DeWired: AUBG’s Newest Student-Led Digital Broadcasting Platform

Student voices are taking center stage at AUBG with the launch of DeWired. DeWired is a new digital broadcasting platform course  managed by students and supervised by JMC Department co-chair, Darina Sarelska. The co-chair of the JMC Department at AUBG, Darina Sarelska being the instructor of the course. DeWired is a student media created by the students taking a new JMC course called TV Studio: Producing News and Talk. The name was invented by Professor Sarelska’s students.  

 

“I have been wanting  to offer my students the ultimate experience of producing a show,” says Prof. Sarelska. “The technical constraints were a problem for a long time, because our class does not have a functioning TV studio, which is necessary for this process, but we work around it. We are trying and we are managing.”

 

There are currently twelve students enrolled in the course. According to Prof. Sarelska, the smaller the number, the more practical the course is.

 

“The first two weeks of the course were mostly orientation,” says Prof. Sarelska. After this, they started developing story ideas, involving a great deal of interaction and engagement with sources and interview subjects. 

 

The students in the course also received different job descriptions because the professor wanted to apply them to the work of real-life news production. Prof. Sarelska assigned the students roles of producers, videographers, video editors, reporters, social media managers, production directors, and anchors. Regarding each and every student’s interest and experience, they were instructed to apply for the roles that they desired, just like a real-life life job interview. 

Examples of future topics Prof. Sarelska and her students plan to work on feature general university news, finding off-campus housing in Blagoevgrad for students, as well as local and global politics.

 

Prof. Sarelska describes DeWired as a real-life news broadcasting educational simulation, with the exception of being accustomed to accommodate the busy schedules of students outside the course.  “It is a very demanding and active class, but I can see the students learning, and you can see their improvements from the first draft to the final draft. I think it’s amazing,” she says.  

 

Ivalyo Kotsev, a fourth-year student, and the show producer of DeWired AUBG, is in charge of reviewing and producing video production for the class. 

 

The idea of DeWired was inspired by a suggestion Ivaylo made in a course evaluation from a previous production class taught by Prof. Sarelska, which sparked the concept for this course. 

“The grade that we get is basically the same grade for everybody in DeWired. Based on the overall show performance, we earn this grade for every single student in the class. It is a big team effort, so all 12 members have to provide for one single product that is going to be judged by the professor,” Ivaylo says.

He defines his role as a show producer as a demanding one, centered on supporting his colleagues through reviewing and advising their work. “I am distributing tasks, but I am not acting bossy to everybody,.” Ivaylo says. “I have to help them if something goes wrong, because at the end of the day, if the show goes wrong, the producer is the one responsible for a bad show.” 

 

All of the published content for DeWired can be found on YouTube and Instagram. 

 

 

Edited by David Mitov and Vasil Paskov