First, let’s state the obvious: We can all agree that U.Va. alumna Melissa Stark is gorgeous.
But that’s not why the NFL Network sought her out to host a pre-game show, and is reportedly looking for ways to expand her presence on its network. Stark knows football, and she is a thoroughly professional broadcaster. Her looks may catch your eye, but her knowledge keeps you tuned in.
And she’s doing it all while focusing on raising her children.
You really don’t need an explanation for this. Just click on the video above. Make sure you have a tissue handy.
(If you do want more of an explanation, the Law School folks wrote one.)
Politics professor Larry Sabato is pretty adept at finding the limelight, and he’s equally generous in sharing it; he shares credit for much of his work with his colleagues at U.Va.’s Center for Politics, and they are quoted almost as often as he is in media reports.
Now, it seems, he is training a new generation.
Undergraduate students in Sabato’s extremely popular American politics class entered and won the “Good Morning Challenge,” a daily video submission contest held by the MSNBC news show, “The Daily Rundown.” The program invites people to submit videos of themselves introducing the program, and chooses the best one each day to air nationwide.
This morning, MSNBC viewers were greeted with this video:
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Here’s what they said: “Good morning from the University of Virginia! Wahoo-wah! It is Thursday, February 21, 2013, and this is ‘The Daily Rundown.’ Now here’s Chuck Todd.”
And yes, Cavman made a cameo.
Come Friday morning, you may notice a rather brightly colored bus parked on the plaza outside Clark Hall. In fact, it would be hard not to notice the bus pictured above, no?
According to an announcement from the public affairs network, the bus is on tour to promote a new series about U.S. presidents’ wives, from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama. “First Ladies: Influence and Image” began Monday, but if you missed the debut, don’t worry — C-SPAN plans to profile every single First Lady, so there is probably a whole lot more to come.
According to the release, the bus is visiting “key historic places in the first ladies’ lives, from hometowns to universities to presidential libraries.” Thus, it will be at Clark from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., then will move on to Monticello from 2 to 5 p.m.
Visitors will be invited aboard the bus, where they will learn about C-SPAN and its offerings through interactive technology, according to the release.
BackStory‘s “American History Guys” are in Washington this weekend for a live show, to begin Saturday at 11 a.m., on “Inaugurations in American History” at the National Museum of American History. The public radio program is being cablecast and webcast by C-SPAN3′s American History TV and also being covered by Voice of America Television News.
But the media coverage does not stop there: CNN has now scheduled three live, nationally broadcast interviews with BackStory’s hosts, Peter Onuf, Ed Ayers and Brian Balogh.
All three BackStory hosts will be interviewed on presidential history and inaugurations by CNN’s Kate Bolduan and John Berman Saturday between 4 and 5 p.m.
Bolduan and Berman will also interview Ayers on the symbolism and use of the Bible during presidential inaugurations, during the 5 o’clock hour on Sunday. And between 7 and 8 p.m. that same evening, the Guys will pick up on the history of presidencies and inaugurations during another live broadcast from the National Mall with CNN hosts John King and Erin Burnett .
Public radio’s contemporary take on American history, “BackStory with the American History Guys” is a national, weekly one-hour show and podcast that is a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. All three hosts have their roots in U.Va.’s Corcoran Department of History; Balogh remains on the faculty, Onuf recently retired, and Ayers has gone on to become president of the University of Richmond.
U.Va. Architecture School professor Edward Ford’s house has been the topic of conversation in Charlottesville since he and his family moved in in 2001. Cars often stop in the middle of Farish Street to gaze at the bright green and orange steel on the façade that is part of the home’s structure. Others knock on the door and he invites them in for a tour.
The house is a mechanism for understanding Ford’s expertise — the architectural detail and design. He wrote about the house in his book, “Five Houses, Ten Details,” published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2009. The author of four books, Ford also writes extensively about architecture on his website.
Now you can get an inside look into the house and Ford’s motivation for designing a home that reveals at every turn how the building was constructed on House and Garden Television’s “Extreme Homes“ show tonight at 9. In Charlottesville, HGTV airs on Comcast Cable on channel 61, on Dish Network on channel 112 and DirectTV on channel 229.
The University of Virginia is chock full of remarkable students. They’re bright, they’re energetic, they’re idealistic, they’re motivated … They amaze us every day.
Kasey Crute is one of those students. Even as a first-year, she signed up to go to Panama during Spring Break for a service trip. But that’s where her capable, energetic future hit a hard reality: Swimming in a local watering hole, she dove into shallow water, hit her head on the bottom and ended up paralyzed from the chest down.
So how did the self-assured Crute cope with her new reality? We’ll let the Charlottesville Newsplex pick it up from here:
It’s hard to believe that nearly three years have gone by since Oct. 17, 2009, when Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington wandered away from the John Paul Jones Arena during a Metallica concert and toward the railroad bridge on Alderman Road … and then disappeared into the night.
Her body was found months later in a field on an Albemarle County farm, but the person responsible for leaving her there has never been identified and may still walk among us.
The case has been linked forensically to a 2005 abduction and sexual assault in Fairfax. The victim in that case provided a description that led to the sketch that appears at right.
The Harrington case will be featured Friday at 10 p.m. on “America’s Most Wanted,” which now airs on the Lifetime cable network.
A Virginia State Police press release announcing the broadcast adds the following:
Anyone wishing to provide information in the Morgan Harrington case is encouraged to call the Jefferson Area Crime Stoppers at (434) 977-4000 or Virginia State Police at (434) 352-3467 or email State Police.
A reward of $150,041 is still available for anyone with information that leads to a resolution of the Harrington crime. Additional information is available on the FBI Website.
Earlier this week, UVA Today posted a story previewing the 25th anniversary Virginia Film Festival, which runs Nov. 1 through 4.
If you want to learn more about the festival and its history, you can catch a half-hour television special produced by the Charlottesville Newsplex in cooperation with the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Publicist John Kelly reports the show features an interview with festival director Jody Kielbasa, as well as “a look back at our history, featuring interviews with key players like VFF co-founder (and former Virginia Governor) Gerald Baliles; former VFF Director Bob Gazzale (now head of the American Film Institute); Academy Award-winning producer and VFF Advisory Board Chair Mark Johnson; U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan; Meredith Woo, the Buckner W. Clay Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences; and Rita McClenny, head of the Virginia Film Office and the interim director of the Virginia Tourism Office.
“The show also features footage from Tuesday’s launch event, and a segment on things to do in Charlottesville.”
Dates and times after the break …
The city of Charlottesville is producing a monthly online video series, “Celebrate 250,” hosted by Ric Barrick. The program looks at various elements of the city’s 250th anniversary celebration, and this month’s episode includes lots of content related to the University of Virginia.
If you’ve got a spare 27:48, check it out:
Celebrate 250 This Month – September from City of Charlottesville on Vimeo.
Let’s see, we’ve suggested that you vote for U.Va. as a top tailgate school, for Super Bowl commercials produced by alumni … lotsa stuff.
Here’s another one. I will let the email from a producer at NBC’s “Today” show explain:
I’m writing because I work with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb on the 4th hour of Today. I thought you might want to know about a competition we’re holding to get Kathie and Hoda to broadcast live from a college campus during the first week of October. … Basically this week we’re asking students to tweet us and whichever Universities tweet the most will be in the running for the visit. Next week, our correspondent, Sara Haines will visit the top 5 schools and broadcast live from one each day.
One interesting twist: Hoda Kotb is a Hokie. It would be sweet to force her to have to broadcast from the Grounds of Mr. Jefferson’s University, wouldn’t it?
Tweet from your account including a mention of U.Va. and the hashtag #KLGandHodaU. Send pictures and videos if you like. DEADLINE: Sept. 16 at 9 a.m.
Here’s the link with more explanation.
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Every year, we at UVA Today look forward to the “NBC Nightly News” recap of graduation ceremonies from across the country (video above; please note that we do not choose the commercials that run before the video clip). This year’s online package includes eight interviews with Class of 2012 graduates — and four interviewees are from U.Va.: twins Mary and Maggie Cearley, Marcus Hall (who was profiled as part of our graduation series), Mary Shafer and Matt Jungclaus.
U.Va. professor Daniel Cox has long studied how various conditions, including diabetes and ADHD, affect young drivers. Last night, he was interviewed for the “NBC Nightly News.”
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HBO’s acclaimed “Hard Knocks” series, which goes behind the scenes with a pro football team each year, is all the rage in sports TV circles. Giving fans an insiders’ glimpse into their favorite teams builds interest in the team and probably helps sell tickets. On the college level, it probably doesn’t hurt recruiting, either. The U.Va. football team even participated in something similar a couple of years ago.
So it’s not surprising that the defending national champion U.Va. men’s lacrosse will get its turn in the spotlight Tuesday and Wednesday with “There and Back,” a two-part series airing on ESPNU. Both 30-minute segments will air at 6:30 p.m., and will be repeated periodically on ESPNU during the upcoming NCAA Tournament.
Behind the project is producer and director Jay Jalbert, a former Cavalier lacrosse star. His family-owned Jalbert Productions joined forces with Little Brother of War Entertainment, described in a press release as “an entity dedicated to revealing the sport of lacrosse at its core,” to produce the show. (View the three-minute trailer here.)
“Cameras followed the Virginia men’s lacrosse program periodically throughout this season and the show will provide an in-depth look into what life is like as a student-athlete at the University of Virginia and within the men’s lacrosse program,” the press release says. “Highlighted by in-depth interviews with Starsia and a personal look into his life, filming included exclusive interviews with coaches, student-athletes and staff members, who shared their perspective and role within the UVa men’s lacrosse program.”
“BackStory with the American History Guys,” a public radio history show produced by the U.Va.-based Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, is blowing up, as the kids say.
On Saturday, “BackStory” took its show on the road, broadcasting from the annual conference of the Organization of American Historians and the National Council on Public History, held at Milwaukee’s Frontier Airlines Convention Center. The show was simulcast by C-SPAN3, American History TV (an edited version is available on C-SPAN) and will soon be posted on U.Va.’s YouTube channel.
“BackStory’s” road show focused on alcohol in American history. The live program showcased the three “guys” – renowned historians Peter Onuf and Brian Balogh from U.Va. and their former colleague, Ed Ayers, now president of the University of Richmond – exercising their inimitable insight and wit, complemented by some intoxicating extras, including an interview and historically oriented beer tasting with Lucy Saunders, a Milwaukee radio personality and author of ”Grilling with Beer.”
The road trip took place just three weeks before VFH – with major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities – launches ”BackStory” as a national public radio weekly show on May 11. The program is currently produced on a monthly basis.
You are invited to email ideas for new BackStory episodes to backstory@virginia.edu.
