Surprising decision: Clarkston chosen for refugee resettlement and sports teams arise in area

Something that surprised me that is tangentially related to sports is how Clarkston, Georgia, is a city essentially made up of refugees and people from other countries. It was interesting how it’s so close to Atlanta, yet many people who have lived in Georgia their entire lives do not know it exists. When I was reporting a story of multiplatform, I found out that the Clarkston High School cross country team is about 90 percent refugees, which surprised me quite a bit and allowed me to fully grasp the demographic makeup of the high school. Then, a week ago I did research on the Fugees Family soccer program also in that area. That sparked a couple questions that I’m curious about looking into: How do sports play a role in refugee resettlement? Are there similar teams in other parts of the United States? And a bigger question about the refugee crisis in general, why Clarkston? I’ve done some research on this in the past, but I’d like to look at this community as a whole and see what led to this decision. I’m also interested to see what the community’s outlook is on sports.

I read this story last week that solely focuses on the Fugees Family and the mission of the team. It also looked into the struggles and pasts of individual members of the team and how that lingers in their day-to-day life in the United States. This article gives a broader look at the city of Clarkston and offered a bit more background information about how this town became a hub for refugee resettlement.

Jerry Sandusky reaction

I was 15 years old when Jerry Sandusky was arrested, and at that point I consumed news mainly in the form of watching nightly TV news with my family. The most vivid memory I have of this case is how upset my mom was over it. She’s very much interested in sports, but she also has a strong moral compass and wants sports to be used as something that can teach children, like me at the time, about life. Obviously, the Sandusky case epitomized the opposite and she was disgusted that a coach could do the things he did.

Reading this coverage was interesting primarily because it repeatedly laid out the timeline of the entire situation. I don’t think I fully grasped the scale of that when I was 15. For me, the most gut-wrenching part of the whole situation is how many people know and the inaction of those individuals. It reminded me of how in Spotlight the abuse in the Catholic Church was described in ways such as people “looking the other way” or that “everyone was just doing their job.” One of the most effectively crafted pieces of these stories was in the fourth article on the site that lists how “McQueary’s eyewitness account became watered down at each stage” as it was passed along to each individual.

In the second story in this series, a mother of one of the victims mentioned how so many other people saw Sandusky as a God. That struck me because it proved how investigative resources need to be used even regarding those who are perceived to be “good people.”

Exploring vox card stacks

I looked through the cards on vox about the war in Syria. It was presented clearly and in a way that helped put individual events into the context of the entire situation. Even though it was about 15 slides long, it felt fairly short. I think that came from how concepts were simple and direct. Perhaps it’s just because I chose to dive into cards on an incredibly complex crisis, but I felt like a lot of facts were mentioned in a short period of time, making it slightly difficult to retain. Because of that, I felt like this particular stack of cards is better to be viewed as a resource to occasionally consult when clarification is needed, rather than as a source you can read once and completely understand.

I like how at the very beginning, the cards gave a brief history of Syria, particularly how French imperialists created the nation’s borders and grouped together ethnically and religiously diverse sets of people. This key piece of background information probably isn’t going to be found in a breaking news story on the civil war or the refugee crisis. Something I didn’t know much about was the Hama massacre in 1982, where the regime learned that “mass violence was the smart response to unrest.” I thought that was a crucial component to understand the current issues in Syria.

After also flipping through some other topics, I like the idea of vox card stacks. It’s simple and easy to use. For me, the best part is that it’s dived into short segments. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost or click away from one page where you have to scroll forever. I also like how the cards incorporated plenty of hyperlinks in case you want to find more information.

Wright Thompson: Journalist I admire

Wright Thompson is one of my favorite sports journalists largely due to how he uses sports as a lens to write about broader world issues. His writing has pushed me to be a better reporter and to relentlessly pursue more sources, more anecdotes and more details. I enjoy how frequently he uses dialogue and describes scenes with characters interacting with people and objects in the space. His writing is exceptional, but I am particularly amazed by his ability to essentially force readers to connect with the emotion experienced by the story’s subject. Thompson writes about humans. Sports is just a lens. And to me, that’s why his work his powerful.

This story from 2013 on Johnny Manziel showed me who Manziel is a person, rather than who he is on the field. The reporting in this story clearly shows the benefits of having great access. How many people would get to spend a day with Johnny Manziel and his dad on a golf course to report a story? Thompson uses that access to find specific details that showcase what Manziel is struggling with. To me, this isn’t about Manziel the football player. This is about Manziel the college student who can’t figure out who he is or who he wants to be.

This story is heavy on dialogue, and I love that. Again, this shows how helpful it is to spend significant time with sources and see them interacting in their environment. It also proves that Thompson pays constant attention while reporting in order to pick out the conversations that best tell the story. I think the ending of this story is one of the strongest endings I’ve ever read. Manziel is no longer the person he was a few years prior, and it’s clear that the pressure and spotlight is becoming detrimental.

One of my other favorite Wright Thompson stories is also about the destructive tendencies of fame. Thompson’s story on Tiger Woods written this spring is the epitome of unyielding reporting. I remember in the ESPN The Mag podcast Thompson said he worked on this for at least 14 months, and that is evident in the final product. He never talked to Woods, and this story could possibly be a more comprehensive look at Woods’ struggles than Woods could have even articulated himself. On top of that, one of the key pieces of Woods’ story was his involvement with the Navy SEALs, perhaps one of the world’s most secretive communities. The number of sources needed to make this story work was insane. But that type of reporting is what brought this so far above just a typical, well-written feature.

Thompson clearly pulled on every thread that even had the potential to lead to more pieces of the story. I feel like this all stems from him simply wanting to get the story right. It would have been easy to run a story about how Woods spent significant time with Navy SEALs, but that’s not the full story. Thompson explores how this obsession comes from Woods’ deeply rooted grief after the death of his father. The detail throughout the story is unreal. Just as one example, Thompson identifies the book about physics in Woods’ car after the wreck. Later in the story, he connects a piece of that book to a struggle in Woods’ life. That’s great reporting, and that’s certainly the type of reporter I aspire to be.