Assignment #4:

Advanced Reporting & Data Analysis
Jour 405V Sec. 7, Spring 2018
Assignment #4: Interviews
Due 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, March 28. Post on WordPress
Write a 500-word news story based on an interview with a person classified as working poor in Northwest Arkansas.

Consider diversity in race and occupations when selecting your interview subject.
Illustrate this post with the following:

1. A photo of your interview subject. Pay attention to background, lighting and composition.
2. Use a professional Zoom recorder to gather and produce a 30-second – maximum 2 minute audio clip from your interview. Introduce your subject and the context of the interview, like you would hear on a podcast. Gather background or ambient sound of the workplace. Mix this and embed this in the blog post.

Additional Material for Graduate Students:

Interview a second person, meaning you are interviewing two people in total. The second interview has a photo and an audio clip, as described above. No graphics needed for the second interview.

Everyone:

Post the interview, graphic and photo in a single blog post, weaving them together to tell the story of your interview subject. Follow a news story format and follow AP style. This is due 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, April 11. Post on WordPress

Assignment #5. Final Production of Stories. Due May 3.

Complete the punch list of tasks to improve stories, photos, graphics; make revisions based on editing.

Assignments will be on the “Punch List” post on the class blog beginning April 5. This list will be updated weekly as we enter final production.

Participate in design and production of website for final class project. Work in teams if so assigned.

Organize Our Project

–What are the common themes?

–Which are the strongest stories so far? What makes them strong?

–How should we present these stories on a web page for publication?

Feedback

Did you tell your kids to get photos of the subject looking at the camera, or did they just do that instinctively? That would be an interesting dialogue to have. My first job was at a community newspaper. We had one photog who was stretched. By about week 7 I was going around with a point and shoot, taking my shots back to him and getting his advice. My style and skill went up from there. I almost never take photos of people looking at the camera now even though I’m a one-man operation. I ask them to act natural, do what they would do if I wasn’t there. The NYT frequently publishes shots of subjects looking out at the page at the reader (taken, of course, by hotshot photographers, not their writers). In other words, it can be a choice.

….

Honored and enthusiastic to be a part of this ….

Bobby Ampezzan

Managing Editor | Arkansas Public Media

5820 Asher Ave. Ste. 400

(501) 569-8489

ArkansasPublicMedia.org

Natural State News with Context

Fact Check

Attached is a spreadsheet for the fact checking process. Please put the name, email and phone number of the people you spoke to on this list. I will be contacting them and sending a few quotes to make sure everything is ok. I do this on major projects and rarely have any issues – the people we interview really appreciate the follow-up.

Editing Punch List

Andrew Epperson and Philip Sais audio.
–Question for Epperson on the Sais graphic – bar musicians
–re-edit the photo and crop it tighter

Ann Johnson, Chris Paff
–edit graphic, eliminate legend – measure names.
–update data for 2017.

Mary Kerr
–bring in the audio files, fix audio for Cathy Lee

Katie Serrano
1) Dana Ralpho
–Wage she earns at Wendy’s
–Audio clip
–More detail about her situation. This story is very brief and incomplete

2) Renee Smith
–increase in pay reference – what was that? explain
–Audio still doesn’t work.
–Photo needs cropping
–Fix graphic. Just display average annual wage

Elisabeth Butler
Abigail Jobst: Not sure where she is working (Grubs?), how much she making and if they remain in poverty status if Zeballos is back to work making $50,000?

Finished Drafts So Far

Graduate School Orientation

by Camilla Shumaker | Jan 7, 2019

Class 11 – April 5