Award-winning Beach TV News serves as diverse pipeline from Ӱ to the industry
It’s 9 a.m. on the Monday after Thanksgiving break, and TA-33 in the basement of the Ӱ Theatre Arts building is busy. The darkened room is filled with TV monitors, cameras and computers, and the student staff of is preparing for its final broadcast of fall semester 2024.
Behind the cameras, journalism assistant professor Jesús Ayala delivers the countdown: “And 3-2-1!”
“Coming up on Beach TV News,” says anchor Liz Hanna. She provides teasers on President-elect Trump’s plans for mass deportations, the intensifying war in Ukraine, and the new Tiana’s Bayou Adventure ride at Disneyland.
“Welcome to this edition of Beach TV News. I’m Liz Hanna.”
“And I’m Enrique Rodriguez,” says her co-anchor. “Beach TV News is brought to you by the broadcast journalism students at Cal State Long Beach.”
The students in Journalism 482 have made quite a splash recently, winning some of this year’s top collegiate journalism awards in the country.
BTVN won a coveted Broadcast Pacemaker award, first-place honors for best broadcast news story and broadcast story of the year, as well as second place for best sports story and third place for broadcast news story from the Associated College Press.
And from the Collegiate Media Association, BTVN won TV station of the year, first place for best news video and second place for best feature documentary.
Not bad for a collegiate TV station that’s technically only 2 years old.
The Pacemaker award is widely considered the Pulitzer Prize of collegiate journalism, according to Ayala, who joined the in August 2022, and transformed the previous Campus Connections into Beach TV News. The new program emphasizes breaking news, with national, international and local stories; entertainment and sports, with professional-level production values and similarly high expectations of the students.
“It’s a testament to all the work that all these students have put in, into a production like this,” said Jerry Reynoso, BTVN executive producer and a fourth-year journalism student. “It definitely feels assuring to me being a part of this program, knowing that those accolades are being received.”
Reynoso, who plans to graduate in May 2025, has already secured an internship at ESPN in the downtown L.A. Live complex. “For me, as a Cal State student, I’m in the right place if I want to pursue something like this for my future.”
Hanna, who is also graduating in journalism in May, worked as an intern at CNN in Atlanta last summer and has been in talks to continue working for the Cable News Network after she graduates.
“I don’t know that I could have done everything I was able to do out of the gate without training I had gotten through Beach TV News,” said Hanna, who returned to college after raising children and a career in the medical industry.
“It (the recognition) seems kind of surreal, and at the same time, it motivates you to work even harder to keep up that reputation, and to keep exceeding those standards that got us there in the first place.”
‘Diversifying pipelines’
Beach TV News and other collegiate broadcast programs like it are serving an important function in American news media. They are providing a diverse pipeline in a field that is actually becoming less diverse over time.
In fact, the minority workforce in TV news dropped 4 percentage points from 2023 to 2024, according to a recent survey conducted by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. While the overall minority population in the U.S. has been steadily increasing, up to 41.1% in 2024, the minority TV news workforce dipped from 29.6% in 2023 to 25.7% in 2024.
In 2024, 74.3% of the TV news workforce is white, according to the survey, while all other categories – including women – have seen declines (except for Native Americans, which remained the same at 0.7%).
“Yet at BTVN, 100% of the students enrolled in JOUR 482 in fall 2024 are students of color,” Ayala remarked. “In order to diversify TV newsrooms, we need to diversify newsroom pipelines. This is what makes BTVN special.”
For Enrique Rodriguez, also a fourth-year journalism major, Beach TV News has opened an unexpected door to what could be a solid career. “I didn’t think of broadcast journalism as a choice at first,” said Rodriguez, who thought he might pursue a career in print. “When I met Jesús Ayala, he told me things about broadcast journalism, what I could do, and so I tried it out, and now look at me. I’ve got a lot of success here on Beach TV News. It’s kind of an amazing experience. I’ve done a lot of packages here, like a package on women’s basketball. I was a little nervous at first, but as time went on, I discovered that this is something I can do.”
Reynoso, a first-generation college student, said BTVN and Ayala have given him the skills and confidence to pursue a future in broadcast news, particularly sports.
“I arrived here at Cal State Long Beach at the best time,” he said. “Being at the right place, at the right time, I count my blessings. I continue to work on the assets I already have and work on new ones.”
Rodriguez also believes the skills and experience he’s acquiring through BTVN will help him after graduation.
“The way that I’m able to learn how to be on the camera and how to be behind the camera, and how to use it, it’s been really useful,” he said. “And that’s something I can definitely take to the future.”
