Last Wednesday Joseph Yeado of the Public Policy Forum visited our capstone class. He provided crucial information we needed in our search for reliable data.
One narrative we may pursue is how unemployment has changed for colored people in Milwaukee since the 1960’s. Yeado recommended we look to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for necessary statistics. Along those same lines we want to examine high school dropout rates and how they’ve evolved in the same time period, he suggested we look at the City of Milwaukee’s Department of Public Instruction for that data. We discussed how we could turn the points on this 1963 document from the Wisconsin NAACP into data based stories. A major concern I had was whether or not we would be able to find the requisite data for these stories. Fortunately, Yeado assured us we could get the information we needed. Throughout the class we discussed how we could rival ONA Award winning projects of past years. A project I wanted the class to see was a student only project by a group from TCU. The story is about border communities in southern Texas dubbed “colonias.” The project is well done and follows a clear question. It has relevant photos, videos and text, but it does not have the data element we seek to add. Regardless, this is the level of project we will be competing against. If we can focus our question and pick great stories, we can create a project just like this, at a much higher quality and add data visualization. The shooting in the videos was fine, but not only can we shoot better, we can shoot with better equipment. We can frame the shots better and we can edit tighter and write more succinct broadcast copy. If we focus this story, we can make something great. Right now my biggest concern is for our group to pick a focused question and drive our project in a clear direction. When we truly know what we’re doing I’m sure I’ll feel differently about the project. For now, I’m uneasy.
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AboutOn this page you can find blog posts about my adventures in journalism, ponderings about projects, experiences with storytelling tools and updates on what I'm working on. Archives
February 2017
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