Samantha Piper

A study of duality, Samantha Piper

By: The Class
Samantha Piper, 21, grew up in Marietta, Georgia. With its kitschy shops and abysmal traffic, Samantha calls Marietta a typical Atlanta suburb. She said it was quite varied, however, with areas of the city ranging from containing slums to Stepford Wives. With the location giving residents access to quality schools and downtown Atlanta, Piper said that Marietta also allowed for individuality and privacy too, and she was able to experience both rich and poor cultures. Her favorite place was a specific park that she watched grow over the years.

Piper originally wanted to go out-of-state for college but realized she couldn’t afford it. She ultimately chose UGA because  she knew she wanted to focus her studies around writing and thought Georgia offered the best writing programs.

Piper’s favorite and best-written work is a piece that she wrote for a Women’s Studies course about transgender groups and the media. This is her favorite work to date because it allowed her to immerse herself in a new community. “I am a big fan of research, so I loved learning how to use the right language and be inclusive,” Piper said. “It really helped me understand how to properly use sensitive language and it was very intersectional.”

Hunter S. Thompson, who was a journalist in the 70s and 80s for Rolling Stone is one of Piper’s favorite journalist. Thompson created Gonzo Journalism, where he inserted himself into the article and where the creative of the story matters over facts. It’s very bizarre.

Piper’s favorite book is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. This enthralling tale is about a woman who, after enduring a troubled childhood, meets a man who sweeps her off her feet. But, he is not what he may seem. This psychological thriller takes place in the Jane Austen era, teaches lessons of independence and putting ones self first. It contains incredible word choice and flow, which is why Samantha loves it so much.

The most meaningful advice Piper has gotten is “something is better nothing”. Piper self-identifies as a perfectionist, but this phrase taught her to at least try and get something done even you think it is not good or perfect. She got this advice from a very close friend last year.

Piper is a fourth year but speculates that she will most likely be adding another semester onto her time at UGA. When she first came to the university, she wanted to pursue music journalism. “I really thought that was my big calling”, she says. But as she got further into the music side of journalism, she realized that she didn’t care for the heavy deadlines and concrete writing, saying she preferred more creative freedom than her major allowed. “The more I got into it, the more I realized I wanted to do… probably radio or magazine.” Piper believes that her career now is more headed “into [an] abstract space of creative production using communications hopefully in radio”.

Samantha savors dualities she finds at UGA and the Athens community as well as those between Athens and its surrounds.   These include emphases on sports as well as academics at the school, pockets of downtown culture versus rural countryside, and relative liberalism of Athens within a traditionally conservative state.  Piper will miss the richness of these dualities after leaving UGA in December of 2017.

Piper uses both a recorder and a notebook while interviewing. Her radio experience has made her appreciate how using a recorder causes you to examine your speech patterns and otherwise phrase things more coherently, and also appreciates the accuracy ensured by their use. However, she maintains that “you remember details better when you’re writing them down,” and thus likes to write down key phrases, spellings, and physical reactions that a recorder does not capture.

“I’d like to be out of Athens,” said Piper when visualizing where she would be in 5 years. She hopes to have graduated and moved on, joking that otherwise, she would be stuck in Athens forever. “I would hopefully see myself moving to Chicago.” Piper said that she has always wanted to live in the north where it’s colder. She mentioned that in addition to the cool weather, moving to Chicago would allow her to be closer to her family. As for her job, Piper is stuck between wanting to work for a magazine or radio station. At this current time, she writes pieces that can work for both career paths until that decision needs to be made.

Hailey Nelson

Take the answer you got from Hailey to the question you were assigned during the second class meeting. Write a sentence with that answer that follows coherently from what your classmates (and I) have added.

Question 1: Where did you grow up, and what’s special about it? (I, Sandra, never saw Hailey in class, so I did not get to ask her this question.)

Nathan Hutto

Nathan Hutto, 23, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Ate the age of six, his family moved ito Dacula, Georgia. Nathan’s forebears and extended family founded and live in Hutto, Texas, about 30 miles from Austin, which ironically is the small town to which his classmate, Sandra McGill, evacuated when Hurricane Ike struck southern Texas in September 2008. He felt isolated by Dacula’s rural surroundings. His friends from school would hang out together in the evenings and on the weekends, but neither he nor his brother were able to do so because they lived on the opposite side of town, about a 30-minute drive away. This isolation created a close bond between his brother and him, as they often only had each other as playmates.

Nathan applied to multiple prestigious colleges, including Wakeforest, Washington & Lee, and Princeton, in addition to UGA. He was waited-listed for Princeton but opted not to remain in limbo waiting on a final acceptance. He toured Washington & Lee, finding the Roanoke campus beautiful but overall too isolated. He was ultimately swayed by the University of Georgia’s cheaper in-state tuition thanks to the Zell Miller scholarship and the surrounding town of Athens.

His favorite and best written work to date is a letter that he wrote to his parents. He is proud of it because he was able to succinctly communicate his position and because he was able to defend it well.

Tom Stoddart is Nathan’s favorite journalist. Stoddart is a photojournalist who almost exclusively shoots in black and white, and Nathan feels the moments he has captured in his 38 year career are some of the most moving images in modern journalism.

Nathan’s favorite book is On Writing by Stephen King. While this is not one of King’s typical horror novels, Nathan believes it is one of the most profound pieces he’s ever read. He thoroughly enjoyed King’s incredible insight on what it means to be a writer and what it truly takes if one wants to excel in his or her craft.

In five years, Nathan would like to have completely paid off his student loans and be working a fulfilling job that gives back to his community.

Nathan reflects on college years as offering a “window of opportunity” to develop as a student and emerging professional.  He will miss the flow of announcements to his email inbox about internships and jobs but looks forward to self-starting some new endeavors after leaving UGA.

A fifth year student, Nathan started his college journey with the hopes of becoming an EMT. However, after taking chemistry which he describes as being a “miserable experience”, he switched majors to journalism because he says “I’ve always been a decent writer” and that his mother was a magazine journalism major. He would like to see where the skills that he has learned at Grady take him, and find his niche later on.

Nathan prefers to use a recorder while interviewing. A recorder preserves his source’s exact words, which helps him avoid even accidental misrepresentation while writing.

While he doesn’t remember the source, he believes the best advice he’s ever heard is “When things suck, love more.” If everyone retreats into themselves and becomes defensive, no one can open up to healing or improvement.

The worst course Nathan has ever taken while at UGA was his Chemistry 1101 class. Though it was an intro Chemistry class, the professor proved extremely unhelpful time and time again, basically refusing to answer Nathan’s questions even when asked directly.

Lisa Fu

Lisa Fu, 20, grew up in Alpharetta, Georgia. She is currently a junior at the University of Georgia majoring in journalism and economics.

Because Alpharetta is so close to the University of Georgia, Lisa said that a lot of her classmates are or have been Bulldawgs. She also said that the city’s high growth rate during her childhood meant that the increasing number of occupants drove Alpharetta to experience more cultural diversity and an appreciation for the arts. Alpharetta’s main attractions included a stellar education system, upper middle-class lifestyle, lots of books on hand, and cultural richness. Despite being a second-generation American, Lisa said her Asian-American parents were not the stereotypical “tiger parents” who control their children’s activities and push them to excel. Nonetheless, Lisa made wise decisions with her life and has found her own success by pushing herself internally. “You drive yourself” to succeed, Lisa said.

In the fourth grade, Lisa encountered the worst class she’s ever experienced. The teacher, Mrs. Waller was a “micromanager who couldn’t organize”, assigning intensive monthly book reports only to loose a good portion of them due to an ineffective filing system.

Attending Alpharetta High School, where going to University of Georgia was the norm, made Lisa initially hesitant to attend the in-state college. Lisa originally didn’t want to attend UGA. She knew she couldn’t afford to go out of state and needed to take advantage of the HOPE scholarship. She ultimately decided on the University of Georgia because of the Grady College of Journalism’s reputation. Still, she was reluctant.

“I was originally like, I guess I’ll go there [to UGA]. But it really grew on me during my freshman year.” Lisa started to appreciate how down to earth everyone was and how much individual attention her professors paid to her. She feels as though she has been offered opportunities at UGA that she never would’ve experienced elsewhere.

“I actually didn’t have too many career goals when I came here,” Lisa says. She knew that UGA had a good journalism program and knew that she enjoyed writing, so she applied to Grady. “I wanted to make a difference in someone’s life and I thought that the best way to do that was through being a journalist.” Since, she has taken up an economics degree and has discovered that she thoroughly enjoys writing about numbers and that she more enjoys solely economics. Fu is now considering working for a central bank or being an analyst. Fu believes that she has opened more doors for herself since she began at UGA. “I never thought that I would do [it] but I’m actually thinking about doing [corporate] analysis,” she says.

With just 2 years left, Lisa said she will miss its lively social atmosphere, ease in making connections, and the support of professors.  She expects to graduate in May 2018.

Lisa’s favorite and best written work is an article that she wrote about a homeless woman in Athens and her constant struggle to remain afloat against seemingly uncontrollable circumstances. This is her favorite piece because it allowed her to connect with her community and make a real difference in the life of someone else. These stories are the real reason Lisa decided to pursue journalism.

After a bit of experience writing with the Red&Black, Lisa learned that she prefers using a recorder while interviewing. She feels that in addition to maintaining accuracy and allowing her to avoid paraphrasing, using a recorder allows her to capture nuances of people’s voices that she could not capture using a notebook.

Sherman Alexie, a Native American writer, is Lisa’s favorite author. He is a minority and he talks a lot about being a minority in his own land. He talks about tough issues like poverty, parenting and alcoholism. He makes them comical so that when you’re reading you want to laugh and cry. He talks a lot about irony, in one of his books the main character plays basketball for a team called “The Indians,” and he is Indian so it was written with a lot of irony.

Lisa’s favorite book is actually a literary collection of poems by Sarah Kay. Titled No Matter the Wreckage, this collection is a beautiful series of inspirational poems about life and love. Lisa loves this work because of the author’s voice; her childlike curiosity about the world touched and inspired Lisa on an emotional level.

The most meaningful advice Lisa has gotten is “pursue your passions, don’t worry about the end goal. ” She got this from her father when she was 16. Her father encouraged her to try hard to do what she really love and don’t worry about whether the job can make money or not. “Most people are lazy, so if you work hard, you will get something. ” Her father said.

 

 

Rachel Cohen

Rachel Cohen, 21, grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina with her parents and her older brother, Michael. Her favorite thing about her hometown does not have to do with the actual city of Raleigh, but rather that she was the first generation of her family to be raised in the South. Upon moving to North Carolina in 2001, shortly after finishing 1st grade, she integrated into the southern way of life through public schooling, girl scouts and being surrounded by many children who had lived there for their entire lives. Her parents, both of which were raised in Pittsburgh, PA, were northern parents raising southern children.

“It was a great childhood, we all learned things together. Now my family definitely considers ourselves southern.”

Reading and writing has always been a big part of Rachel’s life, even in here childhood. From reading her first memorable novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, to collecting every magazine she could get her hands on throughout high school, it is no surprise that she finds herself a senior Journalism major in The Grady College.

Rachel was drawn to the University of Georgia for both its social and academic atmosphere. She immediately fell in love with downtown Athens, the lively social scene and the Grady College of Journalism. After Rachel witnessed a close family friend’s positive experience ahead of her at UGA, she knew the University was the right choice for her. Before leaving for Freshman year, Rachel received the most valuable advice she had ever gotten. Her old brother advised her have an open mind while meeting people and to give everyone a fair shot. Whether they be in your classes, dorm or even sorority, “the people that you meet over the next four years will be some of your best friends and they will teach you so much, if you let them.”

Rachel has found herself reflecting on the infamous Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as she started her writing career. She loved this book because, as the first in the series, it portrayed a child-like innocence and introduced the characters that the world fell in love with. The Harry Potter series was a staple in Rachel’s childhood because it served as something her family bonded over. It was the first novel that impacted Rachel’s passion for reading and writing.

Although writing was always an interest, Rachel started out as an advertising major at UGA. She enjoyed the introductory classes, but when she learned that Grady offered a concentration in magazine journalism, she quickly changed paths.

“I’ve always been fascinated by magazines… I have stacks and stacks of all my old magazines at my house.”

After beginning the magazine journalism, she thought she would write feature stories in magazines, but after taking magazine management, she believed that this might be the best track for her. She feels like she will have multiple careers over the course of her professional life. She would love to still work with magazines, but she will be happy applying the skills she has learned in Grady to any career she does.

Blogging has been a large part of Rachel’s writing experience, and her favorite piece of writing is her blog from her year abroad living in Israel. The blog allowed her to think critically about the events happening in the country that she was living in, and now she can look back and remember her exact thoughts from that time in her life. Rachel has generally preferred to use a notebook while interviewing and writing stories, although she has not written anything that required an extensive interview. She likes to be able to jot down her own notes on what the person is saying, e.g. “great ending” or “ask more about this.”

Throughout Rachel’s academic career at UGA, she asserts that the worst course she encountered was an English Advanced Composition Writing, a class she expected to thoroughly enjoy with her predilections towards writing. Despite a competent and kind professor, the class lacked structure and planning, leaving Rachel feeling stressed and at a loss of how to correctly complete the assignments.

Now that Rachel is a fourth year, she has thought about her future and what she will miss most about living in Athens and being a student at UGA. Rachel said that there will be so much to miss about UGA after she graduates in May. A sense of freedom in being a student and the camaraderie of friends were primary among those while internship experiences have provided a bridge to explore next steps and the work culture.

Her five year plan is still unclear, but she knows she wants to be working in a job she enjoys going to everyday. She emphasized the importance of enjoying one’s job, but didn’t specify a particular field. Rather, her focus was on being able to use the skills she learned in school to grow as a person. During this past summer, she worked for a company that made her realize the importance of having a passion for the organization that one works for.

“I didn’t care about the work personally, and that made going into the office everyday a little bit harder.”
When she worked for a company that she cared about last semester, she felt excited to go to work, a feeling she hopes to have in the future.

Katherine Cline

Cline’s race is long, but she’s excited to start

By THE CLASS

Katie Cline, 20, grew up in North Carolina from ages 1 to 7, San Antonio, Texas from ages 7 to 17, and Georgia from age 17 to the present. Since she spent the bulk of her childhood in San Antonio, she has fond memories of her life spent there. Cline says its Mexican influence and distinct Tex-Mex culture made the city very special and culturally rich. However, she quickly formed a deep attachment to Columbus and Athens, Ga, the towns she now calls home.

Since she was little, Cline always wanted to attend the stereotypical SEC college. Her first impression of the University of Georgia, with its oak trees, white columns, and football mania, was one of an idealized college ripped right from the scenes of a movie. Georgia was large enough to give her the experience of being a “small fish in a big pond”, with the added benefit of offering in-state tuition; it was exactly what she had always wanted for her college experience.

When she arrived at UGA, she began writing for the Opinions section of the Red & Black Newspaper to help spur her journalistic writing efforts. Cline says that she prefers to use a recorder while interviewing. This allows her to focus on her subject and their conversation rather than focusing on transcribing their every word. Her favorite piece of writing is a Georgia College Press Association award-winning article that she wrote for The Red & Black, titled “Mayday Black Friday.” She enjoyed working on this piece because she valued the creative freedom she had when writing it. Through her love of writing, Cline pursued an English minor and thus encountered an English after 1700 course that she says was the worst class she had ever taken. The professor gave long, expansive lectures in a monotonic voice that left Cline falling asleep, even when seated in the front row.

In addition to her journalistic writing exploits, Cline has a large place in her heart for fictional writing and wishes to work in the publishing industry as an editor. Nick Hornby, who wrote her favorite book, A Long Way Down, is her favorite author. His British personality shine through his writing in his blunt and sarcastic way of incorporating dark humor into his work. Cline says that his writing feels real in this way, even though it is fictional. “The plot is twisted and hilarious,” she says.

When she imagines her life five years from now, Cline says that “the goal is to be at a publishing house.” She thinks a moment and adds, “the overall goal is to be an editor.”

However, Cline admits that becoming an editor takes some time. According to her estimation, one must work as an editorial assistant for three to five years. After clarifying that the publishing house would be working with fictional works, Cline pauses to think. She said she envisions herself perhaps living in an apartment with her boyfriend, but adds that marriage would be a bit soon for that point in her life. Ideally, she wants to be married around the age of 28.

At this stage in life, however, Cline enjoys living in Athens and being a UGA student, particularly for the sense of home she has established here.  Cline’s experience at the Oxford study abroad program last Spring inspired an appreciation for adventure and pushing one’s self beyond one’s perceived limits which she believes will hearten her endeavors beyond graduation.

The most meaningful advice Cline has gotten is from an essay written as a hypothetical commencement address by columnist Mary Schmich. The short essay goes deeply into small but meaningful pieces of advice about how to live a happy and deeply moving life. “Wear Sunscreen” as the essay has been nicknamed has gotten her through a variety of tough times since she first read it back in her junior year of high school. Cline has been diagnosed with anxiety and finds that her favorite line in the essay says, “the race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself.” Many of the short, well written lines from “Wear Sunscreen” have become daily mantras for her.

Brianna Blackman

Take the answer you got from Brianna to the question you were assigned during the second class meeting. Write a sentence with that answer that follows coherently from what your classmates (and I) have added

Question 1: Where did you grow up, and what’s special about it? Brianna Blackman, 23, grew up all over the place, but most prominently in Killeen, Texas, and Fayetteville, Georgia. Brianna was a military “brat” (of course she’s not a brat, though!), her father making a career in the Army and her mother serving in the Air Force. Brianna remembers Killeen, Texas most fondly because she met many of her best friends there. Her family relocated to Fayetteville, Georgia upon her dad’s retirement from the Army, and she lived there for 10 years. Due to the transient nature of her living arrangements, Brianna said she was never able to form deep connections with others. As a result, she wants to stay in one place as an adult, somewhere on the west coast because she hasn’t lived there yet.

Q #2 Why did you decide to attend UGA?
Brianna was drawn to UGA for a number of reasons: the versatility of majors, the excellent academic reputation, in-state tuition, an active social and Greek life, and the football team (she’s not a huge football fan, but couldn’t image college life without it.)

After graduating in May, Brianna will miss her involvement with Impact, a UGA organization for social justice.

5. Brianna’s favorite and best written work to date is an article that ran in UGAzine about an Athfest half-marathon runner and his reasons for running, as well as his method of preparing for races. She is especially proud of this piece because she saw it through to the end and it was published.

6. What is your favorite book and why? Brianna’s favorite book is The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. As one of the first books she read all the way through in high school, Brianna loves this novel because of her ability to resonate with the main character.

3. What were your career goals when you started and how have they changed since? When she began UGA, Brianna was hoping to pursue accounting. “I can do that, I like math… [I can be] rich,” she says, laughing. But she said she hated it and switched her major “about eight times, to be honest,” she says. She says she started by imagining what was going to be the best option for her financially, whereas now, she is looking at what career will make her the most happy. After soul-searching, Brianna realized that she wants to go into student affairs and college life because being apart of organizations has become a very big part of who she is. “It went from business to more touchy-feely stuff.”

13.   After graduating in May, Brianna will miss being involved with Impact, a UGA organization for social justice.

J.K. Rowling is Brianna’s favorite author. She likes her so much because of the impact she’s had on other people’s lives. People have gone through so much through her writings and the connectivity there is around the series is amazing. At the end of the day there are negative houses but you can also bring out the positives in it, makes Brianna respect what she’s done.

14. Brianna prefers to use a recorder while interviewing. She finds that her notes are often hard to decipher after the fact, as people tend to “talk faster than [she] can write,” so she prefers to be able to listen to the audio again later if she needs to.

8. “I see myself in 5 years, probably in a student affairs position in a liberal arts college,” Brianna Blackman said. “I like the idea of going out west somewhere.” Blackman has been looking at different liberal arts colleges for a master’s degree.  A college in Illinois caught her eye, and she plans on staying in the area and writing. She hopes that durign that time, one of her screenplays might be picked up for a movie.

7. What’s the most meaningful advice you’ve ever gotten?

The most meaningful advice Brianna has ever gotten is “once you know someone’s story, you can’t help loving them. ” This phrase helps her to have a deep understanding of other’s story and makes her appreciate people more. “Even I think someone is terrible, they may have other parts of personalities that I might like. There may be reasons why they are acting this way,” she said, “maybe it’s because they’ve been hurt before. ” She learned this phrase at an orientation organized by the Center for Leadership and Service in UGA.

12. The worst class Brianna Blackman encountered was a required Marine Science course she was initially eager to take, but soon the class took a turn for the worst. The course largely focused on water and mapping its flow around the world. Blackman claims she could never stay awake in the class and was only fully conscious during one of the projects.

Kelcey Caulder

Kelcey Caulder, 21, was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, but moved to Georgia at age 10. In Lumberton, she grew up in her grandmother’s house near the beach, and spent a lot of time on the sand and in the surf. She still considers her grandmother’s house to be “home” and makes an effort to visit as often as she can.

Despite her love of the beach and Tar Heels basketball, Kelcey made the decision not to move back to North Carolina following high school. Instead, she opted to attend Reinhardt University, a small private college in the Canton area, where she hoped to obtain a degree in Public Relations. It was at Reinhardt that Kelcey’s love for journalism was found and fostered into something all-consuming. She joined the college’s student newspaper, The Hiltonian, and spent many late nights fighting with her best friend and co-editor, Meagan Hurley, about which stories should run on A1. During her sophomore year, Kelcey decided that while she loved Reinhardt and the community, she was not getting the best preparation for her career. The college only offered two courses in Journalism and she was no longer satisfied with the idea of getting a PR degree. So, with the hope of learning from and among the best and brightest, Kelcey transferred to the University of Georgia. Now, she hopes to have a career in digital or print political reporting.

Kelcey spent the majority of this past summer on Baxter Street in Athens, working for The Red & Black as the newspaper’s Digital Producer. When she wasn’t busy embedding tweets and creating visually appealing online pieces, however, she did manage to take a mini-vacation to New York City to visit one of her oldest and closest friends, Cameron Stewart.  The two romped about the city, enjoying deliciously intoxicating desserts at TipsyScoop, an ice cream shop on Park Avenue that specializes in alcoholic yummies during the day and watching Broadway shows in the evenings.  One of her favorite memories of this trip was having the opportunity to meet (re: stalk) Lin-Manuel Miranda outside of the Richard Rodgers Theatre. He signed her copy of the Hamilton soundtrack and thanked her for her over-the-top fangirling. Unfortunately, he was not so impressed as to provide tickets for the show.

When conducting interviews, Kelcey prefers to use a recorder. This ensures that she can report her subjects’ words exactly as they spoke them, and the audio from these interviews can, with permission from subjects, be used to create interesting audio elements for stories.

Kelcey’s favorite written works to date were several pieces that she wrote during her time as an intern at the Student Press Law Center in Washington, DC. These pieces are some of her favorites because they allowed her to mix advocacy and journalism to help ensure that student voices continue to be heard across the nation.

As a journalist, Kelcey firmly believes that reading well leads to writing well. Her favorite book is a popular classic among millennials: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling, her favorite author. She adores this book because she feels as though she grew up alongside the characters and because it, more so than any of the other installments in the Potter series, is the most interesting and action-packed. In her opinion, the stories included in this and the other books in the series are good reads because they teach useful and inspiring lessons about friendship, bravery and the dangers of discrimination. Kelcey admires Rowling’s other works for similar reasons and admires her as a person because of her advocacy for institutionalized children.

The most meaningful advice that Kelcey has ever received she was given to her by her mentor and and high school dance team coach, Melinda Kinsey. Melinda instructed Kelcey to “live a life worth writing about” and to stop worrying so much about always pleasing others. Kinsey fully believed, and encouraged Kelcey to believe, that while considering others matters, lives are meant to be lived by the people that they belong to—and not necessarily to please the people that they don’t. For Kelcey, who truly dislikes making decisions for fear of letting others down, this lesson has proven vital in making many difficult choices in her life.

In five years, Kelcey sees herself working in audience engagement or political reporting in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. That said, she is not looking for anything too permanent at the moment. “I want to be able to move around for the foreseeable future and not be too linked to one particular job or area,” said Caulder.

Audience engagement, Kelcey’s preferred job of choice for the next several years, is a relatively new addition to the journalism field. According to her, it is a very important and growing area that uses many of the skills students at Grady College develop through the New Media Institute. Likely tasks include working with reporters and sections to find opportunities to develop readership, usually by integrating social platforms into newsrooms and creating branded content for publications, particularly for live events.

In December, Kelcey will finally walk under the Arch as a fully-grown Bulldog and she couldn’t be more excited. While she is sad to know that Saturdays in Athens won’t ever be quite the same for her, she is looking forward to putting all of her hard work to use in the big city.

Module 3: Research

Introduction: Knowledge is rarely just a Google away. You need to be able to find stories and sources from social media, from official online sources, and from previous stories, many of which are hidden in online databases.

Learning objectives:

  • Use social media to find experts and people engaged in your beat both locally and globally.
  • Use the Web to find news sites, organizations, and previous stories written about your beat.
  • Use news databases to find archival stories about your beat.

Steps to completion:

Background:

  • Watch this video about doing database research:
  • Find three older stories (pre-2013) from your beat using Lexis-Nexis and/or NewsBank. Write a blog post summarizing the stories and they are interesting or relevant today using the appropriate category and the tag “old stories” by August 31.
  • Find a total of 10 sources (individuals, local experts, national experts) on social media and embed their profiles in a blog post on your beat vertical using the appropriate category and the tag “social media” by Sept. 2
  • Find five organizations (news media, think tanks, nonprofits, businesses, local government, etc.) producing information useful and relevant for your beat. Post links (use hyperlinks, don’t paste in URLs) using the appropriate category and the tag “organizations” by Sept. 2.

Reflective:

  • Class discussion August 30: Research scavenger hunt and categories
  • Class discussion September 1: Interviews and story brainstorming

Exploratory

  • Follow-up research: Find five more stories from any time period relevant to your beat as you define it. Summarize them in a short blog post in your beat vertical using the tag “more research” by Sept. 5.
  • Come up with at least 10 story ideas for your beat and list them in one-sentence summaries in a blog post on your beat vertical titled “brainstorming” by Sept. 5.

Module 4: Story ideas and budgets

Introduction:

The process of coming up with story ideas is a combination of working in your head and working the beat itself to learn about the stories in the world. We develop wild and vague ideas, do research and reporting to see whether there’s “anything there,” and go out and report them. A budget is a list of stories that explains what the story is about, summarizes what’s been written about it in the past, and how you plan to go about reporting it, i.e. who you’ll talk to and what challenges you might find.

Learning objectives:

  • Brainstorm potential story ideas
  • Refine ideas into solid stories
  • Develop budget and work plan for each story.

Steps to completion:

Background:

  • Clark, part IV, especially tools 40-46
  • Check out these student budget proposals and using Clark’s suggestions to offer three ideas that would make them better in a Module 4 post with the tag “budget critiques” by Sept. 7
  • Brainstorming list:
    • Expand your brainstorming list to at least 20 story ideas for your beat. These can be one sentence or even a sentence fragment
    • Of those 20, take six that fit the assigned story categories (2 per category) and expand them into a full paragraph explain what the story is about and what local people or organizations are involved in them.
    • Put both the big list and the small list in a post on your beat page with the appropriate category and the tag “brainstorming list” by Sept. 7.

Reflective:

  • Class discussion Sept. 6: Issue blog post, budget readings, sample budgets
  • Class discussion Sept. 8 Discussing brainstorming lists; provide written feedback by Friday evening, Sept. 9.
  • Sept. 13: Budget conferences (sign up here)
  • Sept. 15: Budget conferences (sign up here)

Exploratory

  • Budget for A and B choices for profile, news analysis and pick-your-own stories. Put in a Dropbox Paper doc and send to me by Sept. 12
  • Revise budget following story conferences.