Hi Everyone,
Thought you would like to see a copy of the press release by Josh Meltzer, WKU Photojournalism, to News Channel 5. This is in addition to the press release about OPR's copy run to Nashville. This is great press and thanks Dave for doing this!
Margie
Bryan,
I am a photojournalist-in-residence at WKU and was given your name and email from Jo-Anne Ryan, the new interim department head of the School of Journalism & Broadcasting.
I wanted to pass along a great story idea for your station. Our first guest speaker in the school will be Dave Ellis, a director of photography at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, VA. He and I have known one another since I was a photojournalist in Roanoke, VA until 2008 before coming to WKU to teach.
In addition to Dave's work as Director of Photography, he is a co-founder of the non-profit Operation Photo Rescue, which is an organization that travels around the country with volunteers to areas affected by natural disasters (mainly those caused by water). The organization digitally repairs photos that were damaged in the disaster and gives out free reprints of the images to those affected by storms, floods or other disasters. Other than losing life or serious injury, many victims of natural disasters say that the greatest sadness is damage to family photos, often when only one copy exists.
So, I found out that Dave was planning a long weekend visit to Nashville to do his non-profit work to help folks with their damaged images after the flooding of this past Spring, and invited him to fly in a few days early to come speak to our Journalism students.
In my last conversation with Dave, he expressed his desire to help get the word out about where they will be located from Sept 10-11 so that Nashville residents can bring their damaged prints for repair. Not only would the weekend of their work be a great story, but he would love the publicity to help let the public know that he and his volunteers will be in town those days and where they can go to get the free repairs made to their damaged images.
I figured with your connection to WKU and desire to tell powerful stories, I thought this would be a great opportunity for a positive follow-up from your coverage of the flooding. Many of our photojournalism students have continued to cover the story of families put out by the storms and floods, and thus are anxious to volunteer with Operation Photo Rescue while they're in our area.
I'm leaving my contact info below as well as that for Dave Ellis. He has a prepared press release that I've attached below from the website. I've cc'd Dave on this email as I'm sure he would welcome contact from you to see about covering their amazing work.
Feel free to contact me as well if you have any questions. Dave will be giving his presentation at WKU the night of Wednesday Sept 8 around 7pm, just FYI if you are interested in attending.
Cheers
Josh Meltzer
WKU- Photojournalism
