To the Depths of Hades and Back Again

This class is DONE! Not that I didn't enjoy the company of the editors or my fellow reporters on this long arduous journey, but I must admit the great joy i feel in having finally completed convergence reporting. Although it was by far the most intense and life consuming class I have ever taken, I learned a lot along the way. First of all, my interviewing skills have improved ten-fold. I am now much more comfortable during interviews and I feel that I have the skills and knowledge to ask the right questions and roll with the information I get, even if it is not the information I was expecting. My technical knowledge has improved greatly as well. I am now confident in my video editing skills using both Avid and Final Cut, and I have a much better eye for jump cuts, over exposed shots, sequences, and framing. I am also comfortable with Cool Edit and Photoshop, two programs I had not used very often before taking 4804. I was able to learn how to use the equipment better too. I know most of the settings on the Sony camera, I know how to set up the wireless mics, and I know how to adjust the ISO settings on the Nikon digital cameras. Knowing the equipment helps me produce better work in the field, in turn making my job in the editing room much easier. Perhaps most importantly though, my news judgement has improved immensely. No matter how good you are at editing, shooting video, or writing, you can't make a bad story good. The best stories start with good story ideas, or the ability to shift gears and recognize if you stumble upon a better story than the one you set out to find. This is what happened to Jordan and I for our second team feature story. We were having trouble finding a good story, so we set out to do a story about unions in Columbia. When we started talking to some of the union representatives, we learned that the issue they were really worried about was how MU's new pension plan was going to affect low income workers. Once we discovered this story, we were very excited because we thought we were really fulfilling the watchdog role in a way. We felt like serious journalists. I think the story turned out well but unfortunately the editors did not think there was enough new information for it to be published. The most discouraging part was that the Columbia Tribune ran a very similar story to our only a few days alter, but ours was better. Although that was very difficult to deal with, it pushed me to try harder to get some of work published.

A few suggestions for improving the class:

1. Buy some cotts for the Futures Lab. There were several nights where I basically slept there, and it would have been nice to have a bed.

2. Have the editor who worked with a team all week be the one to grade that team's story. It is hard to understand when you get a C on a project and you worked with an editor every day improving the story. We always appreciate the input of the editors and we are here to learn from them, but lets face it, all of the editors are very different and have very different views on what a story should be about and what direction it should have gone. If one editor tells a team to do certain things and the rest of the editors don't agree, then the team should not be punished for that. If one editor graded the project she/he had helped edit all week, I think the team grades would not suffer so much and it would be more fair.

3. Provide more opportunities for our work to be published. After spending an entire semester reporting, I was not able to get any of my team stories published. I was close once, but because the subject of the story no longer wanted to cooperate, Erica and I were not able to get the nat sound we needed for our story to air. I think that the expectations of the convergence editors are higher than that of the newsroom editors. I often see work published that is not as high of quality as some of the work produced in this class, and I wonder why we were not bale to get our work published. I know that just because something is published doesn't mean that the convergence editors would have published it, but I think that it does us a disservice because we do not have as much work for our portfolio as students in other sequences.

These are just suggestions. I thoroughly enjoyed working with all the editors and my fellow classmates, ad I would like to thank everybody for their help, hard work, and dedication. Until next year, GOOD LUCK AND HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!!!!

Investigative Story Week 1

So it turns out that none of our story pitches were excepted, at least not in their original form. Unfortunately, Craigslist was nixed, so we had to turn to our other options. Our third story pitch about handymen in Columbia was also given the red light. That left us with only one of our story ideas still standing, the story about the stimulus money being used to give two Columbia fire stations a face lift. The editors thought that this was a decent idea but wanted us to refocus our story to be more encompassing. At first Tony and I decided that we were going to take the same approach that we did to the fire stations and investigate if five other projects were using their stimulus money wisely. After some discussion with the editors and much deliberation, Tony and I decided that we would be even more encompassing and just investigate all stimulus spending in Columbia. We set out to give citizens an overview of what projects were slated to receive stimulus money, how those projects were chosen, how the stimulus funding mechanism works for Columbia, and what Columbia citizens stand to gain and loose with the completion of these projects. This was undoubtedly a daunting task, as the stimulus package is a highly complex issue, but we were able to get a great head start by interviewing the assistant city manager of Columbia, Paula Hertwig Hopkins. Hopkins is in charge of the city's stimulus spending and gave us an excellent overview of how it works. Currently, Tony and I are exploring important individual projects the city is seeking stimulus funding for. I am very excited about this story because I think we are fulfilling both the watchdog and the explanatory roles of investigative journalists. We have conducted several interviews already and have several more lined up for next week. i am confident that we have put ourselves in good position to produce an excellt story.

Preparing to Investigate

Next week we start working on our investigative stories, so the bulk of this week's work was spent preparing for that. Not only were story pitches due on wednesday, we actually had to pitch them on wednesday this week, which put some extra pressure on coming up with good story ideas. It was an imposing task coming up with a good investigative story because it requires a few extra components not present in normal team stories. I was forced to ask myself, what makes a good investigative story? I decided that it has to uncover something not previously known, often fulfilling the watchdog role of journalism. Or it must explain something that it complicated to understand, but necessary for citizens to know. I think that Tony, my partner for the investigative stories, came up with a good idea about exposing the seedy side of Craigslist, particularly in Columbia. It fits in well with current events, as a man was arrested for murdering a prostitute he met on Craigslist just a few days ago. I think this would be a very interesting story to pursue and anticipate that it would be extremely popular. I came up with an idea to investigate the plans Columbia has to spend stimulus money on giving two fire stations in town a face lift. When I discovered these plans my immediate question was, is this a good use of stimulus money? Is giving these two fire stations a makeover really going to help firefighters do their jobs better? Wouldn't this money be better spent on new equipment for the fire fighters to help them in the field? In order to answer these questions I would ask fire departments in other counties/cities how they would spend a large sum of stimulus money. We still do not know which story the editors will want us to pursue (if either) but Tony and I will get working on our story as soon as we find out what it is!