First-year Communications Fellows toured media outlets and networked with professionals.
By Tom Hamzik ’17
The first year Elon University Communications Fellows spent Oct. 24-26 in Atlanta, touring media outlets and meeting professionals from many communications fields. Fellows Director and Communications associate professor Naeemah Clark, assistant professor Gerald Gibson, associate professor Rich Landesberg and senior strategic communications major Laura Van Drie accompanied the students on the trip.
The group left Elon late afternoon on Thursday Oct. 24, arriving in Atlanta shortly before midnight. The following morning, the fellows split into two groups—public relations/journalism and broadcast/cinema—and set off to tour different organizations.
The public relations/journalism group spent its morning at Atlanta Magazine, discussing the process of putting together a magazine. The broadcast/cinema majors went to CNN world headquarters and toured the facility with Ben Kaiser, an Elon alumnus and CNN manager.
After lunch, both groups stopped by the Martin Luther King Jr. historic site, where they studied exhibits about the civil rights movement and wrote a marketing proposal for a movie inspired by what they saw. Next, the broadcast/cinema group arrived at the WSB-TV/radio stations, where the students toured facilities and watched a live news broadcast. Meanwhile, the PR/journalism group visited the Atlanta offices of Edelman Public Relations, the world’s largest PR firm.
The day ended with the students mingling, networking and enjoying dinner with Elon alumni from Atlanta.
The trip concluded with a trip to Turner Field, the home of the Atlanta Braves. Elon alumnus Matt Montemayor showed the group around the press area and where the scoreboard productions are controlled, before heading down to the clubhouse and field.