this morning, scrambled to fill a last-minute gap, and learned something about awkward transitions today, which is the whole point.

The news team really is a UNLV journalism class. But it's also a news team. A few weeks ago, they began to produce a daily, half-hour newscast. It's streamed live at unlv.tv at 3 p.m. weekdays.

Twenty-five students, mostly seniors, take Larson's advanced news production class. The class includes a few students who are voluntarily repeating it because this is the first semester they're doing an actual, live newscast.

The newscast is supposed to teach these future journalists what it's like in the real world. That's hard to get out of a book.

They report stories, work the cameras, interview people, put the video packages together, figure out in which order the stories should be put together, work the technology, read the teleprompter, man the phones.

When they graduate, they'll be out there looking for jobs.

"They'll be able to hit the ground running," said Ky Plaskon, a former local TV and radio reporter acting as news director for the class.

Plaskon said they haven't advertised the newscast's existence too heavily yet. On the first day it went live last month, there were nine total viewers.

"And there were six in the newsroom," Plaskon says.

But viewership isn't the point yet.

"My goal has always been to give my students saleable skills," said Larson, who also is the university's undergraduate coordinator for journalism.

For now, the students produce mostly lifestyle and sports stories. They're usually focused on life around UNLV. Unlike real life, there are no ads.

Each student reporter must produce two stories a week, on top of attending this class and all their other classes.

Larson said he wants to introduce CNN stories into the newscast, and maybe the students can branch out more.

But not this Monday, the day of the awkward transition.

They have stories on budget cuts, struggling artists, spring break, campus recycling, an animal sanctuary and, of course, the killing of a teenage girl.

Right now, it's a half hour before airtime. Sullivan, the anchor, bursts into the newsroom.

"Oh my God," she says. "I am not going to make it."

She helps Hoppe, the producer, come up with someone to fill in for an interview subject who bailed on them at the last minute. The final six or seven minutes of the newscast are always filled by a live interview.

Today, Danny Gonzalez, the outgoing student body vice president, will talk about budget cuts. Sullivan begged him to come on at the last minute.

Plaskon helps Hoppe come up with some questions for the on-air reporter, Blanca Ortiz, to ask Gonzalez.

"OK," announces the professor. "Eighteen minutes to air."

Hoppe, who wants to become a foreign correspondent, assigns a student to work camera one.

"Ash? Ashley? Two minutes?" the student says, eating takeout Chinese food in the newsroom. "Two minutes to pound this real quick?"

"Sure," Hoppe says, and returns her attention to her computer monitor.

There are 14 minutes left to airtime. The anchors soon take their seats. The stories are ready. The teleprompter is loaded.

Hoppe darts back and forth between the newsroom and the studio down the hall.

"If we don't start right at 3 the whole world implodes," she explains, out of breath.

She makes her way to the control room, which looks like the NASA command center in "Armageddon."

"Four minutes out," announces the professor. "Two minutes to black."

Then, "Three minutes out."

"Two minutes out."

"Twenty seconds," announces student director Aysia Bell.

"Five, four, three."

And they're live.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.