Let's Talk UNLV

0:00:00
Alright, well welcome to another segment of Let's Talk UNRV on KUNV with co-host Keith and Renee. Renee, how was your weekend?

0:00:13
So again, weekend was pretty chill, enjoying the weather, doing the chores, and preparing for my girlfriend to come in. So you know you got to get everything, you know, all lined up right.

0:00:24
You know what I mean?

0:00:25
Yeah, you got to step your game up.

0:00:26
Right, you got to make sure the refrigerator is stocked. You got to make sure the house is clean. You got to make sure that you buy the flowers. You got to get that impression. So that was kind of the bulk of my weekend. What about yours?

0:00:40
Well speaking of people coming in town, my sister's 65th birthday celebration.

0:00:45
Oh okay.

0:00:46
And we had like 40 family members come in from the Midwest and other parts of the country, some of her college friends. And so the whole weekend was about her 60th birthday. She hit me if I said 65. So 60th birthday sister. But we spent the whole weekend, you know, we had entertainment game night on Friday. Then Saturday was sort of her celebration. And then Sunday was brunch.

0:01:09
And you know, it was just a whole weekend.

0:01:11
You had a whole itinerary.

0:01:12
Oh yes. We had, you know, you know, when you go back into where family people sleeping on the floor on the sofa You walking through the house tripping over people. So it was you didn't know who was at your house spending the night

0:01:22
So it was one of those weekends, but it was phenomenal great experience I was a great going to the kitchen at two backs and everything. Yeah, you look at these kids like You at the right house But it was it was a great great great weekend great food and you know, you hate to see family leave. You know, you don't realize how much you miss family

0:01:41
until they come visit and depart.

0:01:43
And then knowing that two years ago, we couldn't do that.

0:01:45
Yes, and many of us hadn't seen one another.

0:01:47
Right, right.

0:01:48
You know, since before the pandemic. So it was a great, great weekend. But anywho, today I'm excited with our guest today. We have Benjamin Morris, who's a visiting lecturer. He's our director of the Rebel Media Group. Benjamin, welcome to the podcast.

0:02:02
Hey, thank you guys so much for having me and thanks for letting me listen in to hear about your crazy weekend.

0:02:09
Hey, could you maybe just share for our listeners just a little bit about your background, how you got into the profession, and then ultimately how you end up transitioning to the current role that you're in at UNLV?

0:02:20
Yeah, absolutely. Prior to working at UNLV, I started in 2018. Prior to this, I was working at Marvel Entertainment for 10 years prior to that. So from 2007 to 2017, basically I graduated from college with an English degree, focused on journalism, and wanted to work in the comic book industry. And I made that happen for about 12 or 13 years. I was at last count at Marvel, the editorial director of digital media. So basically I got hired in 2007 to run the website and then the year after I started was the year that the Iron Man movie came out. So the company kind of completely changed from a comic book company to a full-on entertainment brand. And over those 10 years, I got to grow with the company, with my role, and I got to cover everything having to do with any sort of digital media marketing, digital media content. I was running social media, I was preparing podcasts, running the YouTube stream, I was even on air talent when we would do streaming shows at conventions. I moved to Las Vegas, end of 2017, started up at UNLV beginning of 2018. Basically was looking for something different to do, like I said, I was at Marvel for 10 years, so I was looking for a new challenge and made some inquiries around Las Vegas because this is where my wife's family is from, so we were moving to be closer to them, particularly because we had a child right around that time. So I looked into some different job opportunities and was approached by the journalism school at UNLV, curious if I would be interested in taking kind of the most practical knowledge gained from my own experiences and using that to teach social media classes. And that's what I've been doing for the past four years. I've been teaching social media, podcasting, some marketing, some PR, and it's been a really good time. It's been a really cool kind of a second act for me.

0:04:18
So talk to us, what kind of assignments do you give your students that you teach at UNLV?

0:04:23
Oh, for the digital media class, the highly discussion-based class. So I will be very on top of sending them out new stories of things that are going on in the world of digital and social media. And then we come to class and there's both an online discussion component and then also an in-class discussion component. So it's all about class participation when it comes to the digital and social media class. And then my podcasting class is an interesting mix of assignments. They have audio assignments, obviously. They do things like 30-second ad reads or 5-minute interviews with each other. And then they have a 30-minute podcast due at the end of the semester. But along the way in podcasting, I do a lot of, I call them guest lectures, but they're not structured like traditional guest lectures. I have people from the world of podcasting, basically come on either in person, mostly through WebEx. I've got a lot of people from LA and New York, some interesting folks from places like Marvel, places like ESPN, SiriusXM. And I kind of structure the class as an interview, because I think interviewing skills are kind of, as you guys know, what you need for a successful podcast. So I'll structure the class that it begins with me interviewing our guests and then I assign students, depending on the guest, to basically research and take over. So it's like they're doing a live podcast during the class with our guests and in the process we get to learn about the guests and also these guys get to sharpen their

0:05:53
interview skills. So if you could create a class assignment around Chris Rock and Will Smith and this whole fiasco, what would that look like?

0:06:04
I think I would want them to, because it's easy for, you know, to get on and talk to your friends about something like that. I would be curious like to kind of stretch their journalism skills and also to again, put their interview skills to the test. I would say find somebody with an interesting point of view on this incident. Like don't just give me five minutes of you guys talking about it, give me ten minutes of you guys finding, whether it's an expert or someone you think just has a unique take and kind of talk to them about that because a lot of what we do in the podcasting class is, and you guys know this, is that you can have, anyone can have a podcast. The key is how do you make yourself stand out and how do you make yourself kind of like get apart from the rest of the pack. So I think it'd be a cool podcasting assignment. For the digital media class, I would love for them to track basically the lifeline of the incident, specifically on something like Twitter. How long did it stay trending? How did the focus shift? Initially, it's just shock and reaction, but eventually we start getting some takes. I think I could do, either class would be great for that kind of assignment. And then if you could just maybe talk a little bit about some of the, some of your experience in Marvel and the skills that you further refined or honed that you brought with you to your role as a now faculty at the university. Yeah, I mean, yeah, when I started at Marvel, it was really, I was a writer. I had come from a magazine background. I had been a staff writer on a magazine called Wizard. I'd done some research assistant work, but mainly I was a writer. And prior to Marvel, that's kind of, I mean, I think I could have come in and potentially taught classes in journalism, just in terms of like using writing skills and refining that. But what I learned over 10 years at Marvel was how to market, how to interact in social media, how to practice public relations. You know, I was on the front lines of this incredible push for Marvel to grow from what was primarily a comic book company to suddenly having movies, TV shows, video games, toys, and that was all, that all fell under my responsibility to kind of get the word out about. I think I learned a lot about creating brand awareness, but then I also learned a lot about interacting with a customer base. So when I teach a digital and social media class, I cover the history of digital media. We talk about the different social platforms. But when it comes to something like Rebel Media Group, which I know we're going to talk about in a sec, I'm able to kind of say, like, all right, this is how I marketed a product and how I pivoted and how I approached things that I wasn't necessarily an expert in because I'm not a gamer. So promoting video games was challenging sometimes. The movie landscape was very different than the printed comic book. And just kind of like being able to pivot between those skills and being able to take any sort of product and market it in the digital space, I think that's what I bring to the table as an instructor at UNLV and hopefully as the supervisor of RMG as well. And could you just maybe educate us from maybe what you shared earlier, maybe expand on a little bit from your introduction, just what's the mission of the Rebel Media Group, and then secondly, how is helping prepare students for various careers in these different media platforms? Yeah, absolutely. When I came in in 2018, it was with the understanding, I was working with Dr. Kevin Stoker, who's the chair of the journalism department as well as the communications department, but at the time he was just my boss in the journalism department. And he kind of had a vision when he brought me in that, as we always describe it, for our students who wanted to go into radio, we have a student radio station. For our students who want to go into TV, we have a student TV station. There's a student newspaper. There's all these great places where they can kind of get experience and more importantly than anything else, get reps. Kind of doing the job before they actually step out of school and want to apply for a job. And what Dr. Stoker recognized and what I very much agreed with was social media is now a very vibrant and full-time job for a lot of people. When I was at Marvel in 2009 and social media was starting to take hold, we weren't hiring people to be our social media managers. It was more just me and the other people who were already working on the website. They said, try to wrap your head around social media and that's gonna be a new part of your job. That's not the case anymore. Now you can take classes in social media, which some of which I teach, some of which are taught by really incredible other people within the journalism and other departments. But you need to get that experience of actually not just running your own social media, but working on social media for a client or for a brand. So I think what Rebel Media Group provides is it's kind of a – I wouldn't say it's completely real world, but it's pretty real world. I mean we have real clients who are paying us real money for these students to come in and create content for their twitter their instagram their face book their linkedin and i would need the example of that we have a mortgage broker we represent news great at her job very successful but came to us expressing that you really have the driver the time to do our own social media so our students get us actually craft three times a week rain no i've been a reply of much and a yes but i don't know whatever the weather were posting out were posting content for her we're creating graphics we're doing videos were coming up with tax and they're using the tools they're going to get to use in the real world there they're using content management platforms that are favored by you know p r agencies and large brands here in vegas and outside the country they're using the same social media management tool that i use when i was at marvel uh... so they're getting to, I mean, my goal ultimately, and the goal of the program is for these guys to be able to step out of Rebel Media Group, have a portfolio, have a resume, and have this range of experiences where they can go to really any job in digital media and say, I know how to do this, I can show you that I've already been doing this, and then get hired from there. And we've had a lot of success stories. We have dozens of students over the past four years who have been able to get jobs in social media specifically and have credited their experiences in Rebel Media Group

0:12:28
with getting those positions. So how many students are part of the Rebel Media Group and then how do you select the students that make up the Rebel Media Group?

0:12:36
Right now I think we've got about 40 active students working in Rebel Media Group. That number has been as high as 60 at times. It's been as low as 20. It kind of ebbs and flows as I think is the nature of student organizations. We recruit heavily in the journalism school primarily, but we've expanded. We have comm students working for us. We have design students from the fine arts schools who come to do graphic internships with us. I would just added an English student who heard about us through her sister who was in one of the journalism classes. So we publicize, the Rebel Media Group is here and we'll take any student who's interested. And of course there is a screening process, there's an interview process, there's an onboarding progress process, but I do like to, you know, I want RevLeading Group, even though it grew out of the journalism school and it's something in large part for journalism students, it's something that's available to anyone on campus who just wants to get some experience working in social media. So we're definitely ongoing recruiting efforts through our own social media. We've done, you know, stories in UNLV today and stuff like that. But we use pretty much all the tools available to us to recruit students. We will go for it. And then if they come in and do it, the only thing I'll say is that there are paid positions and there are internship credit positions. In order to get to those positions in Rebel Media Group, you have to complete a successful period as a volunteer first. So that's kind of our screening process. I mean, I'll let anyone take a shot at Rebel Media Group, whether or not they continue on and move up the ladder is dependent kind of on their performance.

0:14:09
And if you could just maybe speak to what are some of the maybe soft skills that you're looking for for those who may reach out to you to start the process as a volunteer?

0:14:19
Yeah, absolutely. Writing is always important. If they have some knowledge of graphics, that's great. But if they don't, we encourage them to learn graphics. But in terms of the more soft skills, I think just the personality and temperament needed for this is very important because it's not just a matter of you sitting behind a computer and typing like you might do for an assignment or something for a class. This is very much a group endeavor. Each client has a team working for them, so you need to be able to work with other people, and that's something I try to assess when we're bringing somebody in. Are they going to be a good fit? Not just in terms of, you know, can they write, can they create a graphic, but are they going to be able to collaborate with other students? And also, what are their skills when it comes to client-facing stuff? If I have someone who's going to be a team lead, paid position for Rebel Media Group, then I have to be fully confident that this is someone I can bring into a meeting with a client or even have them reach out to a client on their own and be able to conduct themselves professionally and represent me well, because they're representing me, they're representing Rebel Media Group, they're representing the journalism school, and that's important, especially when we're working with clients. We want clients to be impressed by these guys, not only because we want them to get jobs, but also because it reflects on us as an organization.

0:15:38
And what's sort of the average time commitment per week in these various roles?

0:15:42
It's a few hours per week.

0:15:44
I mean, the thing is, like, if you're on a team, whether you're a volunteer, an intern, or a team lead, you are going to have a half-hour team meeting. We usually have most of our students on two teams, so that's an hour right there. But then the rest of the time, kind of like creating the content, going out and doing it, a couple hours a week for a volunteer. For interns and team leads, it's a little bit more. They can see anything from 10 to 15 hours a week. It depends also if they need to get a certain amount of hours for their internship. We work with them to make sure they do. And then, you know, our team leads are hustling. They're getting paid, so they're trying to work as much as possible. And we definitely encourage that. And, you know, we've got, I said we have 40 students earlier, they're all busy. I got plenty of work for anyone who wants to come and work for me. And yeah, that never stops somehow. The more students we get, we always find stuff for them to do.

0:16:38
So let's talk about your connection with the social media project with Let's Talk UNLV. How did that start and then how did it grow? And then what are you seeing now as a result of that partnership?

0:16:48
Yeah, no, this has been a great partnership for us so far. It was brought to the table by Ashton Ridley, who's the general manager over at KUNV. I know that you guys have a long-standing relationship with KUNV. Obviously you air on KUNV and had expressed some interest in help with social media. So what we did was we're very excited to work with Student Life and to work with this podcast. We had our students do an audit of where your social media was at. We presented it to you guys, said here's what we would do differently, and you guys seemed pretty receptive to some of the changes and suggestions that we had. And for the last few months, we've been making sure that several times a week you guys are getting new social media posts on all of your platforms. I think the word is getting out about the podcast. Hopefully it's been helpful. I know we've been able to add followers on all the accounts. But you know, that's really, adding followers is one thing. I think the success of word of mouth and just being able to increase the brand identity of the podcast has been kind of our goal and something we're still working towards. I've really been impressed with the students' work on this project. They've done some really cool outreach as far as not just highlighting guests and talking about episodes, but we do do that, but also talking about campus events, how you guys tie into it. I've really been impressed with the kind of biographical work they've done on your different guests and hopefully at the end of the day this is working for both sides of the partnership because I know on my end my students are getting great experience and enjoy working with you guys. I'm hoping on your end, you're seeing increased visibility for the show and more people talking about it and hopefully getting some interaction and just getting the word out about this cool thing that you guys are doing.

0:18:37
Yeah, so it was kinda cool. We had a consultant in town and I didn't know he was here. And he was over at Thomas and Mac and he sent me a text. He says, I'm sitting here listening to you. We've been working together, Renee, and I didn't know that you even had a podcast. And your personality, like, you know, shines through and through. So, you know, that was just like random. And so I, you know, to your credit, things are going well and the word is getting out. But I'm curious, what's been some of the experiences of the Rebel Media Group and now seeing this side of student life and all the events and all the ways that we're telling the story about UNLV and all that it has to offer.

0:19:17
It's been really cool.

0:19:18
This has been one of my favorite projects that we, and I'm not just saying that because I'm on your podcast right now, I swear. This has been one of my favorite projects we've worked on because it has been a chance for the students to know, I mean, I know we just did, we've promoted events that you guys are putting on as well as just the podcast, but you guys also, you speak to a lot of interesting people. And one of the goals that myself and Dr. Stoker and everyone who kind of steers Rebel Media Group has had from the start was not just to train our students in social media, but to create more of a sense of community here at UNLV, which I think aligns very well with what you guys are doing. I think you guys are trying to get the word out about events, about resources, and our students getting to be a part of that is really special and really exciting. I know that, you know, speaking to the students who work on the Let's Talk UNLV account, they'll come back and they'll be incredibly interested in, you know, a guest that you guys have on dealing with anything from, you know, different schools to managing resources in terms of mental health, just really valuable stuff that our students wouldn't have necessarily been exposed to. I think it's, I guess what I'm trying to say is I think it's a good two-way partnership. I think that hopefully you guys are, you're seeing the benefits of us helping you with the social media, but it's also really exposing a lot of our students. We have a pretty robust team for Let's Talk UNLV. I know that they've definitely grown and appreciated the experience so far.

0:20:44
Rene and I are very competitive, so we always talk about, you know, how do we improve the podcast? And I know you talked about some of the suggestions that you give your assignments that you give to your students in terms of progressively doing more with the podcast. I think the culminating was doing like a 30-minute podcast session. So what are some of the tips that you give to your students as they approach doing their 30-minute podcast?

0:21:09
I talk about making sure that this is a podcast you would want to listen to. And really like the big thing is I really I said it earlier today but I heart warm the fact that you know especially if you're doing when they do these assignments they're allowed to do whatever subject matter they want within reason. So we'll see a lot of you know sports podcast, movie podcast, but then some more unique things. We do I always say this is the first semester that I can remember that it wasn't some group of kids doing an astrology podcast, that always seems to happen. But you know, also stuff like just dealing with being a college student. And I encourage them to figure out before you start recording what gives you kind of a special way to talk about the subject matter. How can you present a view and an opinion that's different than anyone else? Like you guys specifically have knowledge and background that make you uniquely qualified to talk about life at UNLV. And I think that's been part of the success of your podcast. Not just anyone could do this podcast. And that's true of anyone hosting any podcast. And if you're hosting a podcast in such a way that it can be replicated by any number of other people, then you're not going to be successful. You need to carve out some unique space. And then, of course, there's the basic things, like make sure your sound is good, make sure that you don't have breaks in the action. I encourage them to outline their shows, not necessarily this is what we're going to be saying every second of the 30 minutes, but having bullet points and an understanding so there aren't any awkward pauses, there aren't any points where the conversation just ceases altogether. So it's really about finding your unique voice and then preparedness. Research and just storytelling at the end of the day. A lot of the stuff that we teach in the journalism department in general comes in handy on podcasting. How do you tell a story? How do you make it compelling? How do you make sure you're involving your audience? I think that would be the one last major point I encourage with them is when they're doing these 30-minute projects, even though it's going to be just a podcast played for their class, I say, how would you, and tying back to what Rebel Media Group does with Let's Talk UNLV, how would you get the word out about this? And how do you keep the conversation going in between episodes? It shouldn't be a thing where you just sit down to record a 30 minute episode, and then you kind of forget about it for the next week. You gotta be engaged in social media. You need to have a website. You need to be talking to your audience. That's how you build an audience, is make them feel like they're part of the show and part of the conversation, not just that they're listening to something that they can never have access to, if that makes sense. It does. And could you maybe speak a little bit to, like, departments that have an idea, oh, we're going to have our Facebook page or Twitter page or whatever the platform is, about the importance of having a presence and then to what you said, the sustainability of your presence and the constant attention that's required to be able to maintain that. I think it's hugely important that people working within the university and within any sort of college space are maintaining their social media presence because that's how they're going to be able to communicate with the greatest amount of students. I always talk about in my classes the fact that, you know, I graduated college in 2004 and to do networking, to get a job, I had to literally fly from Boston to San Diego to go to Comic-Con and meet people face to face. Today, you can accomplish a lot of networking just through social media. And that's not just for people looking for jobs. That's for schools, colleges, and departments that are looking to stay engaged with their student body and make sure they're hearing their concerns, but also sharing the good times and being able to kind of celebrate the triumphs. And I would say to the question you asked and to the point, too many businesses, brands, and even colleges can take on more than they can chew when it comes to social media. It's important to identify what platforms is your target audience on and how much time is it going to take to manage those platforms. If you've got limited resources, maybe you're not going to be on 8 platforms. Maybe you just focus on, oh, a lot of our students are on Instagram, so we're going to make sure we're very active on Instagram. I always caution my clients about getting on Twitter, even though I personally and my own personal use love Twitter. It's my favorite social media network, but it's something that demands a lot of upkeep and making sure that you're active. It can't just be something you check in on once a week. Obviously, organizations like Rebel Media Group can help in that sense, that they can help lighten the load and make it so you can take on more networks. But I think it's important to just understand where is your audience? If your audience is not on Twitter or if they're not on Facebook, there's no point in you trying to be there necessarily because you're just kind of shouting out into the void. You wanna find where the people who are going to be engaged with your product, with your service are going to be. And then, yeah, the thing I always come back to is it's a conversation. Everything's a conversation in the age that we live in. It's not a matter of just kind of broadcasting one way and then trying to search for feedback. You've got instant feedback from everybody. You just need to reach out and kind of get it, but it's important to do it in a scalable way where you can be active and you're not going to let one of your accounts lie dormant because nothing's worse than a social media account that hasn't posted in months and months. That just shows that you're not putting in the maximum effort that you were expecting of yourself. So rather than trying to jump on too many platforms at once and do too much at once, figure out what's realistic for you and then grow from there.

0:26:53
That makes sense. This was great. I'm probably the worst at social media. All I know how to do on Facebook is like stuff. If I want to send somebody a message, I have to ask my wife to help me get this message out. Make sure that I didn't create a story or something or something on some timeline. So I'm a mess when it comes to social media. I'm great at liking stuff though. I'm your man. If you need to like stuff, I can do that. And my wife always tells me, well, how come you never comment on this and this? And when I post, I'm the like guy. I'm the like guy. But, Renee, what were some of your takeaways from today's session?

0:27:29
Well, Benjamin just really put it in a nutshell. The way that the Rebel Media Group has helped this podcast alone has been just tremendous work by this team. They came in and did consulting services, diagnosed all the ways that we could get the word out and have greater listener participation, and not just in terms of people listening, but others who say, listen, you know, it's part of my mission and my business to be on the podcast because I want to connect and get our word out. And so we've had Rebels Give, now we're about to have Counseling Services. You know, we've used endless number of podcasts to talk about the pandemic and all the ways that university leadership has been responsive. And I just wonder how those messages would have reverberated throughout the campus without, you know, platforms like this. But more importantly, I love how our students get involved. I mean, look how much Danielle Cathy has grown through this. She certainly didn't start her graduate assistantship thinking they would go this well, but she has taken the job at hand and doing all the scheduling and coming up with great questions and getting us prepped for our interview. And then the number of students that have reached out to do the bios and to get our pictures and just all of the postings. It's just been really great to see our students engaged in this way. We know about the Student Government Association roles and we know about the Resident Assistant roles and some of the traditional aspects of college leadership, but seeing it come from this angle has just blown my mind and how they're going to be able to walk away and have new memories about their time at UNLV that they'll share with their kids about how they spent their time in growing the social media platform for UNLV.

0:29:24
Thank you so much, Benjamin, for joining us today and sharing your experience. We're appreciative of all the work you're doing, especially supporting the success of our podcast. I know that the students collectively that are going through the program are going to I know that the students collectively that are going through the program are going to

0:29:36
benefit greatly and enjoy much success in their careers.

Transcribed with Cockatoo