From Kent Stater TV anchors welcoming viewers with “This is TV2” to now “This is Kent Stater TV News” and from searching KentWired.com to now being redirected to KentStater.com, The Kent Stater rebranded.
During the Spring 2024 semester, a User Experience Design course brainstormed what areas of KentWired and TV2 needed to undergo changes to increase collaboration, accessibility and marketability, said Sydney Brown, the 2024 broadcast managing editor of KSTV.
Because The Kent Stater and KSTV continue to be independent, student-run news organizations, they wanted to become less reliant on the university’s funding, Brown said.
“We wanted to become more independent, if possible, and have great people who are looking out for Student Media in our Student Media Office,” she said.
During the summer, the rebranding process started with creating logo designs, newsrack designs, signage and the early stages of the website’s new design, said Alton Northup, news director of The Kent Stater and KSTV.
In the fall of 2024, KSTV began using its new name as well as new voiceovers and motion graphics provided by alumni: Alexandria Manthey, Erin Sullivan, Gabe Collura, David Hrvatin and Ryan Dunn.
As readers may notice, the website design changed Dec. 18 with the domain name changed to KentStater.com.
Winter break was chosen as the period to launch the new website to ensure everything would run smoothly, he said.
To make the website more accessible to readers, campus and city news are more prominent sections on the website, and a KSTV Livestream was added to the homepage.
“Our first category on the website is going to be ‘Campus’ because that’s your lifeline when you’re a college student,” Northup said. “Right after that is ‘City’ because … the Kent City is really important to students too.”
Because The Kent Stater and KSTV share a newsroom, collaboration between the two became a priority during the rebrand, said Audrey Trevarthan, managing editor of The Kent Stater.
“We want to make sure that we’re getting all kinds of coverage in all different mediums for every content,” Trevarthan said, “So the new rebrand helped us be able to collaborate better, and have the positions suited to that collaboration.”
With the increased collaboration, people began to become closer to each other between the two organizations.
“Now, it’s a place where reporters feel comfortable either going up to a broadcast reporter being like, ‘Hey, want to cover this with me,’ or vice versa,” she said, “That just helps our stories because now we’re getting multiple sides to the same stories.”
Northup, Trevarthan and Brown are all fortunate for the cooperation between both The Kent Stater and KSTV throughout the rebranding process, especially as they dealt with learning curves because of position and name changes.
“Building morale was at first a bit of a struggle, but now it’s come back stronger,” Trevarthan said.
Since those a part of KSTV were used to signing out saying, ‘This has been TV2 news,’ this past semester those on air said TV2 instead of KSTV on a few occasions, Brown said.
“There were a few instances when we first started in the fall where people accidentally [said TV2] … it was kind of a habit still, kind of breaking those habits because I think there were growing pains,” she said.
Brown was especially grateful for the help she received from Austin Monte, KSTV’s head of studio operations, and JoAnn Larsen, Student Media advisor for production and film distribution.
“We could brainstorm and have all these ideas, but without their actual hands-on help, it never would have been possible,” she said.
The Kent Stater and KSTV plan to continue to provide the Kent and Kent State communities with quality stories as the organization moves forward.
“Our new motto is your community, your stories, and I really do take that to heart,” Northup said. “That’s what we are, that’s our mission is to reflect this community and share their stories.”
Adriana Gasiewski is a campus editor. Contact her at [email protected].
