Reporting Projects
News coverage for print and Web
In C&J 475 this semester, you will undertake various assigned minor writing exercises, one magazine project, and a major multimedia reporting project that will be posted on the class Web news site.

Your magazine writing project will be explained Jan. 26 by Ashley Biggers, associate editor of New Mexico magazine, who will provide a handout of the categories and word counts for your magazine articles. See the schedule for due dates on query letters.

Your major multimedia reporting project may be about people, places or phenomena. The difference this semester from print-only 475 classes, of course, is that you will be implementing a multimedia approach in covering news for both print and a Web site rather than writing only for a print publication. You will be expected to maintain a personal blog, contribute to the class blog, complete a magazine project, take photos, work on videos, upload your story packages to the Web, and consider other forms of reporting.

Prior to undertaking a multimedia reporting project, you must write a proposal no more than one double-spaced page in length. The proposal should summarize the story you want to do, how you plan to present the story, and why your story package will be of interest to your potential readers. Your proposal will be returned to you with comments and suggestions.

In general, your stories should be prepared as a package of whatever is needed to help your readers understand the person, place or phenomenon about which you are reporting. A package will include an in-depth print story, probably with one or more sidebars, at least one photo, plus another multimedia aspect of at least one of the following: a slide show, a podcast, a video, a graphic or an interactive aspect.

In addition to writing a story, you also will be responsible for providing digital photographs, video, podcasts, blogs, graphics, etc., that could be used to present your coverage in the Web's multimedia environment. If your story would benefit from tables of data, submit the completed tables with the stories.

Some assignments will be written over the weekends or in class. The first will be a routine print story on a presentation from the previous class, and it will be due Jan. 28. This will be an indicator of your reporting and writing skills so we can address any problems early on.

The magazine project will consist of at least one query and a completed story of 250 words. The in-depth multimedia reporting project for the Web will be in one of the following areas, also adapted from Dr. Bob Gassaway's former advanced reporting class, which are:

People stories: They tend to be features about one or a few people who are engaged in some interesting activity or who have been engaged in some interesting activity in the past. These stories could be about a well-known person, a person who is retiring and who can look back on his or her career to talk about the changes he or she has seen over the years, or a person who is taking on a new and demanding position and how he or she intends to manage the job. Or the stories may simply be about someone your readers would find interesting. You will certainly need more than one interview (one-source stories are not allowed in 475), and often you will want to arrange several visits to ensure that you understand the life of the person or the lives of the several people who will be the major subjects of your story.

Place stories: They generally are about a town, a neighborhood or even a single building that is somehow unusually interesting. You could visit the Legislature to write about the lives of lawmakers or the capitol staff or even the people who clean the Roundhouse, visit the broadcast towers atop Sandia Peak and interview the broadcast engineers who have a rather lonely job but a tremendous view of central New Mexico; you could do a word portrait of one of New Mexico's historic adobe churches and the congregations that keep them going, both physically and spiritually; you could visit a casino, a race track, a rodeo or a retirement center and write about the swirl of life that goes on in each — especially life behind the scenes, which most people don't see. You could visit one of the city's homeless shelters. There are more homeless deaths than there are homicides each year in Albuquerque, but no one ever writes about the homeless deaths and everyone writes about the homicides. You likely will need to visit any place at various times and spend a significant number of hours there to understand the place and the people you find there. Few places are interesting in and of themselves. They usually are made interesting by the people who live, work or play there, so these stories usually become people stories. Observe and interview some of these people.

Phenomenon or event stories: They look in detail at a particular event, which may be new or a longstanding tradition or a social fad. A phenomenon is an event or a happening. It could be a parade, an election, the trend toward healthy living, a musical trend, the changing moral values of a society, life in a particular business, and many other things. But you should always consider the phenomenon (or phenomena, which is the plural, and the word you need if you are looking at more than one thing) from the perspective of the people involved. As with stories about places, phenomenon stories usually are interesting to your readers primarily because of the people caught up in whatever you are covering.