He Works to Get the Word Out: Interview with Paul Lancaster

Paul Lancaster has worked at Virginia Tech for over 20 years as broadcast media coordinator for University Relations.

Lancaster has a long history of involvement with journalism and broadcasting.  He started writing for his hometown newspaper when he was 14 and went on to graduate from Washington and Lee University with a degree in journalism.  He worked at WDBJ 7 for 11 years before coming to Virginia Tech.

His work at Virginia Tech has helped the university build an extensive body of work related to a variety of visual and broadcast media.  In 2006 he received one of five President's Awards for Excellence for his contributions.

Beginning in 2006, Lancaster has been responsible for the Virginia Tech Podcast program along with Gabrielle Minnich, the producer/director for visual and broadcast communications at Virginia Tech, and several student podcasters.  

Lancaster sat down recently to talk with Planet Blacksburg and share some of his experiences and accomplishments, focusing on the award-winning Virginia Tech Podcast program.

Q: Could you explain some of the visual and broadcast media that you are involved with in your job, such as news and radio programs?
Lancaster: Part of the old Virginia Tech Land Grant university ideal is to get information out to people and radio has long been a part of that.  We were broadcasting from Virginia Tech back in the 1930s.  That kind of got that tradition of using radio started.  The radio programming that we do is we send out little news features about things going on at Tech; it’s getting the information out.  It’s nice to have all this knowledge, but it doesn’t do you any good unless you share it.  We also produce all the video for the university, everything from recruiting videos to the halftime football spot.  Then one of my other jobs is to try to work with national and state media.  Generally we’ll work with CNN coming in to do this story or CBS or NBC can come in to do a story [about the university] and just try to help coordinate, you know, make it easier for them to find their way around campus and find the right people to talk to.

Q: You have made many contributions to the university during your time here. What about your work are you the most proud of?
Lancaster: We’ve produced a ton of stuff out of this very small operation.  We are by far, I think, the most prolific broadcast operation of any of the universities in the state.  And the part of that I’m proud of is that outreach idea, that we’re getting information out to people for them to use.

Q: So one of the ways that the university gets that information out for people to use is through the Virginia Tech Podcast program?
Lancaster: I’m still getting used to calling it podcasting because essentially it’s an audio clip. It doesn’t have to be on an iPod or MP3 player.

Q: What types of podcasts are available for those who might be interested?
Lancaster: We do the student one [HokieCast], we do one called VT PodNews which runs on Wednesdays and is more of a faculty/staff kind of one.  Then the other one we do weekly is called a Touch of Tech.  It’s just basically two little blurbs about interesting things going on research wise.  In the middle of the page we run stuff going on now [Special Features].

Q: And it’s true that even hokiesports.com is involved with podcasting for things like game previews and exclusive interviews?
Lancaster: The nice thing about this is that we can focus on the academic side and they take care of their own on the sports side.  Occasionally we’ll trade some stuff but it just offers another opportunity.

Q: So it seems like there is a little something for everyone. … And basically anyone can go to the Virginia Tech podcasting website [www.podcasts.vt.edu] and listen to a podcast or download them to their MP3 players?
Lancaster: If you go through iTunes you can subscribe so that it is sent to your own desktop.  Folks have done the stuff with iTunes so that people can search “HokieCast.”  It comes up and then there’s a button there saying “subscribe” and it will automatically download that to your computer or your iPod every week, so if you can get people signed up, it is automatic.

Q: What are some of the ways that students could get more involved with podcasting?
Lancaster: Any student could do their own podcast.  We [Virginia Tech] may not be the ones sponsoring, but at least they have the opportunity.  Kevin Cupp [runs the HokieCast podcast] and our first student podcaster, Kevin Sterne, have done a great job as far as the student podcasting.  But come the end of spring semester we’ll be looking at recruiting somebody for the next year so there will be opportunities for others [to do their own podcasts].

Q: iPods and podcasting programs are still relatively new technologies. How did Virginia Tech get started with its podcasting program?
Lancaster: We started in February of 2006.  We did this whole change of our motto to “Invent the Future” and that sort of thing, so part of this was to try to be a little bit more futuristic in the way we approached things.  Part of that was to do more podcasting.

Q: So podcasts are a good way for students who are constantly on-the-go to stay on top of news and events going on around the university? 
Lancaster: If they’re on the bus going to their next class they can at least put their headphones on and listen and see what’s going on.

Q: Podcasts are also a way to help to keep the Virginia Tech community informed …
Lancaster: We did a lot of podcasting after April 16th.  We did all the news conferences and basically took all the presentations during the news conferences, you know the [Virginia] State Police Superintendent, Larry Hincker, Dr. Steger.  [We] cut them down to the presentations and posted them on the whole website so that people could hear the presentations unfiltered by the media.  So we did 20 or 30, I think, podcasts during those first couple of weeks, just kind of the different things going on.  We podcasted different parts of the convocation, Nikki [Giovanni]’s poem, some of the other speeches that were made.

Q: Do you know of any other colleges or universities that are currently involved in podcasting?
Lancaster: There are a few which do it.  I don’t know that there are any doing it to the extent that we do.  I don’t know anybody that does the weekly stuff that we do – the updating so constantly.

Q: Any idea as to how many people are currently downloading or subscribing to Virginia Tech podcasts?
Lancaster: Somebody somewhere is tracking numbers but I’m not the person who does it and I just enjoy doing them and it’s a fun part of my job.  If there were one person listening I’d be happy, but it’s hard to say.  In fact, one of the issues that we do have to deal with is every so often you need to tell people again that these things are out there [podcasts] because with the flood of stuff that comes in on your computer every day, it’s real hard, something kind of slips by the wayside.
           
Q: What does the future hold for Virginia Tech podcasts?
Lancaster: For podcasting, one of our goals is to expand beyond what we are doing now.  You know right now it’s basically Gabrielle [Minnich] and I who do most of the work along with the student [Kevin Cupp] who does that weekly student one [HokieCast]  What I want to do next is, each college has an information officer and then there’s other information people for outreach and research and some other things and I’d like to get them trained where they can take that [a recording device], go to a lecture that they’re interested in giving a little more promotion to and tape it.  There’s free software to download to edit and they can post their own [podcasts] on their individual college websites.  You know you hear about these lectures that “boy I wish I could’ve gotten to that” and well, you maybe didn’t get to it but you can listen to it.  And another thing is as we get more podcasts in the archives we’re going to find folks who are interested in particular issues and they go to www.vt.edu and do a search.  They’ve got another source to listen to for the kind of information they’re trying to get.  Somebody in the future will maybe want to find some information - you go to the search mechanism and something will pop up.  The other thing that I think people are figuring out about the web is that it is an archival service, it’s a library.  And actually we do work with special collections on certain audio projects doing oral histories and interviews.  That’s another option for them too, to link right to podcasts.

Q: In closing, if you could offer one piece of advice to the students at Virginia Tech when it comes to the importance of the roles of these technologies in their lives, what would it be?
Lancaster: I think for students the dilemma is trying to find a way to find out what’s going on that doesn’t interfere with how they live.  If you can subscribe, you get the weekly HokieCast and then whenever you plug in your iPod or other MP3 device and download it, it’s there.  You can listen to it on the bus coming in or going home or just skateboarding down the street.  It’s a way of us trying to offer students another option for finding out what’s going on around here. Websites are fine, printed material is fine, but students need more options these days and this is a way to offer it to them.