Mass communication junior Allison Kadlubar received recognition in the Television Features Competition of the 2020-2021 Hearst Journalism Awards Program and placed among the top 20 winners in the national competition between 60 universities.
The competition required participants to submit two stories in order to compete, Kadlubar said. She said she appreciated the opportunity to have more than one of her stories receive recognition.
“I do put in a lot of hard work as a broadcast journalist,” Kadlubar said. “To know all that hard work and those techniques and the details I was applying was working. I was being noticed, and it was very nice.”
Kadlubar’s Tiger TV adviser, Cindy Carter, submitted two of her stories for the competition, Kadlubar said. One of her stories focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the casino industry in Louisiana. The other story focused on how the pandemic and the 2020 election had an impact on Louisiana’s housing markets.
Prior to her story on Louisiana’s casino industry in April, Kadlubar said she observed how the casinos were closed for a long period of time due to the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. She also noticed that nobody seemed to be talking about this despite the casinos’ importance to Lake Charles’ economy.
“No eyes were really drawn on the casinos at that time,” said Kadlubar. “I was like, ‘they’ve been closed for a month,’ and nobody’s really paid attention.”
Kadlubar said she has a specific process for how she chooses the news stories that she covers: choosing stories that have an impact on the community that people don’t seem to be paying enough attention to.
For her housing market story, she interviewed six people so she could build up her knowledge on interest rates and other economic aspects of the housing market. Kadlubar said it takes around one to two weeks to complete a story.
She said it can be challenging to learn about these vast and complex issues within a reasonable time span. However, she said she embraces these challenges as she loves learning about the specific details of stories that she works on.
“That is what I love as a journalist. I love to learn,” said Kadlubar. “This story motivated me to be well versed in it, and I was able to put it in terms that my audience can understand.”
The biggest challenge to her work, Kadlubar said, is the process of learning about complex topics, conducting interviews and then having to present it in a way that is concise and entertaining enough to her audience so they will listen to the entire story.
“It’s definitely challenging, but I love the challenge,” said Kadlubar. “I love the creative details that can draw a viewer in.”
She said she focuses on making sure that her audience not only knows about her news stories, but she wants to ensure they know just how much of an impact that these stories have on the entire community.
“All these stories affect the community,” said Kadlubar. “So, if you can really draw your community in to where they know it’s affecting them and where they are going to care about it and understand it, I think that I did my job as a journalist.”
Kadlubar said LSU has been a great tool for her and her ambitions in media. She said the Manship School of Mass Communication has taught her many great skills, and Tiger TV gives her the opportunity to practice those very skills.
“I applied it through Tiger TV, but I learned it in the classroom,” said Kadlubar.
Kadlubar said it is essential to pay special attention to all of the details of one’s story, as paying attention to all aspects of the story demonstrates you care about the story which the end result will clearly reflect.
“It will be more meaningful to you and more meaningful to your community,” said Kadlubar.
Kadlubar said receiving this award makes her confident she is doing her job correctly, and she is going to continue to work hard to produce stories that will benefit her community.
“I am not going to stop here,” Kadlubar said. “I am going to keep doing stories to shine light on my community and do what I love.”
