News 21 is a partnership between 12 universities around the United States, including Arizona State, Berkeley, Columbia, University of Maryland, University of North Carolina, Northwestern, USC, and Syracuse. There are also a number of fellows participating from Harvard, Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas. This partnership steeped in a mission of finding the future of journalism through innovation is sponsored by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education.
According to Jason Manning, managing editor for News21 at ASU, described the initiative as going journalism “in news ways,” both in presentation and reporting.
In order to participate in the program, students take a one-semester seminar, taught by Cronkite faculty member Rick Rodriguez, about the issues they will cover if they are selected for the competitive, ten-week summer program. The seminar brings in experts both inside and outside ASU and provides extensive background on topics the students may cover in depth.
For Manning, the best part of the News21 editor experience was “learning together with our young journalists.” He then summed up the key “lessons learned” throughout the semester before he launched into a deeper explanation of the ASU News21 site itself.
• The first key lesson Manning shared was “get the story first.” He explained that many of the students were tempted to come in with wonderful ideas for application of technology, but lacked any solid story packages to highlight. Manning stressed that there must always be a story “under-girding the work.” He also mentioned the challenges of having to spend time with the people that the group covered, trying to gain their trust and understand their situation.
• Another lesson was that stories had to be “solid, interesting, and relevant” to have a shot at being published under the News 21 name.
• Manning suggested investigative reporting, especially with innovative media work such as News21, should be attempted in teams whenever possible, as evidenced in many of the following stories.
• News organizations should hire good computer programmers and developers, according to Manning. ASU’s technology team consisted of: programmer/developer Caige Nichols, who sill works at ASU on national News21 work; programmer/developer Britton Halle now in the New Media Innovation Lab; and news artist Andrew Long who teaches online media at ASU. They all “sat in the newsroom everyday,” which is necessary for interaction between the technology side and reporting side, in Manning’s eyes.
• Another tip describes how reporters should have a basic knowledge of the limitations and possibilities of technology, including web-based media. The reporters should also understand a reasonable time frame to give a programmer or developer in which to work with creating a story package.
• Another fact more than tip that Manning mentioned is the high demand for journalists with visual skills. He complimented the Cronkite School on their requirements of at least basic photography and videography training for all their students.
• In a digital age, remote tools to meet with each other and collaborate are tempting. Manning suggested that a physical, daily newsroom meeting with the entire staff was crucial, “even though it was like Lord of the Flies some days.”
• Finally, Manning gave a crucial piece of advice: don’t be afraid to fail. He said the team pushed themselves because of their dedication to the mission Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan charged them with – “If all you do is a story good enough for the New York Times, then you’ve failed.”
During his list, Manning also introduced the stories that the reporters themselves would come up and introduce later in the talk. The first story he touched on was David Kempa’s “Crossing Lines,” focusing on a small Southern Mexico town that desperately want to keep its youth at home and away from the dangerous trek into the United States. This town had orchards laden with tropical fruits but not market – the exorbitant prices wholesalers charged to sell the produce left them with little profit, so the spoiled fruit fell to ground in the impoverished village. During his stay, KEMPA found another a man who worked tirelessly to help this town fairly export their crop.
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Next Manning touched on Christine Rogel’s piece; “Changing Policy.” Rogel investigated the E-Verify government program, which is mandatory as of January 1, 2009, in Arizona. She discovered naturalized citizens were at a risk for false flagging, and the system did not have adequate safeguards against identity theft. She also got the views of everyone involved in the debate to create a comprehensive picture: illegal immigrants, business owners, government officials, and politicians.
On the story’s page, Rogel herself gives a brief synopsis of each part of her investigative report in a video format, immediately engaging the reader and providing quick information for the fast pace of the web. Another interesting aspect of her story resulted from the different sections: each section seemed to lend itself well to a certain media. As Rogel said, “content dictates the form.”
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Next was Evan Wyloge’s “Analyzing Amenesty,” which recapped the survey results from the 1986 IRCA act signed by President Ronald Reagan. The reporter focused on one of the towns that felt a huge impact from the law: Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also traveled to Culpepper, Virginia, which is one of the many Midwest, Deep South and Eastern seaboard towns getting a major influx of illegal immigrants.
Wyloge said his major takeaway for the program was the “incredible support system.” While he arrived with a grand plan of trying to explain and solve the immigration debate, the faculty was able to help him focus on one topic. During his research, Wyloge had to go through 6,000 responses to hundreds of questions attached to the IRCA act, which created a “giant” and “daunting” database. After identifying different areas affected by IRCA, Wyloge made preliminary calls but had a gut feeling about Albuquerque and Culpepper. Within his story package, Wyloge mentioned the singer he interviewed that shared an amazing story. Wyloge also mentioned how he identified the people in the Midwest and other areas that do not have a traditional Latino immigrant population “truly feel threatened.” Shortly after the story went online, Wyloge discovered the Department of Homeland Security is planning to consider an amnesty bill beginning next year.
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Our very own JMC 110 graduate assistant Chrystall Kanyuck covered Latinos in the military in “Fighting Battles.” The individuals she and her fellow journalist Chris Cameron covered included a young man who was brought into the country illegally from Mexico as a young child – now his immigration status is preventing him from serving in the military of the country he loves. This story is especially innovative in that the two found Alberto through a Twitter post.
One key of the story was putting a face to all the statistics of Latinos in the military. According to Kanyuck, the team accomplished this by “humanizing all the data you hear.” From a media standpoint, Kanyuck pointed out the unusual typography introduction, a type of programming only artists traditionally use. She said the goal was for the reader to choose his or her own way in which to view content. On the story’s webpage, video and the text of the profile were displayed, as well as picture slideshows and background videos. In total, Kanyuck and Cameron repeated this process for five other soldiers. Despite the hard work, Kanyuck mentioned they had met many “compelling characters” that they were not able to fit into the segment.
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Next was “Building Success,” a solutions-based journalism story by Jeremy Pennycook and Elizabeth Shell that focused on the reasons behind Latinos low statistics in national education, and what people are doing to reverse the trend.
The team narrowed in on web documentary arrangement for their story using multiple media. One of their challenges was the need for data, facts, and empirical evidence, but their refusal to use boring graphs and charts. They turned to the on staff programmer and developer to design a new type of video player that would display their content in a “lean-forward experience.” The new player, which the team intends to turn into open source software for other journalists in the future at layeredmedia.us, uses layers of “extra-value assets” embedded into a video base. According to Pennycook “You have to be part geek, and they have to be part journalist,” referring to the development team.
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The creator of “Traveling Virgin,” Deanna Dent, was unable to attend the event after she took a job at a Florida newspaper. Manning mentioned that at least anecdotally, students who participated in the News21 program were more marketable as a whole. Dent’s piece focused on the proliferation of the image of the Lady Guadalupe. In her research, DENT followed the image to the Philippines and even Japan.
The story package itself is decidedly non-linear, built in Flash with many video embeds. Manning described the video and captioned picture content as organized into “pods” in a “relational framework.” These descriptions pale in comparison to the actual presentation, which is both interactive and surprising. Manning emphasized the amount of work both reports put into the package, as many of the photos and all video are original works.
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In response to questions for the audience, Manning explained that all in-depth stories take time and hard work. He feels that the technology aspect does not make them take noticeably longer than a traditional investigative story package, however.
All these stories, as well as stories from the other 11 alliance schools, can be found at the national site. In addition, all of the schools have their own social media accounts with feeds on their stories, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr account and Vimeo stream.
+A few of the student journalists shared their discovery of ASU’s extensive and helpful music catalog rights.
