WEIU-TV has entered its Feb. 8, 2010, newscast into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation College Emmy Awards and finished in the top three of the national competition.

They have piled up two regional Emmy titles and are still hungry for more.

In February, Eastern placed second in the Student Newscast Competition 2011 hosted by the Broadcast Education Association Festival of Media Arts.

The Emmy Awards competition receives hundreds of entries each year and has schools all across the United States entering.

Kelly Runyon, the news director at WEIU-TV, said larger schools like Arizona State University, Brigham Young University, and North Carolina State University are in the competition every year.

“Students who participate in regional and national competitions could have doors open for them in (the) future,” Runyon said.

Eastern is a smaller university compared to other schools in the competition. The newscast that placed in the top three of the Emmy Award competition took place during a snowstorm in Charleston.

It included weather coverage and live elements throughout the newscast.

Twenty-five students from the WEIU-TV team worked together on the Emmy Award winning newscast. Marine Glisovic, Krista Henery and Katie Glaze were three members of the award winning team.

The team said it was an honor to be selected and nationally recognized for this award. The members of the WEIU-TV news team said they had plans for after college.

“I would like to report for one of the large news outlets in the United States like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles,” said Glisovic, a senior journalism major.

Glaze, a senior technology major, said she plans on pursuing a career in the film industry.

“I would like to work on television stations like the Travel Channel or MSNBC,” said Henery, a senior journalism major.

The awards ceremony is a red carpet event where Hollywood stars, industry leaders, Academy Governors and members of the Foundation will all be in attendance, Runyon said.

The members of the WEIU-TV team said it took 35 to 40 hours a week to work on the newscast. The team would start working on the newscast at 7 a.m. and would not finish until around 5:30 p.m.

Winners will be honored in April at an awards ceremony in Los Angeles. Several awards will be given including individual newscast awards.

Jeremy Kappel can be reached at 581-2812 or jjkappel@eiu.edu.

LaMar Holliday, a senior journalism major, gets ready to report on WEIU’s NewsWatch Tuesday. The News Watch program is up for a regional Emmy, which it has won two years running. (Kacie Berry

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