By Kayleigh Webb

Photo by Mikki Harris

It’s 3:30pm on a Wednesday afternoon, and sitting confidently in the control room of the Student Media Center behind a computer editing video is Stewart Pirani. Pirani, an Ole Miss junior pursing a degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in cinema studies, is the manager for NewsWatch, a live, student-run news program that airs on channel 99 at 5 p.m. on weekdays.

His love of television and producing started earlier. It began in high school, where Pirani took a class in television production. The class emphasized producing a live news program.

“I got there on the first day and I walked into the studio and the control room,” Pirani said. “I saw everything: the technology, the lights, the buttons, the monitors. I just knew that what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was television.”

After four years of the class, Pirani had his sights set on Ole Miss because of the broadcast journalism program.

Pirani began working in the Student Media Center at Ole Miss during his freshman year. His first projects were with Chatterbox, a comedy show that was produced in the media center studio.

“It helped me step my foot into NewsWatch,” Pirani said. “I started doing it that second semester my freshman year and I’ve not left since.”

Pirani first worked as the technical director of NewsWatch. Now as station manager, Pirani oversees five student employees who work each day, as well as about 30 students who work one day each week anchoring news and weather and sports and more.

Pirani has made quite a few changes around the NewsWatch studio. It started during his sophomore year, when he and his father built a new set for NewWatch. The set was designed by Pirani, as well as the red and blue murals that make up the backdrop to the set. A matching interview set soon followed to make the whole studio look uniform. This year, the SMC purchased equipment for NewsWatch from the Athletics Department. Over the Christmas break, Pirani helped install the new equipment and a high-definition playback system.

“Our cameras are still standard definition, but we’ll work on that,” Pirani added with a chuckle.

Balancing NewsWatch with academics was not always easy.

“It was really hard the first two years.” Pirani said.

As station manager, Pirani knew that he would have to devote more time to NewsWatch and he planned his schedule accordingly. Pirani made sure to schedule his classes in the mornings and leave his afternoons open for NewsWatch work.

One of Pirani’s professors is Deb Wenger, who teaches Journalism 480: Advanced TV Reporting.

“He is one of the strongest visual story tellers and editors that I have in the class, “ Wenger said. “He is very technically savvy. If it’s technology, Stewart is able to figure it out.”

Pirani’s achievements are not limited to the studio at NewsWatch. At the 2012 Southeastern Journalism Conference, Pirani received 2nd place in Radio News Reporting, which was a big deal for Pirani because he had little experience with radio reporting. That year, the Student Media Center won the Grand Champions title.

In the summer of 2012, Pirani was given the opportunity to intern at NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. His duties included daily work for Nightly News as well as working with producers and even anchor Brian Williams. Pirani fondly recalled running around 30 Rock with scripts and rundowns and meeting all of the people who worked there.

“It’s an experience I’ll never forget.” Pirani said. “I lived in New York for eight weeks and I still can’t believe I was there.”

Pirani was also selected this past spring to work for Cable Sports South (CSS) on signing day, the biggest football recruiting day for college athletes.

“He’s a student,” said Wenger, “but his skills are such that professional news organizations or sports organizations look at him like someone who is capable of handling a professional level of coverage.”

Wenger said that Pirani will succeed because “his passion for journalism and in particular in technology and TV production make him a rare individual.”

After graduation, Pirani plans to pursue a career as a director or producer. He would be happy in either role.

“I love producing videos that entertain people, so that’s what I want to do when I graduate.”

Kayleigh Webb is a junior English major from Purvis, Miss.

By Jane Lloyd Brown

Photo by Mikki Harris

With The Ole Miss yearbook heading to print and final touches completed, one would expect Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Beaver to enjoy a break from the Student Media Center’s hectic buzz.

Instead Beaver, a senior journalism major and art minor, hustles around the center giving direction on design projects and offering advice to student writers.

The editors on Beaver’s staff include Miriam Taylor, design editor; Alex Edwards, photo editor; Jake Thompson, sports editor; and Callie Daniels, writing editor.

“It’s madness all the time,” Beaver said of working with her team in the SMC. “We’re like a big rolling circus.”

The yearbook process naturally works at a slower pace than the other media components because the staff do not have daily deadlines.

This year, the staff wanted to get the book done early so that they would have time to fix any mistakes before the publication went to print.

With Beaver also juggling schoolwork with a barista job at High Point Coffee and getting engaged this year, finishing the yearbook before deadline was difficult.

Working from the bottom up in the SMC, starting as a photographer and then becoming design editor, gave Beaver a different perspective on problem-solving and troubleshooting. Knowing where the problems lie before getting started gave her a leg up in the production process.

Writing Editor Callie Daniels praised Beaver’s leadership.

“She always made herself available to anyone on the staff,” Daniels said. “She put a lot of herself into the annual this year, spending quite a few weekend nights and sometimes all-nighters on it. She even worked on it over the Christmas break and the spring break.”

Beaver and the rest of the yearbook staff changed the book to a horizontal layout, which she believes will enhance it.

Jake Thompson, sports editor, said, “She is like a dog with a bone. Once she has a hold of something, she isn’t going to let go until she feels the job is done and done well. I couldn’t imagine working under anybody else.”

Beaver graduates in December. She has started a wedding stationary business out of her home.

“My dream goal is to stay at home and hang out with my dogs and make pretty stationary,” Beaver says of her plans after graduation.

Her job as editor-in-chief of the yearbook taught her a lot about the kind of career she wants.

“I thoroughly enjoy this experience, and I think I’m very good at it, but I think if I could do without the daily stress of the newsroom I would,” Beaver said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so honored to be in charge of something, or so proud of the end product we are going to be able to give everyone.”

Jane Lloyd Brown is a senior in the Meek School. She is from Baton Rouge, La.

By Casey Holliday

Photo by Thomas Graning

As Emily Roland walked across the stage of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts to be awarded a place in the Hall of Fame, a laundry list of achievements were rattled off: editor-in-chief of The Daily Mississippian, president of the Society of Professional Journalists chapter, choir member, recipient of the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson Scholarship.

From a young age, Roland, a senior print journalism major, was interested in music and travel. Her dad, a musician, told Emily to avoid the field and instead combine those passions with her interest in English and writing and become a journalist.

“I had never thought about working for a newspaper until my dad suggested it,” Roland said. “It just kind of stuck. The more I got into it, the idea of journalism really attracted me.”

Roland walked into the Student Media Center on the third day of her freshman year to ask to be a writer for The Daily Mississippian. It was then that she would meet Alex McDaniel, the editor-in-chief at the time.

Sitting behind McDaniel at the editing desk almost every day, Roland would question every change and edit to improve her own writing and lay the groundwork for what was to come.

“Emily’s work ethic was unlike anything I had seen from someone her age,” McDaniel said. “She was always at the newsroom, always working, always trying to find ways to improve her writing.”

Roland’s first story for the DM was about Donna O. Johnson’s “Guaranteed 4.0” plan. It ran on the front page.

“I grabbed like 50 million copies and mailed them to my family at home and in California, and last Christmas my mom gave me the article framed.”

Her rise would not stop there. After a summer internship with the Meridian Star, Roland would take over as lifestyles editor her sophomore year. Several news editors quit, and Roland became the lifestyles and news editor for about two weeks. Midway through the semester, she was appointed campus news editor and, by the beginning of the next semester, she was managing editor.

“By the end of my sophomore year, we always joked around that I was ‘chosen’ to be chief at some point,” Roland recalled. “It was like Alex picked me and trained me to one day take her place.”

According to McDaniel, their “joking around” was actually pretty close to the truth.

“One of the most frustrating things about running a college newspaper is finding students who are dependable,” McDaniel said. “But I always knew I could count on Emily and that she’d end up running the place one day.”

Spending the fall semester of her junior year as managing editor, Roland experienced the toughest semester academically she had so far, and chose to spend the spring as copy chief. Finding out in March that she would get to spend her senior year as editor-in-chief, Roland immediately started work, and used the summer to lay the foundations of her vision of the Mississippian.

“I would have been shocked if Emily hadn’t gotten editor-in-chief,” said Emily Cegielski, senior journalism major and Roland’s former roommate. “Ever since freshman year, it was what she was working toward, and when Emily wants something, she works her butt off to get it.”

Roland’s first goal was to create a new layout. The design usually changes with every editor-in-chief, creating a new look for the newspaper every August. She worked to create one that corresponded with two Ole Miss themes ─ tradition and respectability ─ and was easy to read and, according to Roland, “look[ed] like a newspaper.”

When it came to the website, she knew it needed work. Although she helped where she could, in the end, Roland was not completely satisfied with the results.

“I’m not a code person; I can’t program or write HTML,” Roland said. “I was more advocating change. We needed a website that looked and functioned better, and I was part of the planning about what the website needed to have on it and what it needed to be able to do, but that was where my role stopped. It still needs a lot of work. I hope the next editor can give more attention to the website than I was able to.”

In addition to her work redesigning the newspaper, Roland led The Daily Mississippian team to multiple awards.

“Every decision I’ve made since I was a freshman was a ‘I hope this is the right choice’ moment,” Roland said. “Winning those awards told me ‘okay, okay, I did that right.’”

Ole Miss students dominated the Southeast Journalism Conference’s “Best of the South” awards in February. The Daily Mississippian won fourth in the Best College Newspaper category, where the DM was the top-ranked daily newspaper. The DM website won second place for Best College Website. The DM and its staff also won many awards this year in the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Region 12 contest, and the Associated Press Managing Editors contest.

The most personal award for Roland was on Jan. 25, 2013. Seated among 153 of her peers who were also being honored as “Who’s Who” students,” Roland discovered she was being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Inclusion in the Hall of Fame is one of the most prestigious honors a student at the University of Mississippi can receive. The tradition extends back to 1930 and currently highlights 10 students who embody superior academics and service, as well as a strong potential to become leaders in their careers and communities. For Roland, being selected was an utter shock.

“I couldn’t believe it then, and I can’t believe it now,” Roland said. “It was the high point. It told me people appreciate what I’m doing, and that it matters. When you’ve spent nights crying in your room because you had to spend so much time at the newspaper and didn’t have time for laundry, it’s so humbling to be told, ‘Thank you for what you’ve done.’”

Casey Holliday is a senior in the Meek School. He is from Nesbit, Miss.

WABG (Greenville) is looking for a multiple platform journalist to assist with the production of local commercials for station advertising clients along with studio production duties. Will also be responsible for station websites and updating social media platforms. Experience in graphic design and/or commercial production preferred. Job requires working knowledge of all aspects of digital media including various forms of social media.

Send resume to:
Steve Ross
849 Washington Ave.
Greenville, MS  38701