For this Sunday’s thoughts, I want to share quite a bit of work done by students in this class or fellow peers. It is always so cool to see people I know succeeding in such amazing ways. I think we produced some good stuff this past week, and for it only being week two of the semester that’s pretty cool.
This week, the first thing I noticed was this amazing photo story by Hudson Heidger. Photographing something like a drive-in movie presents a number of challenges. First, it’s dark! Also, photos of people watching something aren’t cool. But Hudson did a fantastic job of moving around and getting some really creative shots. They aren’t repetitive and he showed quite a few aspects. He worked well with the available light.
(I wanted to show you a preview here of it and spice up this site with some visuals, but word press said no. :/ )
I also noticed this cool new series of stories we did titled COVID on Campus. (This links to one of the articles within the series. The other parts of it are linked at the bottom of the first article. Yay for sibling assets.)
I thought it was very informative and I liked the multitude of angles. Rather than just focusing on COVID at Mizzou, this series focusing on several large campuses. I liked having the added context of how other schools were doing. I of course loved the visuals on it; I thought the photographers were really creative in figuring out the best way to show “COVID”. There was also quite a bit of data in the articles which shows some informed reporting and I love seeing stats. The only thing I would say here is that there could have maybe been some graphics to make all those numbers a little more digestible.
I wish we did more longer form, multiple pieces like this for our bigger topics. I feel like often we do just one story and that’s that. When in reality, this complex issues that people actually care about have enough desire and depth for multiple stories as things unfold and change. People in this town actually really really care so I say we should give them as much info as they want.
Getting a little less local here, but there is so much important national news happening.
From the Associated Press, American idle: New Hampshire House holds drive-in senate.
I really appreciated the visual element of this story. I thought it was amusing and the headline got me hooked, but the journalism in the piece was really excellent as well about providing context and other relevant information in an easily digestible way.
Okay back to local news, and more important, my peers’ work!
On Jan. 21, Madison Stephens published this piece on CPS teacher and staff vaccinations.
This was something I was interested in so I was glad to see we published something on it. I was excited to see that it was written by none other than Madison Stephens, fellow Spring 2021 Reporter. I thought it had lots of good information in and there was a real depth to the reporting. I liked how she tied in the story about the CPS board vice president as well, and linked it!
The only thing I would say is the middle is very number heavy. I love that we have that data and it’s beautiful to share that, but what if we did so in a fun graphic instead? Especially since this story has no other visual elements.
I’m a big fan of infographics and I think the Missourian way underutilizes the Graphics Desk.
Right before our class discussion on Thursday about social media, I read this piece by Emily Wolf.
From the story, “Rep. Cheri Toalson Reisch, R-Hallsville, was within her rights to block a constituent on Twitter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled Wednesday.”
I thought this was interesting when considering the larger context. There has been a huge fight over social media recently, due mostly to Trump, although experts warned of this for a while. I felt like in a lot of the recent cases, we have seen the opposite decision made so I was interested in this Republican representative in Missouri getting a different one. Since I read this piece the same day we discussed social media in class, it felt extra relevant.
Just in case you weren’t done looking at photos, because I never am, I was want to highlight this beautiful photo story, Papa’s Cat Café hosts author during monthly book club.
This is another one of those photo situations that is less than ideal, but it was captured beautifully. I thought the photographer did a great job capturing the overall feeling of the event and got some amazing detail shots that accent the larger group shots so well.
Last, but not least, this morning when I checked the Missourian I was pleasantly surprised by this beautiful story by Irina.
I loved Irina’s story on the front page about international students. The visuals were wonderful and the story was so great! Both really show an intimacy or relationship with the subjects. I liked seeing how many sources she got. I thought she explored a lot of sides of the story and we love that. It also flowed so well throughout the whole thing.
It was a really good week for Missourian reporters. Go team!