Syracuse University Students Return to Cover 2024 Empire State Winter Games
Students from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School for Public Communications are covering the 2024 Empire State Winter Games, marking the third year of a program designed to help them gain real-world experience in sports journalism.
Nearly two dozen journalism, photography and public relations students will capture photos, video and audio at the 44th Empire State Winter Games sponsored by Community Bank N.A. in Lake Placid, N.Y. from Feb. 1-4.
Over the four-day period, students will capture the action from the games and post their work on this website specially designed by their advisor. The Empire State Winter Games hosts about 2,000 competitors in more than 30 sports. It is the largest multi-sport amateur athletic winter sporting event in North America. The program is being funded through the Newhouse Sports Media Center.
At the Games, graduate and undergraduate students will photograph multiple events each day at various venues including Whiteface Mountain, Olympic Center and Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Run.
“Doing an assignment for a class once a week is different than doing it all day for four days,” said advisor Seth Gitner, a Newhouse School associate professor in magazine, news, digital journalism and visual communications.. “There were lots of opportunities for students to get outside their comfort zone to photograph lots and lots of different types of assignments.”
Working with fellow faculty advisor Jon Glass, students captioned and uploaded photos that were posted to this website on a daily basis.
“We wanted to create a newsroom environment where students were working as photojournalists to deliver their work on deadline,” said Glass, a professor of practice for magazine, news and digital journalism.
“This class is an opportunity for students to be published and also get assignments from real-world publications,” Gitner said. “We really want the student to be published in some form — like a website or newspaper.”
