Our capstone class has picked a topic. Huzzah! Now that we have a focused question we all have subsets of the question we will explore. In order to focus our reporting we're using the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's project proposal template to prepare ourselves.
Project summary The central question of my project is where do people live 50 years after the fair housing marches? It will also look at housing patterns in the city and Greater Milwaukee area. The story will be presented with a print story and a video, along with a collection of data. What is the key question we are trying to answer? Where do people live 50 years later? Why are we doing this story now? In 1967 the fair housing marches of Milwaukee occurred during a period of widespread civil disobedience. Now, 50 years later during another wave of protest, we will report on how the things people marched for have changed in the 50-year period since they marched. Our audience will largely be those participating in this summer’s “200 Nights of Freedom” marches and the people of Milwaukee who will hear about the marches throughout the year and have any number of questions about them. Background One thing I do know is there will be movement to report on. In the time of the marches the south side was a predominantly white area, but that area is now largely Hispanic, a demographic that didn’t rule any sizeable portion of Milwaukee in 1967. Though Milwaukee is still extremely segregated it’s segregated in a much different way than it was in 1967. Reporting strategy This is a data driven story but the print story will be written as a feature, accompanied by a larger data element. The subjects will be residents of Milwaukee who, ideally, have lived in the area for the last 50 years. It would be beneficial to speak to members of the march to get their perspective on how things have changed, why they live where they live now and how they got there. I expect it won’t be terribly difficult to find cooperative subjects for this story. The minimum story here is about one or two families who live in different areas of Milwaukee than they might have lived in the 1960s. The maximum story would tell the story of many families of many different backgrounds who have moved around the city for the past 50 years, exploring each step of their local migration. This route would tell the story of a white family who moved from the south side, a Hispanic family who moved in to the south side early, a black family in an affluent area who has been around Milwaukee since the marches, another black family who has moved through primarily black neighborhoods as those areas have shifted and perhaps an Asian family as well. The two main questions for all these people would be why do you live here right now and how did you get here? Timeframe The reporting for this story will need to be finished in roughly two months, with the data visualization element, the video and the print story coming together in early May. Presentation opportunities When my story, along with the video and potential audio element, are complete they will be a part of the larger story we construct on an independent site. The data visualization will be a part of a comprehensive visualization connected with the other six stories my classmates are working on. Teammate Julie Grace summed it up well in her blog post by saying, “Together, we will create a data visualization piece that showcases the changes in housing in Milwaukee from 1967 to 2017.” Dang, I feel much better about this project today than I did at this time last week.
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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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