This morning, I had a wonderful conversation with Dan Kane, an investigative journalist from the News & Observer. We talked a lot about research, how he gets leads and contacting various public officials. First, Mr. Kane explained the importance of documents to me, saying that “documents can’t lie, people can”. He recommended trying to find documents that explain what’s going on in clear way, with concrete evidence. He also advised me to record everything when interviewing people so you have the information to refer back to verbatim for later. Second, we talked about how he finds topics to write an article on. He says he gets ideas from anonymous tips through social media, email or letters. An example of a tip that got him a huge story was when someone told him about the position of “house historian”, where someone was getting paid for a job and never coming into the NC legislature to do anything. After more research, he found that this woman was originally in charge of the page program(a program for high schoolers to learn more about the state legislature), but that she was housing the teens with her son who was a convicted felon with a history of drug use. Quietly, the NC speaker of the house moved her to a new position as to not cause any type of scandal. Another way that Mr. Kane finds stories is through what he likes to call “triggers”, when he notices something and figures there’s more than meets the eye. His four “triggers” are 1. money 2. risk 3. power and 4. secrecy. Finally, we talked about the importance of the balance between being aggressive and assertive when talking to public officials. He told a story of when he was communicating with the department of revenue after hearing they were keeping money from taxpayers who had accidentally overpaid. They refused to give him any information or relevant documents because it was supposedly illegal to share taxpayer information. However, after reading the statue he was sent, Mr. Kane pushed back and pointed out that this was only in the case of individual information and he wanted collective data. By standing his ground and remaining cool, he was able to push back without seeming angry or biased. He says that this is one of the most fulfilling parts of his career as a journalist because a lot of people got their money back due to his work. However, he also pointed out that a lot of journalism is frustrating because even with clear evidence, people may not want to make a change. For example, he and his team wrote up an article presenting concrete evidence that lack of supervision in prisons causes deaths. They used the story of a homeless woman who was arrested for “pandering” and died in jail because she didn’t have access to her medication, but then was buried before the state could perform an autopsy. However, because sheriffs have so much political power, nobody is making any changes or enforcing regulations on prisons, so Mr. Kane is not able to do anything about the problem. Most importantly, he told me that journalists are the eyes and ears of the people, so it’s essential that they always do their job because they’re what continues to keep the country a democracy by holding officials accountable.
Tag: Journalism
Sneakercon
Today, we met with Dr. Mark Hansen, a professor at Colombia Journalism School and learned about how he modern journalism is beginning to use more and more data science and statistics as well as some of the many things that Dr. Hansen and his students have done. One of their coolest projects (in my opinion) is Sneakercon. Sneakercon is about things called “Sneaker nets” in Venezuela. Because the government monitors the internet, people can’t really browse the web freely. So they have a really cool workaround – Sneakernets. People would set up different mesh nets, give out thumb drives disconnected from the network, and even use Raspberry Pis (small computer boards, similar to Arduinos) as bridging devices to access the internet unrestricted. What Dr. Hansen and his students did was organize Sneakercon, a conference to teach more people about sneakernets and other types of offline/independent internet connections.
Day 8
Guys!! My story is up on INDY Week’s website! Find it here: https://indyweek.com/news/durham/durham-hit-10000-participatory-budgeting-goal/.
If you are for some reason interested in economics, I highly suggest you read it as well as the original story, found here.
In short, my last day at INDY Week was bittersweet. I finalized my story (I went with the first version after Jeff told me to “trust my instincts”), and it went through copyedits and the like before publication. I also ran some basic copyedits on Thomasi and I’s story, adding Oxford commas to every serial phrase (we’ve had some disagreements). It was a great day, but I’m sad to be leaving.
Since it’s my last day at the office, I’m putting some journalistic things/phrases I’ve learned below:
- Some terms:
- Lede: The first sentence/paragraph of a story. Should give a basic summary of the story.
- Hed: The story’s headline.
- Dek: The sentence that goes after the headline, kind of like a subheading but longer and more comprehensive.
- Graf: A paragraph in a journalistic article. In journalistic writing, these are usually short; Thomasi is a big fan of grafs that are only one sentence long.
- Folo: A follow-up question, often in reference to an additional email sent to a person who you already emailed on that topic.
- Getting quotes is hard, especially when you’re using a high school email. I found that, on average, more people responded to emails from my Gmail account than from my CA one.
- People want to read personal stories. Starting an article with an anecdote is a tried-and-true way to draw people into the text.
- Getting advice from peers is beyond helpful, but when in doubt, go with your gut.
- No matter how bad you think you are with technology, in a news office, being under a certain age means you’ll always get questions about it. Case in point: even the college interns were asking me if I could find people’s emails for them.
I’m so grateful to the awesome people at INDY for this experience. I learned so much and had an amazing time!
Day 4
Today was again a great day at Indy Week! I continued my research and made plans with Thomasi to start working on a few new stories next week. As part of my research, I requested information from the Durham Police, surfed through social media feeds, referenced other journalistic sources, and more– using basically every technique I could think of. I also took the opportunity to talk more with Thomas, one of the college interns, about his experience working for a collegiate publication.
At lunchtime, Lara and I accidentally went the long way to the restaurant and ended up at Durham’s City Hall, which is actually a really beautiful building.
After our relatively roundabout trip through the city, we found ourselves at a restaurant called Toast and each had an incredible panini.
After we got back to the office, we finished up our work (with me discovering the wonderful City of Durham Twitter feed) and headed home. Except I had one last stop to make: to The Parlor. My order? One scoop matcha, one scoop chocolate. I have absolutely no regrets.
Day 4: The Last Day at the Indy!
After NO traffic on the highway this morning, I was in a super good mood. As soon as I got into the office, I got an email from Ms. Rice about what I should work on during the day. She asked me to continue working on the article that I started yesterday and to write more posts for social media.
I fixed the edits she gave me for the article I wrote and reached out to another contact, and am awaiting his response.
For the social media accounts, I was tasked with writing a post for today, tomorrow, and Sunday. Go like them!
For lunch, Cate and I went to Toast, an Indy endorsed restaurant!
When we got back, I worked some more on my article and worked on finding another contact for it.
Day 3!
Today started with the least amount of traffic of all the days… YAY! Starting at 10am, I got an assignment from Mr. Billman. I researched what he requested up until lunchtime, writing 3,652 words on the topic! It was really cool because it reminded me of some of the nonprofit and service work that I do for CA through Beta (now, Delta).
For lunch, Cate and I went to Luna’s empanadas. Although it was a very good meal, the empanadas at Che are much better (shoutout to my part-time job!). Below you can see some pictures of that.
After we got back, I wrote the Instagram post that will be published today at 6:18pm, as well as a majority of the tweets that will be tweeted out on Sunday. I also interviewed someone and wrote a short article. Overall it was a good day, and I’m sad tomorrow will be my last day!
Day 3
Today was another busy day, as I continued to research Durham politics and crime. Thomasi and I didn’t make it down to the courthouse, instead staying in the office and doing our research online. It’s incredible to see just how much work goes into every news story and feature; for Indy Week, which is a weekly specializing in longer features, writers often have days or even weeks to research, draft, and edit stories. Staff writers started working on most of the stories for next week’s paper either early this week or last week, and many are still in the research phases of that process. One of the college interns, Thomas, has been working on a story about a legal case for the past few days, for instance, and is still amassing files and reports.
It can also be hard work to find people online. A large part of what I did today was finding online contact info for a myriad of people, which was often harder than what it sounded like. Though we’re often used to finding any info we could possibly want on the internet, I often found myself backstopped as I dug deep into a story.
For lunch today, Lara and I went to Luna, an empanada restaurant near the office. I have to say, I’m quickly growing to appreciate Durham food– like with the other places we’ve been, the food was amazing.
As another consequence of writers getting research for their stories, the office was pretty empty again today. People dropped in depending on if they were needed at their desks, and otherwise were out collecting data and interviewing people. We’re also getting wind of some big stories; it’s really cool to hear about things firsthand, before they appear in the paper or on TV.
I also took the opportunity to leaf through Indy’s stash of old papers. They keep piles of them in the office, with multiple copies of each issue organized by publication date.
Day 2
I began the day by meeting Thomasi, the new staff writer who just moved to Indy Week from the News and Observer. I’ll be working on stories with him for the rest of the internship, looking into Durham politics, crime, and court cases.
For most of the day, I researched Durham crime rates in an effort to eventually understand the patterns of crime that are shaping the city. Lara and I, along with another writer, took over Indy Week’s conference/meeting room for the day, and the two of us compiled our information into a masterlist. We also sat in on a staff meeting, during which we learned about a myriad of local news stories.
Later that afternoon, Lara and I took a break from our work to go out to lunch at B. Good, which was — like yesterday’s lunch — absolutely delicious. We did have to evacuate due to a fire drill, but we grabbed drinks for the road and headed back to the newsroom.
When we got back, Lara picked up working with the food editor and I kept working on Durham news. Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully get to head down to the courthouse to look through some case files!
Day 2!
Today, and with less traffic, the day started. After having individual meetings with Mr.Billman, Cate and I worked on an article that will be written soon. Cate typed up facts as I researched them.
At 1pm, we sat in on the staff meeting and listened to all the cool topics they’re writing about. A lot of them were about local issues I had never heard about, and I’m very excited to read more about them!
Cate and I then headed to lunch at B. Good. It was a good lunch, even though it was interrupted by a fire alarm.
After we got back to the office, I talked with Ms. Rice, the food editor. She assigned me some work to do and I spent the rest of the day working on it. Some of that included transcribing an interview that was super interesting, making the Instagram post I’ve attached below (go like it!), and writing out the Twitter posts that will be published tomorrow.
It was an amazing day and I’m super excited for the rest of the week!
Day 1
Today, I experienced something I had not yet. I wasn’t expecting it, but there I was, motionless. Stuck behind a red car. I was experiencing rush hour traffic for the first time. What could have been a 20 min drive was a 45 min drive. For the first time in my life, I realized who actually looked at billboard signs. It’s people in traffic. Corona? Orange Vanilla Coke? Those are the new drinks whose posters I enjoyed while taking a break from looking at that red car.
Despite all of this, I got to Durham early. I turned right into the parking lot, passing the bull statue. After I arrived, I walked down the stairs to the building. Passing the hotel, on the opposite side of the street, you see a clear door. Through the doors, you can spot a wooden staircase going up. I ring the doorbell like the sign told me to do, and was met with a friendly smile guiding me up to the couches. The couches became Cate and I’s workplace, as we each reviewed copies of super cool articles.
For lunch, Cate and I went to Neomonde and ate very good chicken kabobs! After we got back, we met with our host, Mr. Billman, and coordinated our plans for the rest of the week.
