WRAL-TV Hosts Second Annual CBC-UNC Diversity Fellowship Class in March

Last week WRAL-TV hosted a group of college students from across the country in the second annual CBC-UNC Diversity Fellowship Program, a journalism intensive program to prepare them for future broadcast media careers. WRAL-TV and WRAL.com work together with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication on the program which is focused on helping increase diversity in the broadcast news industry.

The students arrived on Wednesday, March 12 and departed on Sunday, March 16^th. They came from California State University, California State University – Northridge, University of Mississippi, Howard University, University of Maryland, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Southern California, University of Colorado, University of Florida, Syracuse, NC Central, and UNC.

This year, WRAL-TV hosted 9 reporter fellows and 3 producer fellows including our own, Larry McGill, currently a news production assistant at WRAL.

“The fellows worked with our seasoned photojournalists on 9 original stories,” explained WRAL-TV Assistant News Director Aysu Basaran, who helped coordinate the program. “They also worked with our experienced producers to create two different newscasts which were recorded on Sunday. New this year, we deployed four live trucks to give the reporter fellows an opportunity to be live in the field.”

The group will continue to keep in touch, both among themselves and with the staffers at WRAL-TV, through email, phone and Facebook.

“The hope is that we’ll be able to keep track of their accomplishments and perhaps cross paths again,” said Basaran.

WRAL-TV News Production Assistant Kiara Palmer worked alongside Basaran to organize and run the fellowship. Palmer is a graduate of last year’s inaugural program. WRAL-TV Vice President & General Manager Steve Hammel has been the driving force behind the CBC-UNC Diversity Fellowship Program.

“The whole thing was all Steve Hammel’s vision from the beginning,” said Basaran.

CBC and WRAL-TV both take our role as leaders in the broadcast industry and the community around us seriously.