Rust Communications teams with university, KFVS to create student media lab

Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian, has teamed with Southeast Missouri State University and KFVS12 to create a hands-on laboratory for students in the university's media programs.

The 12,000-square-foot Center for Excellence in Mass Media at 325 Broadway will house the university's student newspaper, The Arrow, and its television and video production program.

Southeast president Kenneth Dobbins announced the new partnership Friday evening during the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce's annual dinner.

The university is leasing the space from Rust Communications, which owns the former Security Bank & Trust building.

The center is not the first partnership between Rust Communications and the university.

In 2011, the university contracted with the Southeast Missourian to oversee production of The Arrow and create a more robust student-produced news website.

Dobbins said that relationship played a key role in the reaccreditation of the university's mass media program by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

"It was a really unique opportunity for us, our journalism program and our students, and for the Southeast Missourian, especially at a time when college and university newspapers around the country were being eliminated due to budget deficits," Dobbins said.

Southeast entered into a similar agreement last fall with KFVS12, in which students produce two hours' worth of programming on WQWQ, a KFVS12 affiliate.

In a news release Friday, Jim Dufek, professor of mass media and television and film operations manager in the Department of Mass Media, said the center's location -- next door to the Southeast Missourian and across the street from KFVS -- would give students "a sense of being in the thick of things."

Pertinent address:

325 Broadway, Cape Girardeau, MO