My name is Hermon Negash and I am a senior at the University of Arkansas and I am majoring in journalism. I was born in Los Angeles, California to two wonderful parents, Zaid and Theodrose. They are immigrants from Eritrea, a tiny country in East Africa. I also have an older brother who’s name Philmon. We spent all the time in the world together since we shared a room in our days in California. We moved to a small suburb about 20 miles east of Dallas called Rockwall when I was 11 years old and that is where I grew up.

My main hobby is definitely basketball. Being from Los Angeles, I am a die hard Lakers fan. My fandom didn’t blow up until I moved to Texas. In my little bubble in Los Angeles, everyone was a Laker fan so I assumed that the whole world liked the Lakers. It wasn’t until I moved to Texas that I realized that people outside of LA despise the Lakers. I found journalism through my love for basketball. When searching for my major, I learned the important lesson of doing what you love. I knew I loved basketball; I also knew I wasn’t going to make it to the NBA. My next best option was talking about the sport I love, which was also something I loved to do. I wrote for the Traveler last semester covering the Razorbacks men’s basketball and had a great time. My favorite article I’ve written is split between my first article and an article I wrote after a Razorback and Aggie basketball game last year. The postgame article on the Aggie game wasn’t my greatest writing but my first press conference interaction with Coach Anderson will be a story I tell my children.

My experience with data does not go very far. My father is an account for Cedar Sinai, a hospital in California, but he works from home in Texas. I was always intimidated when I walked past his computer. He always has over 10 Excel spreadsheets open in which he is dealing with multi-million dollar accounts. I never bothered to ask him how he was doing what he was doing.

http://www.uatrav.com/sports/article_4f5f2ebe-e1bd-11e6-b055-1bfbb3a837e9.html

http://www.uatrav.com/sports/article_e3b63506-f989-11e6-bce9-57e608e47193.html

Observations: There is a typo in the third paragraph of the section ‘What This Book Is’ in the ‘Front Matter’ chapter

Questions: Do you believe that data journalism will be used to help aid stories or become the story?