For Students, By Students
Despite being only three years old, one organization in the College of Media & Communication, The HUB@TTU, a student-run website that showcases student work, is already winning regional awards and competing at a national level.
Most recently, the website gained national attention when it published two stories that qualified as finalists last October for the 2014 Multimedia Story of the Year competition sponsored by the Associated College Press.
One story, titled “ICYMI: Executive Candidate Forum and Election Coverage” by Alicia Keene, the graduate executive director, and staff members Abbie Arroyos (BA Journalism, 2014), Evan Dixon (BA Journalism, 2014), Ben Jarvis (MA Mass Communications, 2015), Blake Silverthorn (BA Media Strategies, 2015) and J.B. Felipe (BA Electronic Media and Communications, 2014), was recognized in the “news” category.
The other story, titled “ICYMI: The Hub’s Conversation with a Congressman” by Keene, Arroyos and Dixon, was recognized in the “features” category.
Earlier, in March of 2014, staff members traveled to the Society of Professional Journalists Conference for Region 8 in League City, Texas, where The HUB@TTU won four awards.
The online publication won Best Independent Online Student Publication overall. Keene, Arroyos and Dixon won an Online In-depth Reporting award for an article about asbestos on the Texas Tech campus. And former CoMC students Sydney Holmes (BA Journalism, 2013) and Claudia Tristán (BA Journalism and Bachelor of Business Administration degree, 2014) also won awards for Online Feature Reporting and Online News Reporting, respectively.
The HUB@TTU was established in 2012 as a website for students to easily showcase their work. Pete Brewton, adviser for the publication, said the students who work and volunteer with the website publication have a large amount of freedom in what they publish.
“The Hub is there to give our students the opportunity to exercise their creative skills,” Brewton said. “It gives students the opportunity to publish all of their work in an online forum. It allows students to show everybody what they can do.”
Lauren Estlinbaum (BA Journalism, 2014) worked as the entertainment director at The HUB@TTU while she was a student in CoMC. Estlinbaum had been part of the online publication since it was just a concept three years ago.
“I’m one of the few members who helped start it,” Estlinbaum said. “The Hub is an online student publication showcase. Anyone in the college or Texas Tech can submit his or her own work to be published. It does not matter if you’ve written something, you’ve made a video, or you have art to display. You name it; we will publish it, if it is worth publishing.”
Brewton said he hopes the awards will show that The HUB@TTU is successful and should continue.
“I think it has been a worthwhile enterprise,” Brewton said. “The students are doing good work. They are winning awards. They are being recognized and having a lot of fun. I hope the faculty and administration of the college recognize this, and I think they do.”
Keene’s award-winning story covered the basics of asbestos, described a few buildings on campus that are abandoned due to asbestos, and compared Texas Tech’s situation with asbestos to asbestos situations at other universities.
“We talked about places on campus that are abandoned due to the expense of abatement,” Keene said. “Weeks Hall was our main target. We took a tour. They’ve been trying to do something with it for years. They do not want to knock it down because it is old but the cost of abatement is astronomical.”
Keene said the asbestos article was a good opportunity to explain a part of Texas Tech’s campus that many students were curious about.
“We showed an interesting building that people couldn’t go in so that people don’t do it themselves and risk asbestos exposure or criminal activity,” she said. “We also had some numbers in there and context behind it. We were persistent and even got asbestos certified in order to tour Weeks Hall.”
Estlinbaum said the awards have given the online publication exposure and an opportunity to prove itself. She also said she appreciates how much freedom she had when choosing stories or projects.
“The Hub is interesting because we got to put our own spin on it,” Estlinbaum said. “Yes, we had advisers and we’re under the College of Media & Communication. But, we got to do what we thought matters. There is definitely more room for creativity at The Hub.”
“These awards definitely helped us say that we were worth the time,” Estlinbaum said. “And they still are. Just give The Hub a chance and visit the website. They have done good things.”
Keene said the online publication offered her a chance to showcase some of her classwork. She said she wishes it would have been around earlier in her academic career in order to preserve some of her earlier stories.
“When I was taking intro classes, there wasn’t anywhere to publish work from classes,” Keene said. “I wrote a great story in News Writing, and I wanted to publish it somewhere. It was on my computer at home that crashed and burned. It is nice to have access to a service that can keep and preserve my work. It is a good thing to look back on as an older journalism student.”
Keene said she hopes students in the college realize the benefits of having an organization like this on campus. Keene said she hopes more students take advantage of it and that she is willing to help any students who want to publish their work.
“We are here not only to be a publication,” Keene said. “We are here for the students, as well. Some of the stuff I personally produced was from my classes, and I also produced things for other students. Whether it is News Writing or Reporting, they will send their stuff in, and we will help edit it and put it on there so people can get published.” mc
(Rachel Blevins is a sophomore journalism major from Mineral Wells, Texas. Jay Crain is a senior electronic media and communications major from De Kalb, Texas.)
