Author: Sandra L. McGill

My name is Sandra L. McGill; I am a second-year terminal master's student studying Health and Medical Journalism at the University of Georgia in Athens. My biology career spanned fifteen years before I decided in 2012 that it was time to make a change. I have been writing and editing—works of science, works for the community, works of humor, and a lot of other works—since 2008 and shooting photography on a quasi-professional basis since 2011. Art—of the penciled, painted, and vocal variety—has been a lifelong passion. When I’m not engaged in the above pursuits, my favorite pastime is bugging the crap out of my twin sister, Sabrina. Don’t worry about confusing us: from our appearances to our personalities, we’re as fraternal as they come. Despite this, we are very close. Which is good, because my short arms don’t reach very far and I enjoy poking her a lot! Finally, I have a continuing love of the martial arts and am fascinated by just about every facet of them. I have trained formally or informally in seven styles ranging from Shotokan to Kung Fu. I hold a second-degree Black Belt in Korean Tang Soo Do and a first-degree Black Belt in American Kenpo, and I am currently affiliated with the Atlantic-Pacific Tang Soo Do Federation. Tang soo!

Lede: Is China’s Gaokao the World’s Toughest School Exam?

  • Story: “Is China’s gaokao the world’s toughest school exam?” by Alec Ash
  • What kind of lede is it? A scene-setter lede
  • Does it do what Edward R. Murrow told Nancy Dickerson a lede should do? Yes
  • What drew you to it? I have a Chinese roommate, of whom I’m very fond. It got me thinking about the pressure she went through just to get here.

Postmortem Evaluation: Interview with Kelcey Caulder

What questions do you wish you had asked?
I think I pretty much covered it! Although I took longer with the interview than I would have liked (I wanted her to discuss how into theater she was with concrete examples, and I might could have shortened that phase), I don’t feel like I left anything on the table.

What worked well with your approach?
I had an intended beginning, middle, and end. I began with warm-up questions (her name, her major and grade level, how long she’s been a student at UGA, etc.) and introduced my main question (what one of her passions is (she’s a theater enthusiast)), launched into a lengthy middle section in which I got her to describe to me how passionate she was by relating stories from some of her theater exploits, and wrapped it up by asking why she was so passionate and ending the interview at a logical conclusion. As I mentioned above, while my middle section was longer than it could have been (most of those 20 minutes didn’t make it into the podcast’s two-minute time frame), the stories she told a) established that she was indeed a theater buff, and b) rounded things out nicely for the conclusion.

I also did well by making suggestions—during the interview—that would help things later on. It so happens that my lavaliere microphone and recorder’s mic capabilities died a few days earlier (I confirmed with Kelcey’s help before the interview started that that was indeed the case), so I was dependent on my recorder’s stereo recording for everything. Initially she was very animated, waving and clicking a pencil as she spoke, which I feared the recorder was picking up. After she finished her first animated question, I asked her to set her pencil down and explained to her the reason why. She promptly put it down, but then sat on her hands! I told her, “No, don’t sit on your hands! Be animated! Just without the pencil.” We laughed, and although she was stiff initially, as she told me her theater stories, she began to relax and became animated once more. This is the first time I’ve had the guts to correct an interviewee during an interview; in the past I’ve just let it ride—and suffered the consequences. I’m glad I spoke up. The brief awkwardness was worth the improved sound quality. My goal is always to get my interviewee to open up, but at the end of the day, I have to have a usable product (in this case, clear audio).

What could you have done better?
Shortened the middle story-telling section.

Other Comments:
I do have one point of contention. The authors of the two reference articles disagree with each other: one says to go into interviews with a few notes and key ideas instead of written-out questions, while the other says to go in with questions. Who’s correct?

The Techno Glaze

Article: “And Their Eyes Glazed Over” by Joelle Renstrom

Summary:
Professor Joelle Renstrom’s undergraduate students aren’t paying attention in class. Instead, their hands inch toward their cell phones around the 50-minute class’s 30-minute mark, and instead of engaging in chatting and playful banter immediately preceding and following class, their fingers are flying, engaged in text messages and swiping through Internet pages. As a result, she has a no-cell-phone policy within the class; violations—as in phones ringing during class—grant the class a free concert as the student must sing or dance as punishment (it’s in the syllabus). Other forms of technology are just as bad: students with laptops rarely use them to take notes or look at the class’s daily reading; instead, students are engaged in non-class online activities, such as shopping or checking social media. Even students who do take notes on their laptops miss out more than those who write notes by hand.

Distraction equals students missing out on vital information, and technology has made procrastinators out of non-procrastinators and worsened procrastination tendencies for those who already procrastinate. As Renstrom teaches classes on writing and research, she has noticed—and various researchers have shown that—what we read affects how we write. Online materials are geared toward simplistic syntax, and she has noticed the detrimental effects to her students’ grammar, word-processing, and critical-thinking skills. Even when the occasional rare student does make a breakthrough into technology’s harmful effects, that insight washes over the rest of his or her classmates who sit glassy-eyed, already zoned out and tuned back into their little worlds. While Renstrom is forced to embrace technology in the classroom for reasons she enumerates in her article, she is depressed by the detrimental effects it has on the current generation raised by the Internet.

Characters and Their Roles:

  • Joelle Renstrom: protagonist
  • Renstrom’s students (undergraduates at Boston University who are taking classes on writing and research): antagonists who can’t get away from their technology long enough to pay attention in class
  • Studies by various researchers: used to back up her claims (unnamed but out of “So-and-so University” or “Such-and-such Institution”)
  • Theorists: also used to back up her claims
    1. Juan Enriquez: purports that the next iteration of humans, Homo evolutis, is one that can control its own evolution
    2. Amber Case: cyborg anthropologist who argues that we are cyborgs already because although the technology isn’t attached to our bodies, we don’t need to be implanted to be connected and unable to function without it
  • Chris: shy 19-year-old student whose phone rang in class, who busted out, as per the course syllabus policy (that students’ cell phones who ring during class either sing or dance), “Build Me Up Buttercup,” to which the whole class joined in without a cell phone in sight, finally engaging with one another

Photo Package

  • Photo Package Link: “Photo Gallery: Pentatonix Plays at Tulsa’s BOK Center” by Tulsa World, a newspaper based in Tulsa, Oklahoma
  • Why I Chose It: I love Pentatonix, the hottest group in a cappella music today. (They got their start by winning Season 3 of the NBC series The Sing-Off and have gone on to achieve many accolades, including platinum-selling albums, YouTube videos with billions of views, and two GRAMMY awards.) I’m a visual person, so I always enjoy seeing pictures of my favorite musical group! Since this is a journalism class, however, I wanted to stick to a journalistic source.
  • What I Like About It:
    1. The photos are crisp, pristine, and of excellent quality, with clear images and nice bokeh.
    2. There is a mixture of single-person and group shots.
    3. The photographer did well at getting different positions of the singers when doing group shots: some with their heights staggered, some linear.
  • What I Think Could Have Been Stronger:
    1. I would have liked to see the singers interacting more with the audience and the venue (the BOK Center is a multipurpose arena and indoor-sports arena in Tulsa). Basically, I’d like to see the newspaper putting Tulsa’s unique thumbprint on a Pentatonix concert.
    2. I would like to have seen more personality in each photo. As it is, they’re great shots of great singers, but that’s all they are. I’d like to look at a picture or two and say, “Wow, he really captured the essence of Avi there.” Nothing really stood out as saying “This is Pentatonix” from “This is a rock band.” There was also no emphasis on the characteristic that makes them unique: that they are a band with no instruments.
    3. I can tell the photographer was either close to the stage or had an excellent zoom lens, but I would have liked to see more mid-range or wide-angle shots. (As a nature photographer, I’m normally all in for tight shots, but with people I want to get a sense of story that’s better told with a mix of all three distances.) They do so a bit (once they showed most of the stage and part of the monitors and lights above it; I just would like to have seen more.)
    4. Captions on all of the slides mentioning singer Mitch Grassi misspelled his name as Mitch Grass. This is bad, because the story linked to the photo package spelled it correctly. Miscommunication between journalist and photojournalist, and a bad error not caught by the editor.
    5. The phrase a cappella should have been italicized since it is Latin.

Hack Your Way to Scientific Glory

  • Infographic Link: “Hack Your Way to Scientific Glory” is an infographic in the larger article “Science Isn’t Broken; It’s Just a Hell of a Lot Harder Than We Give It Credit For” on FiveThirtyEight.com.
  • Why I Chose It: I’m a scientist, and I love interactive infographics! This had both.
  • What I Liked About It: I loved the fact that it was interactive: I could manipulate the infographic (i.e., data) and it would spit out a different image (i.e., result). Total eye and brain candy.
  • Tufte’s principles used:
    1. Comparisons (Principle 1), because it compared Democrats and Republicans.
    2. Multivariate Analysis (Principle 3), because it analyzed which politicians to include (presidents, governors, senators, and/or representatives), how to measure economic performance (employment, inflation, gross domestic product, and/or stock prices), and other options (factor in power and/or exclude recessions).

CNN Student News Video Podcast, September 20, 2016

  • Podcast Link: CNN Student News, September 20, 2016. (Note: This podcast is produced the day before it airs so that teachers can retrieve it and use it in their lesson plans. Thus, even though it is dated September 20, 2016, I found it on September 19.)
  • Why I Chose It: I’m unfamiliar with podcasts, so I figured I couldn’t go too wrong with one geared toward middle and high school students. This one was a video podcast.
  • What I Liked About It:
    1. I liked the fact that it explained unfamiliar concepts briefly but well. For example, the broadcaster stated the term terrorist cell, and then gave a brief definition (a small group of terrorists) so that his viewers would know what it is. This helps students especially, who may be unfamiliar with concepts and nomenclature we as adults take for granted.
    2. I also like the fact that it took breaks from the narrative by filming (with audio) some nice B-roll elements that supported the story. For example, at one point we hear an off-camera officer shout “Fire in the hole!” three times, each time the scenery panning to a different place on a near-empty bomb range. The final shot (with audio) is of a van exploding in slow motion, a brief shot of music, the approach of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents to the exploded van, and an interview with one of those agents.
  • Interview Segments and Voiceovers: I’m still new to the terminology of podcasts and a Google search was not as revealing as I would have preferred, so I’m going to guess at what what these terms mean.
    1. This podcast had interviews with ATF Trainer Agent Will Creech and ATF Public Information Officer Michael Knight in a segment explaining what ATF agents do in processing a bomb scene; during their interviews, they were sometimes in the shot while at others B-roll footage was creating the visual.
    2. This segment then flashed to the next stage of bomb-scene processing, lab analysis, and the podcast played an interview with forensic scientist Natasha Neel while lab B-roll footage played intermittently.
    3. Then it flashed back to the ATF guys before returning to the broadcaster.

Sandra’s Brainstorming List

Long List: 20 Story Ideas

  1. Why race?
  2. Why raise?
  3. How effective are charity races?
  4. What are the intangible benefits?
  5. How to train and raise simultaneously
  6. What events are most effective?
  7. Who are the big players?
  8. How long does it take?
  9. What draws racers in?
  10. Solo or social?
  11. Three stories to tell
  12. Effect on the community
  13. What’s new in charity racing?
  14. What’s cool in charity racing?
  15. The day-to-day: training and raising funds
  16. In their words
  17. Zeroing in: seeing if Athens has a small operation of a national trend
  18. It all started when…: everyone has a reason to race and raise.
  19. Bruce Wayne: charity racers’ day jobs
  20. Snapshot to silver screen: one person’s story as a microcosm of a larger trend

Short List: Six Paragraphs

  1. Profile:
    • Three stories to tell: I’d like to tell the story of three people: one who began raising charitable funds through exercise not having done either before, one who exercised but at some point starting using it as a conduit to raise funds, and the third a regular giver who raised funds by some other means but one day decided to do it using exercise. What event in their life caused them to make the change?
    • Effect on the community: I’d like to know what impact a certain individual’s charitable racing has had on his or her community. How has the community changed due to the event or someone’s story; how is it currently changing?
  2. Trend:
    • What’s new? I’d like to know what trends are emerging in charitable racing. What is their impact? Do they focus more on the exercise portion, the giving portion, or both?
    • What’s cool? This may or may not go along with the previous one. What things are popular among participants of charity races?
  3. Pick-em:
    • The day-to-day: Corresponding with the behind-the-scenes pick-em, I’d like to see a day in the life (not on race day) for the charity racer. How do they train? How do they raise funds? This could also spill over into an ending of the story detailing the day of the event.
    • Bruce Wayne: In real life, Batman, wasn’t Batman during the day; he was a rich tycoon. Corresponding with the off-the-beaten-path pick-em, who are these charity racers when they’re not racing and raising funds?

Budget Critiques by Sandra

Rush:
I liked this one, mostly because I discovered Rush for myself a couple of weeks ago while visiting Athens Church (they’re in the same parking lot). I didn’t go in – it was closed at the time (late night) – but I’m considering doing so and would even like to take my sister there the next time she visits me in Athens.

I think the author made a good use of Tool 40: Draft a mission statement for your work. He or she gave a good proposal of what he/she proposed to do. As someone who’s interested in visiting the site, I would have actually liked to see all the stuff the author proposed, as well as a first-hand account: I would have liked for the author to have gone in and bounced on the trampolines, somersaulted into the foam pits. That would give it the most tangible edge, in my opinion.

#TheWhoevers, CAPS, and Barre Exam
#TheWhoevers, CAPS, and Barre Exam left much info to be desired. The former was the worst, consisting only of questions. CAPS and Barre Exam do better by presenting an opening problem statement (Barre’s was shorter and definitely lacking), but then both just have questions too. Although the questions asked are relevant, the authors make no game plan on how to go about finding the answers to those questions. Tool 40 needs to make an appearance in all three; without it, these are just questions on a page.

[Indian] Dance Revolution
Tool 40 must be my favorite tonight (I promise I did read the rest!), because it comes up here too. Unlike #TheWhoevers, CAPS, and Barre Exam, [Indian] Dance Revolution has the problem in that it is just a statement: there are no questions or inquiries. In other words, I don’t know what the author wants to solve, and hence what story he or she wants to tell. Need a game plan, folks.

Brainstorming: The Charity Side of Health and Fitness

  1. Why do charity racers race? I’d like to know what motivates individuals to choose health and fitness activities (not necessarily limited to races; they could do Zumbathons, for example) to raise money for charities, as opposed to other activities like bake sales or bingo nights.

  2. Why do racers raise money for charity? The flip side to the above coin, I’d like to know why fitness gurus choose to raise money for charitable causes.

  3. How effective are races for raising charitable funds? Again not limited to racing, I’d like to know — in terms of event cost versus return on investment — how profitable organized fitness activities are at raising charitable funds in comparison with other fund-raising modalities.

  4. Are there any non-financial or intangible benefits to fitness-for-charity events? How do these compare to other fund-raising modalities?

  5. How do racers raise funds while also training for their event? What techniques are better than others for both activities (training and fundraising)?

  6. What are the most effective charity-raising fitness events? Are they the most well known and recurring, or are they obscure ones, like one-time obstacle courses and fun runs? Why?

  7. Who are the big players? Which events and individuals are the best in the business, and what do they do that makes them stand out?

  8. How long does it take? How long does it take participants to train as well as raise funds for a charitable fitness event?

  9. What draws racers to particular events? Are they going for the fun factor with themed races, seeking a race that targets a specific charity, striving to run an iconic or well known race for charitable causes, or is there some other motivating factor?

  10. Solo or social? Do charity racers run races alone or in groups, and why do they choose their favored method?

More Research: The Charity Side of Health and Fitness

Here are five more stories relevant to my beat: the charity side of health and fitness.

  1. “How ACTIVE Employees Are Helping Get Kids in the Game”
    • Author: Scott Brown
    • Date Published: July 21, 2016
    • Summary: This story focuses on a different type of charity: giving children access to extracurricular activities who otherwise would not have the chance to do so. The story tells how ACTIVE partners with nonprofit organization Kids in the Game, lists featured events, and gives a testimonial.

  2. “How Do I Raise Money for Charity While Training for a Race?”
    • Author: Team Women’s Running (non-credited)
    • Date Published: March 20, 2015; Updated March 2, 2016
    • Summary: This post is more of a blog than a story, but it does give very useful info on how to raise money while training for a race, including establishing benchmark goals, being creative with how you engage your audience (and potential donators), and holding a fundraising event or party.

  3. “Top 100 Fundraising Ideas”
    • Author: not listed
    • Date Published: April 4, 2013
    • Summary: This article comes out of the UK, and like the previous one, is more of a blog than a story. The difference with this one is it organizes its top 100 fundraising ideas by Type of Fundraiser. It also includes helpful categories including Easiness Rating, Fundraising Target, and Time Scale.

  4. “In Long Run, Do Charity Races Pay?”
    • Author: Trevor Hughes
    • Date Published: April 8, 2013
    • Summary: This cautionary article from USA Today argues that charity runs may not bring in all the charitable funds they aim or claim to. In fact, many fun runs are “woefully inefficient ways to raise funds,” according to nonprofit rating service Charity Navigator’s Sandra Miniutti, and races and other special events were “the least efficient method of raising money, when you look at dollars raised versus dollars spent,” according to a 2003 study by Indiana University’s School of Philanthropy. Miniutti argues such events are more about brand/charity awareness than fundraising. However, the author does report on better aspects of charity races than simply fundraising, including community goodwill and donor cultivation.

  5. “Charity Running More Competitive Than Ever”
    • Author: Michelle Hamilton
    • Date Published: July 2, 2013
    • Summary: Rather than targeting runners, this article focuses on how charities compete to participate in races, especially big ones like the Chicago Marathon. The story mentions how the Marine Corps Marathon added 30 charities to its roster in 2013, hitting a record high of 131, with 28 more on their waiting list. “In the past, there was one or two” said Marine Corps public relations coordinator Tami Faram. The article goes on to mention the growing field of charity racing, as well as its benefits to charities including developing a revenue stream, increasing public visibility, and strengthening relationships with the communities in which races are hosted.