Northeast wins broadcasting national championship

NORFOLK, Neb. -- Four Northeast Community College broadcasting students, including two working with News Channel Nebraska and Flood Communications, took the gold medal in the Collegiate Broadcast News Production category at the SkillsUSA national conference.

The winning team members were Jordan Kempf, of Glenvil, Leonard Schaecher, of O’Neill, Lance Vie, of Fontanelle, and Luke Vie, of Fontanelle. Both Lance Vie and Luke Vie are members of the NCN staff. 

It is the second national championship earned by Northeast broadcasting in this category.  Northeast also won the top prize in the 2018 national Skills USA competition.    

The contest included a written knowledge exam assessing news terminology, direction terminology, technical direction terminology, floor direction terminology, news ethics, newsroom personnel, scripting, and on-air etiquette.   For the skills portion, the team was given around 25 news wire stories and was required to select, order, and write enough stories to fill a 3-minute newscast.  Points were deducted for going over or under the 3-minute requirement, however Northeast hit the goal at exactly 3-minutes.   

“The contest coordinator commended our students for working well together as a team and for being self-sufficient, asking few questions” said Brian Anderson, Northeast Media Arts Instructor.  “I truly believe this is because of our small class size and the fact that we do this type of activity in our program each and every week.   

Anderson said he is proud of his students. 

“These students spent a good number of hours practicing for this contest.  They were eager to compete and driven to win.  This year’s contest was a heavy technical lift because it was all virtual.  Each of our three cameras and the director had to be on a separate device, logged into a zoom room. It was the director’s job to switch the cameras virtually to simulate a professional news look and sound.  It was a production situation we had never encountered in a lab before.  It was a challenge, but that’s what a national competition is all about.  They practiced for hours, perfected it, and it paid off.”