Photos by Ralph Freso
Michelle Fortin’s friends say she’s the one to call when you need something to happen. The best example was when Fortin produced an online comedy video and wanted to end it by riding off into the sunset on a white horse.
But where in the world would she get a white horse?
“Two phone calls,” Fortin said. “I got a white horse. For free.”
More about that skit later and the value of a former reporter who knows how to make connections. But today Fortin is telling the story from Grand Canyon University’s Broadcast Lab, at one time as improbable as a white horse on campus, not to mention the dozens of students crowded into it tossing out story ideas for their student news show, “Lopes Lately.”
“What else? Don’t be shy,” she urges in a recent story pitch meeting, as 15 ideas pour from students about fires, mental health issues and the election.
“Anybody know anyone?” she asked on one story idea and a student responded that her roommate was in that situation. “You guys! Go!”
Go. This is what has happened since Fortin arrived as a communications instructor at GCU in 2020, piggybacking on the urgings of GCU Executive Director of Broadcast Barry Buetel to increase its hands-on education in broadcast fields: The duo helped start and advise a student club, Future Broadcasters Club, that has tripled to 60 members in less than two years and produces the aforementioned news broadcast; revamped course offerings in its bachelor’s in communications/new media and broadcasting, while laying the groundwork for a new major in broadcasting that awaits regulatory approval; helped seven of last spring’s graduating class secure jobs in broadcast journalism.
Senior Greenlee Clark, president of the club, said it doesn’t matter the time of day or weekend, Fortin answers her text and pushes her to be her best. “Lopes Lately” staff marvel at how Fortin trucks out onto campus with students, cameras and microphones in tow, even in the early-morning dark, when a story is unfolding.
“She does an amazing job of being true to herself. She never changes her personality or beliefs, or who she is as a person to all the different personalities we have in the club,” Greenlee said. “She is a stable rock for us to lean on, is the best way to put it.”
Fortin has several years of broadcast experience – a KTVK writer and field producer in Phoenix, a weekend anchor in Kearney, Nebraska, a reporter in Portland, Maine – before she became an Arizona State adjunct professor and owner of a public relations company in Phoenix in 2008.
With two young children, clients and students and volunteer duties all needing her, Fortin hit a wall a few years ago.
“I hit burnout. I was doing too much. I couldn’t decide what not to do,” she said. “So I decided to do nothing … I had to reset the rhythm in my life.”
She lifts her arm to show a tattoo of the word “rhythm” on her arm. It was that meaningful, to ink it. For one year, she refused all invitations, even social, and listened to the rhythm.
“Looking back, I realized it reset the rhythm in my family permanently. I could finally hear the beats and hear what rhythm was going to work with my husband and my kids, and I could slowly fold things back in.”
Fortin decided to do one thing she always wanted to do that year – take a comedy improv class. At the class conclusion, they produced a showcase and invited friends. It was such a big hit that she was asked to do it for a church mom group, and after enlisting a friend, took the comedy online, making parody videos seven years ago.
Their first was a musical parody set to a Coldplay and The Chainsmokers’ song, “Something Just Like This,” about girlfriends who invite you for coffee but really try to sell you Pampered Chef, Tupperware, candles, knives, etc. – “If you’re my friend, then you’ll buy this,” they sang. It went viral on Facebook, racking up 5.5 million views, and more than 100,000 on YouTube.
The popular TV reality show “The Bachelor” was the next parody, the bachelorettes being on different diet plans, keto and vegan and CrossFit and Weight Watchers (“Is that a kale quinoa salad?”). It was so funny it had more than 1.5 million Facebook views and launched her company, Top Knot Comedy, and a nationwide comedy tour.
“I think more people should do it,” she said of taking her year off. “I love talking about it, and how it changed my life. But I don’t think I could do it again.”
Because now she is fully enmeshed in a new career, and it’s no joke. When she came to GCU, there were no facilities and only a couple of meaningful broadcasting courses, she said. Since then, a Broadcast Lab was built with a TV studio, podcast bays and closets full of equipment. Fortin said she enlisted students to help her revamp the classes, start the club, and feel invested.
“These students are the best I’ve ever taught. They are respectful, they want to be here,” she said. “Still to this day, when I arrive to park in the morning, I do this little shimmy. I am so happy to be here. I’m waiting for the honeymoon phase to end, and it hasn’t ended yet.
“What impressed me about the students is they recognize the need to go beyond the classroom. None of them are getting class credit, they’re not getting paid, but they are helping each other, coming up with stories, challenging each other to get better, just because they want to.”
Lexi Lambert, the executive producer for the Nov. 11 edition of “Lopes Lately,” said Fortin showed her the real world of news isn’t like the “rainbows and butterflies” at GCU – it can be gritty and fast-paced – and helped her get an internship at a station in Tucson and job offers even before graduation.
“Everyone loves to go to her for advice. She’s been in the industry, she knows what it’s like,” she said. “She will be blunt with you, but she’s a caring mom on the other side.”
She appreciated that both Fortin and Buetel acknowledge that TV news often has a surface side – how you look and how your voice sounds is vital. “They helped me build my wall of accepting harsh feedback.”
Fortin also acknowledges it’s tough to straddle a thin line of tough reporting the students want to do while reflecting well on the university, but they are doing it. The most recent broadcast that dropped on YouTube on Nov. 11 tackled a recent arrest in a campus fire, a court decision favoring GCU, student mental health, a new safety campaign on wheeled transportation on campus, and others.
“The students want to do these stories, and they go out and figure it out. They are just scrappy,” she said.
While Buetel takes on the role of experienced mentor and helps connect them in the industry, Fortin urges them on in classes. “They realize if they pour themselves into it, there are rewards,” Buetel said.
The list of graduates already employed is growing – in Tucson as a morning show producer, reporters in Mississippi and Yuma, Arizona, and Fargo, North Dakota, and at a top-50 market in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Bela Olague is a multimedia journalist.
Olague has already interviewed actor Brian Cranston, but her favorite story is one she did on a quilt shop that helped victims of this summer’s wildfires in New Mexico.
Olague credits Fortin, who in her first class changed her mind on what she thought of as a dark world of mainstream media: “The first day she said, ‘We can be the light in the darkness.’ I decided this is what I wanted to be.”
Fortin lit the spark, showed them how to produce engaging reels for jobs, and how “getting those reps was the biggest thing we could do,” Olague said.
While ASU’s long-established Walter Cronkite School of Journalism attracts many, GCU eventually will be a destination for broadcasting and sports media students, she said, with a pending major and collaborations between of College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Arts and Media.
“We will do it and do it with a heart of service, showing how to go out in the field and be a light,” Fortin said.
Now she just needs a donor for more equipment and space, while remembering the rhythm she found with humor.
“Just get me in front of them,” she said, smiling. “I got the white horse for the video!”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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