For the past six weeks my classmates and I have been working to complete a six part Massive Open Online Course on data visualization and data journalism through the University of Texas. It was a worthwhile experiment that provided us with the necessary knowledge to take on a data based journalism project despite being a group with next to no data journalism experience. If you're curious about what I learned and what I contributed to the course, click here.
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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. 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. 50 years ago more than 100 members of the Milwaukee Youth Council of the NAACP marched north up the 16th street viaduct in Milwaukee where they met 100 more protesters. They gathered to speak out against local practices preventing people of color from buying or building homes or moving into primarily white areas.
These protests followed a half-decade of civil disobedience speaking out against unfair voting laws, segregation and the war. Sit-ins, marches and other forms of peaceful became wildly popular and necessary tactics to give those living on the margins a voice. This weekend impromptu protests broke out after President Donald Trump signed an executive order many are calling a “Muslim ban.” At the same time people gathered in Washington to speak out against abortion. Last weekend men and women marched in hundreds of cities across the country to speak out against Donald Trump’s rhetoric and stand up for women’s rights. As one clever sign put it, “Protest is the new brunch.” There are undeniable parallels between the time 50 years ago when Father James Groppi led the fair housing march in Milwaukee and today. To name a few: oppressors who won’t acknowledge the existence of oppression, massive demonstrations speaking out against leadership, a leader trying to cut down the press and a nation where blatant, unabashed racism has few consequences. In my journalism capstone course this semester we’re trying to create a data-based project relating to the 1967 March on Milwaukee. There are two stories I’d like to look into. First, I’m curious about protest culture. It feels like protests are “in” right now, like they were 50 years ago. Does the amount of protest in our nation ebb and flow like the economy? Is there a pattern to protest or is it all simply reactionary? Has social media motivated people to protest more often? Some of these questions are probably far too large for me to find an answer to this semester, but these are the things I’m wondering about. Second, Father Groppi was a white man leading the charge for black people. Is this common? If so, why? Did it used to be more common? Could that kind of thing happen today? What is the influence of white people on organizations like Black Lives Matter? What is the role for white people there? Some of these questions might be easier to do my own research for. Getting in contact with BLM would be easy enough, but some of these questions are far more qualitative than quantitative. I’m interested to see where this project goes and what we do with it. It’s entirely possible neither of the topics discussed here will be covered, so check back later to see what direction we take the project. When I came to Marquette as a freshman I thought the best way to eventually earn a job in sports television was to make a career for myself in print journalism and go from there – like Wilbon and Kornheiser or anyone from the Around The Horn cast.
I didn’t know anybody in the industry but I had always heard (and constantly read) about how hard it is to break into the business. I knew I had to have a backup plan, but I wanted it to be in media, so I decided on a political science minor, that way I could write about politics if sports didn’t work out. Now I’m a senior - about to apply for jobs. My three and a half years at Marquette have brought me back to where I wanted to go originally, sports television. A combination of things have led me back to my primary goal, but reason number one is simply that my talent lies in television. I’ve learned how to write for print, radio and television, but the writing that comes most naturally is broadcast writing. As far as being on camera goes, it’s something I’ve always been comfortable with and a skill I’ve continuously honed in my time at college. Additionally, I’ve developed a good eye for shooting sports and a wide-ranging knowledge of how to use different video cameras. I feel confident that I could figure out how to use a video camera I’ve never seen before in less than an hour. I’ve shot a multitude of sports, from basketball and football to lacrosse and track and field – it’s all just a matter of anticipation. A struggle of mine has always been reading other people’s words for broadcast. I can rewrite their words to suit me better, but reading someone else’s work without putting my own touch on it makes my delivery clunky. One of my biggest weaknesses on television is controlling the pace of my delivery. Occasionally I’ll speak too quickly, but enunciation has never been a big issue. This is a skill I can use to my advantage sometimes though, when hits on television are short and there isn’t much time to fill the audience in, I have more options than cutting things out or trying to rewrite the story into as few words as possible. Another thing I’d like to improve on is incorporating natural sound seamlessly into packages. I’ve learned how to get quality nat sound, but slipping it into the story and weaving it together with my voice over is the next step. Of course, if I land a job and do these things five times a week, I’m confident I’ll improve quickly.
A semester of hard work is coming to a close as I uploaded the video portion of my project covering Jeff McAvoy. To celebrate my victory in the AP Style Bowl I spent several hours putting the finishing touches on this video that took a few months of planning.
A major challenge of this project was finding a way to show my Trinity fellow’s work. This was difficult because his job as marketing and communications manager has him behind a desk a lot of the time. A few ideas were thrown around in conversations with Professor Lowe and Carole Ferrara. One of my favorite ideas was to show the work that the Urban Ecology Center does with children. The issue with this was that I was in class at the times that the kids were visiting the agency. It would have been simple enough to cover an event McAvoy was working at and film him interacting at a gathering that he was in charge of publicizing. The issue with this idea is that it would not have made for an interesting video. The search was on to find an idea that had a little drama. When Professor Lowe asked me how the organization started it got me thinking. McAvoy mentioned that a neighborhood in trouble banded together to clean up their park and that mission eventually became the Urban Ecology Center. My last meeting with him was great as he explained in much greater detail the dramatic story about how the area changed through the agency. A neighborhood in crisis needed to find a way to clean up a park that had witnessed drug deals and even a murder. One main idea behind this project is that heinous crime is less likely to happen where children are. As the clean up of the park began kids began to make appearances. Over time the crime moved on out and the presence of children continued and grew. McAvoy make this story easy to tell as he was able to tie the current mission to the original goals in his interview. In order to learn more about McAvoy, the Urban Ecology Center and the Trinity Fellows Program check in next week when all of our projects will be displayed online. Wednesday afternoon #loweclass was treated to a visit from the senior features editor for CNN digital, Mira Lowe. This visit was part of something I call the Herb Lowe advantage.
Mira Lowe showed us new tools that she uses everyday. Chartbeat is a real-time analytics tool that allows you to see what people are clicking on your site that very minute. Another tool she showed us was called News Whip. This is a tool that identifies trends on social media and scores links based on their “social velocity” which tells you how quickly a story is being shared. These tools help her answer the question she works to answer each day, “What should we be focusing on?” These tools can be helpful in learning what stories she wants to be sharing but Mira Lowe explained that they do not replace news reporting. In addition to sharing her tools with us, Mira also gave advice on how to get people reading our content. “Your story doesn’t end when it’s published.” She urged us to share our work on social media. Of course, sharing it is not enough on its own. In order to really push our content we have to make people want to read it when we share, rather than simply saying “look at my work.” After we talked about how to share our work we took a look at some high quality content. The night before Mira’s visit I explored a story that she recommended. The story was a feature on CNN.com called The poor kids of Silicon Valley. The story featured six videos and pictures with each piece of text. We discussed how the author, John Sutter, was creative with his storytelling method. He uses first person narration and beautiful visuals to deliver the story. It was great to have someone who influences content in the professional world stop by our classroom to share with us. After class all my classmates had positive things to say about our double-Lowe-day. Not every journalism class has access to a professional like Mira. Perhaps two Lowes are better than one.
A month ago I explored a New York Times’ documentary series titled Op-Docs. One of my favorite pieces was A Conversation With My Black Son. The piece was simple but effective in delivering its message. In the end that specific Op-Doc was the example for my project.
It took a while for me to land on a project due to time constraints and the availability of important interview subjects. In the end I picked the timely topic of fraternity life. The brothers who spoke with me were eager to have their voices heard. They explained that they feel misrepresented in the media. This type of project was a perfect way to hear their side of so many recent stories. We covered topics that you rarely hear about in the news like what fraternities do for the common good, what it's like to be behind the doors of a frat house and how the brothers feel about all the recent media coverage. It was interesting to get inside an organization under fire and see how people interpret the world around them. It's always interesting to find out how the judged judge. The interview process was smooth but the harder part came in editing. What was the best way to tell this story? How could I allow their voices to be heard while also presenting the problem in a clear and concise way? Getting my nearly 60 minutes of interviews down to just a five minute video was challenging. It was a difficult decision but in the end I did not use any supplemental footage. This required me to be more deliberate with my cuts and trimming in the editing process. In order to keep the video interesting with such simple visuals I had to make quick cuts and keep the quotes moving along. One difficulty in this process was that many of the quotes I used started with “um” or “and” which was not ideal. It took precise editing to fix the problem. It was challenging to find a flow for this story because there were so many talking points but each quote had to be shorter than eight or so seconds. My goal was to keep each quote around five seconds or less but some were too poignant to cut short. In the end the story came together nicely and I'm pleased with the way the final product looks. This is a story that I will continue to work on in my time here at Marquette. The end goal is to have a member of every fraternity on campus in the video. Check back for that sometime this summer.
Throughout this semester #loweclass has been working to create our final project. The final project will focus on the Trinity Fellows Program at Marquette University. Each member of our class has been assigned a fellow to do a feature on and my fellow is Jeff McAvoy.
For this project we will be using multiple forms of visual storytelling. Last week we were introduced to StoryMap. This new mode of storytelling allows you to map out a subject and take the reader on a virtual tour of the story. Each stop along the way only requires a sentence or two of description. This mode of storytelling works especially well for my story about Jeff because one of the main components of this story is how he has travelled across the country. StoryMap will allow you to see how he has moved and how far exactly each move is. StoryMap can be a bit clunky at times but I am not a software engineer who can properly critique the mechanics of the tool. What I can say is that as you get used to using it, StoryMap can create a beautiful final product that will be interesting for your reader to look at. This got me thinking about what else you could create with StoryMap. I love what my classmate Jack Goods did for his Marquette Lacrosse season preview with StoryMap. Many NBA teams have ridiculous travel schedules due to the alignment of the conferences and divisions. Writers across the league have proposed a variety of solutions and I imagine they could use StoryMap to really spice up The ever-changing world of journalism has more to explore than this writer can truly believe. The New York Times created a series of documentaries called Op-Docs that allowed for stories with opinions to be told. The platform is successful journalistically because the stories are told entirely by the interview subjects.
Amongst the Op-Docs I watched the most fascinating was Kaboom. The story profiled two explosives enthusiasts who blow things up for a living. The visuals were stunning and the story was intriguing. One of my first thoughts was that Herbert Lowe would not enjoy the music. Most of the time it worked for me but there were moments that it overpowered the words that were said. The audio of the explosions was incredible and not overdone. The only other thing that puzzled me was the framing of the interview. We have been taught in many different settings to frame the interview with the subject looking off camera, but these two were almost looking away from the camera. Overall this story was absolutely amazing. One story that troubled me a bit was Melody. My first thought was that the opening shot was gorgeous and boy, I wish every story could have something this wonderful. After that things got a bit rocky. The story was interesting but there was no explanation of why there was all of this old film of the subject playing her instrument. The next problem was my impression that the story was about the first speaker; later in the story it became clear that there were multiple people in the story. There needed to be more written information about the story in order for it to work. Each time I come across a new method of storytelling my first thought is about how I could use this method. Many times there are limitations because the budget available to me is much smaller than that of the New York Times. After a quick scan of the university news briefs a few ideas came to mind. The first was to cover a candidate in the upcoming MUSG election. Get inside their life a bit and get behind the scenes to explore why they are running rather than to cover the election. Another idea was to cover a family relationship for the upcoming “little sibs” weekend at Marquette. It would work to cover any relationship really so long as the relationship is active and one can film interactions. One issue I foresee is that if I make an Op-Doc it will be far less interesting than Kaboom because it is simply not possible for us to film visuals of that quality. That doc used go-pros, likely more than three cameras on site, at least one journalist with a whole camera team and it required a weeks of planning. It would be fun to create a story that allows for opinions to be expressed more freely, but it worries me to compare it to these stunning docs. |
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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