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I am lucky enough to live with Madison Alworth in Saybrook this year, and I have watched her work incredibly hard on the Yale-TV (YTV) project for the YDN for the entire year. At the start of our interview, I could already sense a heightened sense of excitement from this busy bee because the long-awaited launch date is finally close enough to talk about!
Her Campus: Hi Maddie! So, you are kind of involved with a lot of activities here at Yale…am I right?
Madison Alworth: Yeah, I happen to do a bunch of different things, but YTV is something that I have taken a focus and a leadership position in because I am really passionate about it—it is what I want to get into for my career. Of course I love all of my groups, but at the beginning of the year, this was starting from scratch, and so we needed strong leadership and as much dedication as possible.
HC: There are other people involved with YTV, right?
MA: Yes, there are five of us that have really formed the leadership team for this new project. They are Raleigh Cavero (2015), Lily Fast (2014), Danielle Trubow (2014), and Charlie Kelly (2014). We are the YTV team, but all of our reporters are part of YTV, we are just the team that really pushed it forward.
HC: Why did you want to start YTV?
MA: In the past, the multimedia desk at the YDN existed, and they were doing a great job, but we noticed that there was no broadcasting and we all felt like that was a gap that needed to be filled. We are all really passionate about broadcasting and that is why this has been working—we are all so dedicated and the staff is incredible.
HC: What will YTV look like to a student here at Yale?
MA: We are excited to see where it goes. Something we have known all along is that we might know where we want to start, but we may not know where and how it will grow and evolve. We have reporters that do packages [individual stories about different aspects, events, happenings of the Yale and greater community], like the ones that had been done in the past with the multimedia desk, but we are now also adding in the broadcast section. The broadcast news segment will add a new level of professionalism to the packages as well, because they are being included in a larger broadcast. We are really looking forward to legitimizing ourselves as a broadcast journalism station and network.
HC: What will the different YTV programs look like?
MA: Every Sunday the broadcast will be put online. The first part will be an overview of the top print stories of the week and the second half will be a compilation of the packages from the week. It is very exciting.
HC: And what will you personally be doing or what will you be in charge of?
MA: All of the anchors [the four females in the leadership roles listed above] will be rotating between actual anchoring, line editing, script writing, and overseeing and helping to edit the packages. We have created an entire schedule and we have spent a lot of time reorganizing the multimedia desk. The official name is “YTV: A YDN Network,” and we had a lot to do to prepare for the opening. We had to create the schedule and redo the entire landing page of our news page. Videos view differently online, so we really wanted to make sure that we had the right format.   We also had to shoot the preview and the opener, plus edit and add graphics. We even contacted another Yale student, Alex Vourtsanis (2014) to compose an original piece to play with our opener everytime our broadcast is starting. It’s really, really cool.
HC: Well Maddie, this is awesome! Thanks so much and we look forward to seeing the first broadcast this Sunday!
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I also contacted some of the other Yale students responsible for spearheading such an incredible project, and here is what they have to say:
Charlie Kelly: YTV is exciting! It adds a new voice– a sleek, sexy, TV voice– to an old and incredibly successful campus newspaper. I wouldn’t have guessed that the formidable Yale Daily News could be improved after delivering 135 years of powerhouse coverage, but I think we might have done it!
Raleigh Cavero: Yale is behind the times–TV’s been around for 60+ years, and our campus doesn’t have an outlet for students interested in this prominent industry. YTV is filling that void. We took the Multimedia section of the YDN and turned it into Yale’s first weekly TV news broadcast. Not only will our broadcast be a new, accesible medium for weekly news, but Yalies can now learn and grow in a field previously unrepresented at Yale. We started with myself, Danielle Trubow, and Lilly Fast, and then brought on Maddie and Charlie Kelly. It’s been quite a ride, but it’s a dream that we’re finally here launching this.
Be sure to watch the preview and tune in on Sunday at 5:00 pm for the first broadcast at http://yaledailynews.com/ytv/ .