Adv. Reporting - Reporter's Notebook

Class Notes:

The following are the random notes I took in class. My reflections on the beats and specific stories are towards the bottom.

Four Beats:

Courts and Cops:

Event: Stalking cases at UNI, statistics, process, etc.

Human Interest: Safety of campuses across the country, other campus policies/procedures

Local Government:

Event: City Council meeting

Human Interest:

Midterm Elections:

Event: Midterm Elections

Human Interest:

My Choice -

Event:

Human Interest:

Thursday August 29th:

Story Leads:

Pull out the relevance of the story right away - top of the story

Think about what is useful to your audience, what are you catering to?

Inverted pyramid style

Immediate identification lead: Well-known person or celebrity

Delayed identification lead: better for those who are less well known in the community

Summary leads: good for simplifying complex stories (City council meetings for example)

Question leads can help if you are struggling

Tuesday September 3rd:

Similarities between published council story and my own:

“Non-incident”

Sarah Meyers behavior policy quote - though mine is shorter

Explanation of Werger’s response

“There is a specific law that says you can prevent people from carrying weapons in a school,” Werger said, “In my opinion, a public library is not really much different.”

Explanation of 1,000 foot radius weapons free zone

“We’re kind of deciding if we have the legal ability to do this,” said city council member Brian Birgen, “but the other question is if we do, is this something that we want to do?”

Differences:

Mention of mass-shootings across America

“The children were nervous about it; the children were scared,’ Meyer said. - my quote not included in published story

Following several direct quotes by Meyer were paraphrased by me

I paraphrased Nolan’s speech with a different quote than the published story

My story does not have a quote from Dan McKenzie

“I understand that you don’t want to scare children,” Lindeman said, “I understand if you want to limit people loaded to the teeth walking into the library. However, concealed carry I believe is a different issue.”

“These people have chosen to go out of their way, to pay the money, to get their concealed carry permit, and if something were to happen these are the first people on the scene. I just want you to consider that,” Lindeman stated. Both Lindeman quotes are in my story not the published one

We have differing Chavez quotes, but relatively the same message about her speech

I did not include a Kangas quote

I did not include Main or Hoffman

I included quotes from Rathe and Sherer which were not included in the published story

I also mentioned the Chief of Police who was not mentioned in the published story

I closed my story by saying it would be discussed at a later date

CF Police Chief Jeff Olson

Has good off the record relationship with journalists

More reluctant to tell new reporters stuff of the record until you’ve worked with them awhile

Handles and media that comes to the scene

Has to deal with sensationalizing and making sure the information published is accurate

Rather it be accurate than have a problem

We don’t HAVE to talk to the media

Refused to talk to a reporter that previously fished for certain responses and seemed to have an agenda

Recently hired a communications specialist - put press releases together, handles social media

Public Safety model: cross training police officers for firefighting

Cross trained officers can often get there before firefighters because they are already out on the streets patrolling

Average about 6 serious structure fires a year

Down 60% in the last 40 years

“It’s teamwork, it’s not a turf war”

A lot of controversy surrounding this model, but overall, there’s more trained firefighters arriving to fire scenes than before.

Budget is approximately 10 million for police and fire public safety as a whole

Gang related homicides/crimes can be the hardest to solve

Theft is the most common

Alcohol offenses are also common

Rob Green:

Wife: Jocelyn Green - novelist

Web developer at ITTC

Graphic designer and promotions coordinator

Was a Coast Guard officer

City council for 2 years

Cedar Falls since 2004

Started paying attention to city issues when he saw how many houses in his neighborhood started turning into rental houses and people were moving to the suburbs

Won with 70% vote when he ran for city council

At large candidate: means 5 of the 7 council members represent specific areas of the city. The other 2 are “at large” and represent the entire city

Power to veto: the Mayor only has power to veto- controls meetings and has power to draw out more dialogue about topics

Most of the things that come before council get approved because it’s gone over beforehand with the administrator

Wants to be mayor to preserve the authority of the council

Iowa Open Meetings Law

November Goal Setting Session - 2 days 4 hours each - unless you attend all of it you won’t know the goals for the next year, it’s not recorded and no minutes are taken - but still public

Groupthink problems - thinks this is heavily at work in the PSO problem

Wants to have a good relationship with the press

Skaine:

Came to CF in 1965

Was a Speech professor at UNI.. later became Communication Studies

CF Times: Anelia ran for 12 years

Got shut down, all versions have always been bought by the Waterloo Courier

Wants to restore University Avenue as a corridor

Reflections:

Beat One:

Cops and Courts

As always, the beginning of each semester is slow going for most students as they get into the swing of things. Coming fresh out of summer, most of our minds are still with all of the fun things we did and the places we went. This was true for me. I didn’t do my best work on this beat. However, I did find an interesting topic to pursue revolving around safety on college campuses, specifically stalking cases.

For my first story, “Watchful Eyes,” I took a look at the annual crime report at UNI and noticed that there were a surprisingly high amount of stalking cases reported. I initially wanted to interview one of the UNI police officers on camera and get video footage of that as well as some B-roll around campus. Unfortunately, it was really difficult to get even just an e-mail interview about the topic, which I think is kind of telling that they don’t really want to talk about it. I did get written responses to my questions, however, and was able to write a story.

My second story, “Campus Safety Nationwide and Close to Home,” took a broader look at safety on campuses across the nation. I did a lot of research into what kinds of crimes were happening on campuses, as well as where the most were being reported. Along with this, many sources suggested that while some campuses may appear safer because they have less reports, that could actually be a sign of under-reporting, which would mean students are even less safe and less likely to get help. It was an eye-opening experience to pursue these two stories.

Beat Two

City

This is the beat where I feel like I really started to get the ball rolling for Advanced Reporting. Though the city council meeting we went to seemed uneventful at the time, it actually proved really important moving forward, because that was my first introduction to the three men who ran for Mayor. My first piece was a run-down of what happened and what was discussed at that city council meeting.

My second story, “Colorful Candidates Battle in the Race for Cedar Falls Mayor,” was interesting as well. This was the first time I’ve gotten involved in any way in local government/politics and it was exciting! I took video at this event and pulled key quotes from each of the candidates as they debated. A struggle with this piece was actually not doing enough prior research. I and a couple other students went to Maucker Union that night, where it looked like they were setting up for the debate upstairs in the main area. We ended up a few minutes late to the event because we didn’t find the right room in time, and thus had to stand in the back. Also, even though there were probably twenty or more people standing in the back of the room by the doors, whoever was in charge of the event was pretty rude to us in particular and basically told us to find a seat for the next debate or leave because we were in the way. I guess that’s just a taste of being treated like a reporter when people don’t want the media involved for whatever reason.

Beat Three:

Election

I can’t express how exciting this beat was for me! All of the work leading up to it made it feel like I was so in-the-know and involved in Cedar Falls! Each of the candidates coming to class and speaking to us was helpful for gaining knowledge about the election.

Having this beat for an assignment gave me the opportunity to go to Rob Green’s campaign party on election night. It was both scary and exciting to be the only students/reporters there. He had a very tight-knit party with close family and friends, so we felt like odd men out. Green was very accommodating though and did a great job of making us feel comfortable! He sat and talked with us for probably twenty minutes, and also had his wife and kids talk to us as well. We could tell his children were shy/unsure of us, so I figured it best to not stick a camera in their faces, but it was still entertaining to talk to them. We had to stay on our toes when Chapala closed earlier than we thought it did, before the results were posted. Rob graciously invited us to his house to await the results, so we got to be the FIRST reporters there when Brown conceded and Green won. I remember as soon as that happened, a reporter called him on the phone, and I was standing there thinking, ‘If I was reporting for a newspaper right now, I would have a ten times more exclusive story than anyone else.’

Overall, this was a great experience for me and I think this beat in particular helped shape me into a better reporter!

Beat Four:

Labor of Love

Since these could be anything we wanted, this was the easiest beat to fulfill. I had gone to the ROTC Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony back in October, so I covered it for one story. My roommate and one of my best friends Tierra is in the ROTC program and thus was required to attend the event. This made me feel more at ease with going. I took video of the ceremony and each of the two inductees’ speeches. I interviewed one of the inductees, Bobbie Williams, before the event. I would have liked to interview both, but even though I talked to the organizer of the event more than a week prior about coming to do interviews, she didn’t inform either man that I wanted to interview them. I wasn’t able to catch Dr. Adamovicz, but Bobbie was happy to talk my ear off. He was a lot of fun to interview and he gave a very charismatic speech as well.

My second piece was about the Main Street Director, Carol Lilly. I have fallen in love with Cedar Falls’ downtown district since I moved here for college more than 3 years ago. It seemed only natural to find out more about what makes it so lovely. Carol is a very busy person, as am I, so we weren’t able to meet for an in-person interview. I called her and we had a phone-interview as she drove back from Des Moines one afternoon. We talked for probably half an hour about what she does and what Community Main Street does for Cedar Falls. As we talked I just had her on speaker phone and recorded it in one of the audio booths in the library so that I could listen back later and pull the best quotes.

Overall, I had a great time this semester and this class made me a much more confident reporter. Thanks for a great last semester!