Week 8

I thought doing the video news project was fun. A lot of work, but still fun, especially editing in iMovie. I like gathering information for a story. I always feel I can never have enough. Emily and I overheard a group saying they had three sources. We had 13. We interviewed eight students, two dining hall employees (one student and one full time cook) and the CDS marketing director, in addition to talking off-camera with someone from the Office of the Registrar and another Campus Dining Services rep to get statistics. I think with all this information, we were able to put together a strong story on something that could have been superficial: Dining halls are crowded, boo hoo, say students. I hope you agree.

With such a busy week of midterms and the video project, I haven't had the time to scour the news as usual. (I just sat down with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday's NYT when I realized I had to write my blog.) So the best story I've read this week was actually one we were assigned for Cross Cultural. It's a Washington Post article from 2004 by Anne Hull, "In the Bible Belt, Acceptance Is Hard-Won." It's a strong immersion piece since the reporter spent hundreds of hours following around a gay 17-year-old in rural Oklahoma. It truly gives an inside look at what is like to be...well, a few things...a gay teen, a gay Christian, a gay Oklahoman. It showed several sides of the boy. He was certain he was different, though he wished he wasn't. He was working for acceptance of himself and from his mother, but he didn't want to flaunt his homosexuality. This complexity is something most reporters cannot always get. They strive for the human angle, but can't get it unless they dedicate the time and have the right state of mind to really understand someone's situation. Then it's a matter of relaying everything you learned and telling a good story:

"Michael Shackelford slides under his 1988 Chevy Cheyenne. Ratchet in hand, he peers into the truck's dark cavern, tapping his boot to Merle Haggard's 'Silver Wings' drifting from the garage.
Flat on his back, staring into the cylinders and bearings, Michael fixes his truck like he wishes he could fix himself.
'I wake up and I try so hard to look at a girl,' he says. 'I tell myself I'm gonna be different. It doesn't work.'
Michael is 17 and gay, though his mother still cries and asks, 'Are you sure?'"

Week 7

The Los Angeles Times has been running parts of a series called "Vanishing Russians" about the declining population in Russia. I read all of Monday's article, which focused on the inadequate health care and multiple risks Russians face, especially in certain areas and if they are poor. Another story in the series focuses on disease, suicide and substance abuse, while the third part looks at loss of identity as the Muslim and minority population grows.
Kim Murphy, the Times writer, must have completely immersed herself in this subject. The amount of information she must have gotten had to have been overwhelming. She wrote three in-depth articles examining different problems, as well as one shorter story that focused on a specific town that she featured in the health care article. I am impressed with how she was able to organize everything and tell these stories compellingly. The lead on the health care article, "For the Sick, No Place to Turn":

"He was 40 when he had his first heart surgery, a quadruple bypass to correct damage caused by the swirling poisons of the ancient copper smelter where he worked. But that was a decade ago, when the decrepit Russian healthcare system still provided low-cost care to those who could wait.
Now, Mikhail Lychmanyuk has been told he will die unless he has a second heart operation. This time, it will cost him $5,000.
It might as well be $1 million."

The story is as heartbreaking as it is informative. The series opens our eyes to a problem we wouldn't otherwise think or know anything about, and I think it is amazing that someone went in and took the time to understand the breadth and depth of the situation and then wrote stories about the people in it. This was a massive undertaking—far beyond where I am now—but it is in line with the type of journalism I want to do. When I do a story, it consumes me. I want to take time to learn about all the angles of a topic. I want to talk to as many sources as possible. I want to learn about the history of something so I can better understand its present state. I want to be an expert. That is why I don't take on many stories for The Maneater, and why I don't think being a reporter for a daily paper is the life for me. If I can't do a great story, I'd almost rather not do it at all. Not that those papers can't do great stories. They certainly do. But for me, I'm very picky with the projects I take and I don't like being rushed to throw them together.
When I was a senior in high school, I wanted to do a story about teacher-student relationships and the gray area of sexual harassment. I had this idea early in the schoolyear, but I waited because I needed time to do it right. Luckily it was evergreen and I was able to get started in the spring when classes weren't as demanding. I spent weeks doing interviews, analyzing the situation with my cowriter and redrafting with our advisers. When it came out in the last issue of the year, I was completely satisfied. So since my senior year, when I did that story and other in-depth features like one about perscription drug abuse, I have been leaning toward magazine writing, which allows more time and space to delve into an issue.

Week 6

Grammar has mostly been the focus of class this past week. I feel pretty confident about the test coming up on Friday. I've always been strong in grammar because I'm actually interested in words and the rules of language. I'll probably do another practice exam before the test, but I think I should do well.

I read a really strong article in the New York Times, "A Farmer Fears His Way of Life Has Dwindled Down to a Final Generation." The piece is a great example of examining an individual case to tell a broader story. It has a very strong human element, one that is not superficial like "The Formula" stories I talked about in my post last week. Charlie LeDuff gives us a clear portrait of one man whose situation reflects those of other independent farmers who know a completely different way of life.
It's got a good lead:
"The heart of the heartland, the exact geographic middle of the continental United States, is owned by a middle-aged Kansas man named Randall Warner. He exports wheat, beef and soon his second grown son to the city. He stands in his boots in his field and wonders what's become of his way of life."
From that I kept reading and was pleased to find that the story didn't quickly segue into a general topic. Yes, sometimes hearing from many different perspectives is important, but in this story the strength comes from the singular focus. That is the type of human element that can be most effective in storytelling. We should be striving to find that perfect example to serve as a microcosm for the larger point we want to get across.
Plus the article had a great arrangement of four photographs that perfectly showed the two sides of the story—the conservative farmer who loves working the land above all things and the college-bound son looking for something new beyond the farm.
Good photography. Good writing. Good story.