Bureau Blog

Through this reporting experience I found a lot of what I learned in the classroom become a reality. I loved seeing all the different aspects of journalism played out through this project. Because we were on a deadline I found it important to be well prepared before going into an interview. Know the questions before you begin asking them. This will enable you to be quick and efficient while you question people. It is crucial to make the person you are interviewing feel comfortable before you start. Also, it is beneficial to find people who look like they want to talk. If someone is at all hesitant you will probably not get very good answers from them. One girl we interviewed was hesitant, but consented to being interviewed. She gave one-word answers to each of our questions, which was not very helpful. On the other end of the spectrum, we had another interviewee that loved to talk. We got great answers from him; this student gave us some of our best quotes. Sometimes it is hit or miss, but if it’s possible to tell if someone is willing to talk or not than that can be useful in choosing who you interview.

In deadline writing it is very important to budget your time. Seemingly always you will find you have less time than you originally thought. At the beginning of our allotted time we were ahead of schedule and it seemed we would finish and be back early. Then we ran into Michael, a commuter that was relaxing in the Collegium. While his answers to our questions were great, they were very long and in depth. Looking back, I realize we probably should have nicely interrupted, thanked him for his answers, and then left so that we could be back in time to make our deadline. The team approach made the workload easier. With each team member doing something different, the interviews got done quickly and everything was more efficient. In our team we had one person text in the answers, one person ask the questions, and one or two write down notes. Because we had more than one person writing down what the interviewee was saying, we got more accurate quotes and information. However if your team is not in sync than it becomes even harder than if you were working on your own. I found it is important to divide up the jobs to each team member, because when different people tried doing the same things it got very confusing.

Hugh Hewitt talks about blogging side of journalism, and it’s exciting to see all the different aspects talked about in his book happen through this project. Blogging truly is a cutting edge form of journalism. Because you are finding the information for yourself it creates a kind of raw reality to the piece that is posted. I loved the reality of this assignment; it made me feel and experience what it would be like to be a journalist.