Good job picking Jessica’s brain on “13, Right Now”. Her hustle and reporting endurance stood out. Thirty hours of tape. Visit upon visit. Showing up at the subject’s house at 6:30 AM on her birthday to capture a scene. Same went for Jessica’s writing process. Draft after draft, from messy to OK to pretty good to great. Such a valuable reminder that you can have all the talent in the world but what separates journalists from the pack can be as simple as putting in the effort. Her secret to getting to the Post at 24? Working both smart and really, really hard.
For Next Week:
- Keep going on your stories. If you sent in a lede/chunk you should have received feedback already. If you haven’t sent me one, get to it. Those who had to change course or ideas, keep me updated. To gain the most from this class you need to be reporting ASAP. So focus on stories without access issues.
- Send me your photos and captions by Monday at 5 PM. No exceptions. Details on the assignment at the bottom of this post
- Prepare for our guest on Tuesday, Jed Jacobsohn. He will be talking to you about access, rapport, and visual storytelling. He’ll also be giving feedback on your photos and can provide an inside perspective on The Player’s Tribune. He’s one of the best in the business and we’re fortunate to have him in class. From his website:
Before Jed arrives, check out the following photo essays:
On Olympic athletes, for the New York Times
On Derek Jeter’s first day, for The Player’s Tribune.
On Kevin Durant coming to the Bay Area (you’ll recognize some Berkeley locales)
Cool “moving portraits” of Olympic athletes, combining still and video
Also, watch these short videos:
Kevin Durant (singing)
Ed O’Bannon on why college athletes should be paid
Finally, peruse Jed’s site here and make time to check out the full KD video – it’s 32 minutes – to see how he put together months of access.
Assignment Details
Take a series of candid photos of someone involved in your story, then choose the best ones and attach a telling quote below. If you have one awesome photo, send that. You can send up to five, with either one quote encapsulating them all or individual quotes/captions.
Aims:
- To further the reporting for your final stories and encourage you to think visually and cinematically
- To capture an emotion or a moment. You don’t want this person’s “photo face”. Take pictures while they talk. Or as they work/interact/walk/do what they do.
- To portray a character and encapsulate their story/personality in one photo and one quote, if you can. Tell us a mini-narrative. For ideas, think of Humans of New York, especially the early ones. The examples I showed in class are here, here, and here
Rules:
- no more than 200 words
- If you can’t tie this to your story, then pick someone interesting. Make it Humans of Berkeley, essentially.
- It can’t be another student or your friend. That devalues the exercise.
- You can combine quotes out of sequence (and I encourage you to, for depth). Just include ellipses
Storytelling Through Sports 