Ask the expert

Today, our class had the privilege of hosting Melody Alexander, who is employed by KU’s marketing department. Melody has had a lot of experience working in a variety of different medias and currently works as an assistant creative manager. As someone who regularly oversees the creation of multimedia packages, she was an excellent guest lecturer in our class.

Melody’s presentation focused on the planning aspect of multimedia storytelling. She described the process of how stories are found, and then how their multimedia potential is assessed. I found it interesting to hear Melody talk about the annual Chancellor’s Report. Many stories that would be front-page news/features are limited to a mere bullet point in favor of other, better stories. Melody said that they find content through their liaisons in various academic departments, or, as she referred to them, “communicators.”

Finding stories for our own use will be much more difficult. Our school is much smaller than KU, so there’s less going on on campus at any given time. Further, since our class consists only of communications majors, we don’t have a lot of perspective from other departments. This is where networking becomes important: Reaching out to friends in other majors for ideas.

The only thing that I really found lacking in Melody’s presentation was that it focused only on planning the package. I would have enjoyed tapping into Melody’s knowledge about the process of putting together this type of package a bit more. However, as the project manager, she probably knows little about the individual processes of the videographers and photographers.

Overall, I think that Melody has a fantastic job. Marketing is often overlooked as a possible source of employment for a journalism student, but it is a very nice environment for a community-minded journalist. I definitely would enjoy working in this type of setting with this type of content. I’m proud of Olivet, and would love the opportunity to share that love.

TH