This entry's purpose is to give conclusion to my study of the U.S. Immigration beat. Through out this process I have learned much about the issues our country faces with immigration law and reform. While the coverage seemed to be random, there were themes that shined through every couple of weeks.
I used a very broad amount of sources so it would be difficult to claim one as better than the other. The New York Times website had just less than third of the articles I used in my study. They also devote an entire section on their site to explain the U.S. immigration situation. I chose the NYT because they are most often the Agenda Setter for news publications nationally. The other websites I used were Google News and CNN News. These were very helpful for finding articles which showed local coverage. Often these articles would come from local newspapers near the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona, and California. The local stories were often more poorly written but has a higher human interest quality to them than the articles that covered the issue more broadly.
While there were no major stories and developments in this beat, the articles covering fake immigration lawyers, and the "tent city" illegal immigration camp in Phoenix, AZ were covered nationally.
I felt like there wasn't very much coverage of immigration reform groups from both sides. All the articles were relatively one sided, and showcased a human interest aspect(s) which made the reader feel for the individual(s) at hand.
If I were in charge of a reporter, I would have him/her give a weekly updated report showing the strives for change on all sides for immigration reform. I want to know what politicians, citizens, and activists have to say about it.
In conclusion I am not sure I learned too much more about media coverage in general. I was able to find the themes, or consistent issues in immigration coverage specifically though. After the thrid beat entry, I had a good understanding of what I was looking for, and who/where to go to for that information. Overall this has been a good learning experience, which taught me how to understand and create a successful, comprehensive beat.
March 11, 2009
February 25, 2009
Eric Eldon, Who is he?
You may be wondering, who is Eric
Eldon? How did he make it on such a famed blog as this?
I asked myself this same question earlier this week. Lucky me, as it turned out he was the Keynote speaker in my reporting class.
Since the spring of 2007 Eric has become a key player in the world of technology blogging. Along with blog/website founder Matt Marshall, Eric spends over 80 hours a week ensuring that his readers appetite for the latest, most nifty tech information is satiated.
Eric focus's most of his work on social websites (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace). Unveiling the latest gossip and innovations as soon as they come out. But don't think this is some glorified PR job. Eric works diligently to stick by the standards of journalism, having learned the importance of the fourth estate when writing for Stanford's daily newspaper.
"That's the role of Democracy, keeping eachother accountable," said Eric.
Eric emphasized the huge opportunities local news publications have to move to a blogging style of website. As he has seen this firsthand from venturebeat.com. He further states that with an apt team of writers, each covering a different beat, a local blog could take over that news market.
While venturebeat.com has become quite successful, Eric has also become quite knowledgeable on beat blogging. As this was not his initial business of choice, he gave two examples of accidental hirings to venturebeat.com, one of them being himself.
"He [venturebeat.com's blogger MG Siegler] just linked his blog to mine so I started reading it," said Eric. "It was really intelligent and well written... so we hired him."
In the end, Eric's most important piece of advice for aspiring journalists is to just blog: Write as much as you can, update all the time, respond to comments and "milk the interests of your audience for all it's worth."
Process Memo for Profile Story
For this story, I met with my contacts in their own offices to get a feel for who they were. I felt like the most difficult part of the story was putting it all together. I clarified my notes immediatly after each interview, and had my focus statement. Yet when I wrote it out, I found that I re-organized it an inordinate amount of times.
Placing quotes was also something that was hard to do, I had to rewrite a few sentences so that they would lead into the quotes more smoothly. Also I was unsure if I had correctly bracketed the extra information inside the quotes, so the quote made sense to the reader.
Other than those two setbacks, this assignment was fun, and I enjoyed riding my bike around campus to find the info I needed, and to verify things I had learned but did not know were true.
If I could do this again, I think I would do more interviews with people that are close to him. I was able to show his personality a bit, but it is much more trustworthy from an outside source.
Placing quotes was also something that was hard to do, I had to rewrite a few sentences so that they would lead into the quotes more smoothly. Also I was unsure if I had correctly bracketed the extra information inside the quotes, so the quote made sense to the reader.
Other than those two setbacks, this assignment was fun, and I enjoyed riding my bike around campus to find the info I needed, and to verify things I had learned but did not know were true.
If I could do this again, I think I would do more interviews with people that are close to him. I was able to show his personality a bit, but it is much more trustworthy from an outside source.
Journal Entry: Bringing in the reform
This weeks coverage of the Immigration beat has been had a flare of reform to it. Either there has been a random upsurge of rallies and lobbying, or there is change in the air. I believe it is the latter based on the articles I read this week.
The first article I chose was Navarrette's column on immigration reform. He gave quite an objective description of the U.S. current immigration problem. He portrayed the point of view of both the main parties and how they want the reform to go. His column was very well done, with not as much opinion, as his purpose was probably to put the situation into perspective and make it very easy to understand.
The second article I read was by Bernstein. It covered a soft news story involving a man who had been a fake immigration attorney. The story was written with a summary lead, which like the entire story, was written in such a style that the reader felt like they were there at the courthouse. Well placed quotes were built up with intriguing human interest stories. All together this was a very well written article.
The last article I chose was by VOA (Voice of America) News. This hard-news story was written very plain and simple. It was no more than seven graphs, and it only told the reader the most pertinent facts. I believe it lacked much objectivity though, as it only had one quote, and that was from an outside party. While it surely provided information to the public, it lacked completeness.
Resources:
"Commentary: Time for immigration reform is now" Ruben Navarrette Jr.
"An immigration attorney is charged for being a fraud, and his clients scramble for help" Nina Bernstein
"U.S. charges Salvadoran Ex-Defense Minister With Immigration Fraud" VOA News
The first article I chose was Navarrette's column on immigration reform. He gave quite an objective description of the U.S. current immigration problem. He portrayed the point of view of both the main parties and how they want the reform to go. His column was very well done, with not as much opinion, as his purpose was probably to put the situation into perspective and make it very easy to understand.
The second article I read was by Bernstein. It covered a soft news story involving a man who had been a fake immigration attorney. The story was written with a summary lead, which like the entire story, was written in such a style that the reader felt like they were there at the courthouse. Well placed quotes were built up with intriguing human interest stories. All together this was a very well written article.
The last article I chose was by VOA (Voice of America) News. This hard-news story was written very plain and simple. It was no more than seven graphs, and it only told the reader the most pertinent facts. I believe it lacked much objectivity though, as it only had one quote, and that was from an outside party. While it surely provided information to the public, it lacked completeness.
Resources:
"Commentary: Time for immigration reform is now" Ruben Navarrette Jr.
"An immigration attorney is charged for being a fraud, and his clients scramble for help" Nina Bernstein
"U.S. charges Salvadoran Ex-Defense Minister With Immigration Fraud" VOA News
February 18, 2009
Journal Entry: The immigration Debate Continues
The first Article I read was Kings, (see below for references and links), as it came across to me as a broad update on the immigration situation in its entirety. King began by speaking of his helicopter flight over the steel wall separating a part of Mexico from Arizona. Below is an excerpt from the story showing how he has explained the stories focus without just simply stating the facts.
"But from a helicopter above, the border is a steel barrier that stands out along the riverbank and against the desert sands, and is the dividing line that gets the most attention from those crying to cross illegally and those who believe recent efforts to bolster U.S. border security have been riddled with wrong choices."
I believe this may be one of the better articles I have read. It is short and to the point, yet contains new information relevant to, and covering what readers following the immigration debate want to know.
The next article I chose was written by N.C. Aizenman of the Washington Post. This article was covered new findings in an old investigation of some corrupt police officers arresting immigrants, and suspected immigrants to meet their quota for a certain time period. While the story was riddled with details that made it a bit more difficult to read, Aizenman brought up great human interest points that kept the reader interested. Here is an example of how he did this:
"And although many of the 24 Latinos detained at the 7-Eleven were found to have been in the country illegally, 14 were not fugitive immigrants. One, Ernesto Guillen, was merely stopping for coffee on his way to join his wife at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where their 4-year-old son was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia."
This article as most other immigration articles, contained pertinent facts about how immigration policies are being upheld in our country and how they are being abused in some cases.
Overall this weeks articles were very similar to others in past weeks, that is why I only chose these two. The broad update and coverage of the immigration debate given by King stood out for it's high writing quality and structure. It was easy to read, intelligent and made no point other than to educate the readers.
------------
Resources:
"Border fence is a dividing line in immigration debate" by John King CNN Chief National Correspondent
"Conflicting Accounts of an ICE Raid in Md." by N.C. Aizenman, staff writer for the Washington Post
"But from a helicopter above, the border is a steel barrier that stands out along the riverbank and against the desert sands, and is the dividing line that gets the most attention from those crying to cross illegally and those who believe recent efforts to bolster U.S. border security have been riddled with wrong choices."
I believe this may be one of the better articles I have read. It is short and to the point, yet contains new information relevant to, and covering what readers following the immigration debate want to know.
The next article I chose was written by N.C. Aizenman of the Washington Post. This article was covered new findings in an old investigation of some corrupt police officers arresting immigrants, and suspected immigrants to meet their quota for a certain time period. While the story was riddled with details that made it a bit more difficult to read, Aizenman brought up great human interest points that kept the reader interested. Here is an example of how he did this:
"And although many of the 24 Latinos detained at the 7-Eleven were found to have been in the country illegally, 14 were not fugitive immigrants. One, Ernesto Guillen, was merely stopping for coffee on his way to join his wife at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where their 4-year-old son was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia."
This article as most other immigration articles, contained pertinent facts about how immigration policies are being upheld in our country and how they are being abused in some cases.
Overall this weeks articles were very similar to others in past weeks, that is why I only chose these two. The broad update and coverage of the immigration debate given by King stood out for it's high writing quality and structure. It was easy to read, intelligent and made no point other than to educate the readers.
------------
Resources:
"Border fence is a dividing line in immigration debate" by John King CNN Chief National Correspondent
"Conflicting Accounts of an ICE Raid in Md." by N.C. Aizenman, staff writer for the Washington Post
February 11, 2009
Beat Journal: Deportation or Bad Economy?
In the following stories, amongst the themes found throughout most of them, the most prominent was that of immigrants being deported or leaving the U.S. While deportation needs no explanation (as they are illegal immigrants), the poor state of our economy is the main reason immigrants are looking for different places to go to support their families.
The stories I found on the CNN website were far more effective reports than the others because they used the best story structures for the events they were covering. One of them used a summary lead, followed by an easy to read/understand background paragraph which lead into a series of graphs detailing the happenings from most important to least important. The other CNN story was written with a Story lead, which explained the story's content without giving exact details or using statistics.
The reporter for Chicago's WGNtv wrote an excellent story, although the lead did not explain the story's content very well. Using a classic hard news summary lead, followed by three more graphs detailing the event, the story then went in a complete different direction. From talking about the airline that deports illegal immigrants, the reporter then began to write about other problems and events currently plaguing illigal immigrants. The story was well written/organized, yet there were many times while reading it that I felt like I wanted to stop reading because it did not flow smoothly.
Overall the coverage of immigration in the news is well done. But because our legal system moves so slowly in the conviction of illegal immigrants, and it takes non-profits so long to change policies and laws on immigration. Thus each report I have read so far has been a new event but the same story.
Resources:
"Immigration agency's airline flies tens of thousands of deportees out of U.S." Antonio Olivo Chicago's WGNtv reporter
"U.S. immigrant raids mark start of years of limbo" by Associated Press and published in the Greeley Tribune
"U.S. immigration history preserved on Angel Island" by Terence Chea of the Associated Press
"Bad economy forcing immigrants to reconsider U.S." by Thelma Gutierrez and Wayne Drash of CNN
"Liberians facing mass deportation from U.S." by Eric Marrapodi and Chris Welch of CNN
The stories I found on the CNN website were far more effective reports than the others because they used the best story structures for the events they were covering. One of them used a summary lead, followed by an easy to read/understand background paragraph which lead into a series of graphs detailing the happenings from most important to least important. The other CNN story was written with a Story lead, which explained the story's content without giving exact details or using statistics.
The reporter for Chicago's WGNtv wrote an excellent story, although the lead did not explain the story's content very well. Using a classic hard news summary lead, followed by three more graphs detailing the event, the story then went in a complete different direction. From talking about the airline that deports illegal immigrants, the reporter then began to write about other problems and events currently plaguing illigal immigrants. The story was well written/organized, yet there were many times while reading it that I felt like I wanted to stop reading because it did not flow smoothly.
Overall the coverage of immigration in the news is well done. But because our legal system moves so slowly in the conviction of illegal immigrants, and it takes non-profits so long to change policies and laws on immigration. Thus each report I have read so far has been a new event but the same story.
Resources:
"Immigration agency's airline flies tens of thousands of deportees out of U.S." Antonio Olivo Chicago's WGNtv reporter
"U.S. immigrant raids mark start of years of limbo" by Associated Press and published in the Greeley Tribune
"U.S. immigration history preserved on Angel Island" by Terence Chea of the Associated Press
"Bad economy forcing immigrants to reconsider U.S." by Thelma Gutierrez and Wayne Drash of CNN
"Liberians facing mass deportation from U.S." by Eric Marrapodi and Chris Welch of CNN
February 4, 2009
Process Memo: Event Coverage Story
I am going to start with the most prominent issues I had, since they seem to be the foremost thought in my mind. Deciding how to use the mass amount of statistics and charts given during my event was very difficult. I sided with a very minimal approach, looking for themes in statistics to provide a more broad thus easily understandable description of what was discussed. Although I think it may have lacked a bit of "power statements" as I call them (statements that really grab the readers attention, and give them the urge to tell a friend).
Research was fairly easy, there were many places to access info on the Keynote speaker, and the class that was the initial instigator of the event.
Note taking was also difficult because the speaker tended to trail off at the end of each sentence. I found that I had to go through my notes after the event and ask him to elaborate on things I didn't hear well.
For my feedback, I would like help with my organization, and how to set up better for quotes, and their placement. Also I had difficulty finding a good lead for this story, so I may have unintentionally placed a couple in a row. Overall I think it went well, but as with everything there is much room for improvement.
Daniel Acee
Research was fairly easy, there were many places to access info on the Keynote speaker, and the class that was the initial instigator of the event.
Note taking was also difficult because the speaker tended to trail off at the end of each sentence. I found that I had to go through my notes after the event and ask him to elaborate on things I didn't hear well.
For my feedback, I would like help with my organization, and how to set up better for quotes, and their placement. Also I had difficulty finding a good lead for this story, so I may have unintentionally placed a couple in a row. Overall I think it went well, but as with everything there is much room for improvement.
Daniel Acee
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