Assistant professor of practice in media production Ken Fischer is CoJMC’s newest faculty member. Fischer has experience building student-led broadcasting programs at his previous institution, the University of Oklahoma.
Fischer will be teaching classes in broadcasting and be a faculty lead for Nebraska Nightly, a student-produced recorded show within the Experience Lab where students produce video and audio content for Lincoln and Nebraska audiences.
Fischer has worked in the broadcasting industry for more than two decades. His career included work in public broadcasting, commercial production and cable television. In the early 1980s he served as Assistant News Director and a documentary producer at KBYU radio and television in Provo, Utah. He then worked as a producer/director for Group W Cable in Fullerton, California and helped found the Orange County Cable Association.
After a season as a videotape editor at the DIC animation house in Los Angeles, Fischer returned to broadcasting. In 1988 he joined the staff at KRWG-TV in Las Cruces, New Mexico as Production Supervisor. Fischer’s interest in sports led to his creating and producing the Sportsview 22 series. In 1994 the program won First Place in the New Mexico Associated Press Documentary division for a local follow-up to Ken Burns’ PBS Baseball special.
In 1994 Fischer moved back to the journalism area when he accepted a position in the newsroom at WUFT-TV in Gainesville, Florida. He served as field producer for WUFT-TV’s coverage of the 1996 Fiesta Bowl, the national championship football game where Nebraska beat Florida 62-24. In the late 90s he joined WOUB radio and television, the public broadcasting facility in Athens, Ohio. Fischer served as News Director and an instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. His team created a Friday Football Highlight program that still exists called Gridiron Glory.
Fischer was on the Radio-Television faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 2000-2005 and the University of Central Florida in 2005-2006 before joining the faculty at the University of Oklahoma in August 2006. The students of the OU Nightly newscast won the Broadcast Education Association Best of Festival’s Top Student Newscast Award in 2019.
Fischer retired from Oklahoma on January 3, 2022 and one week later he began his new role at Andersen Hall. He is an active member of the Broadcast Education Association and Association for Education of Journalism and Mass Communication. He also belongs to the Radio Television Digital News Association, Society of Professional Journalists, and Alliance for Community Media.
In 2017 the AEJMC Electronic News Division honored Fischer with the annual Edward L. Bliss Award for Distinguished Broadcast Journalism Education. He is ABD in Political Communication at the University of Oklahoma.
“I’m excited for my first semester at Nebraska,” Fischer said, “I hope students who take my classes or work with me at Nebraska Nightly learn the importance of repetition when it comes to learning the craft and that television news is a team sport, you can’t operate without working well with others.”
