Bureau reporting was an eye-opener. Before this class exercise, I had never worked on a story with a partner let alone a group and because all of my writing, reporting, and interviewing has been done alone, working with a group of others was a different experience. When several people are working to put together one cohesive idea and story flow it can be difficult to include everyone’s ideas.
The group I worked with had an interesting dynamic. All of my group members were good writers and either had a lot of experience, or a high amount of interest and took our assignment very seriously. It was interesting to see how everyone’s personalities changed slightly as we began deciding how we would split up our group to cover certain areas of campus. Even those with the most quiet of personalities, immediately began to speak up and share their opinion.
Interviewing on a deadline was intimidating at first. I wondered if my group would be able to gather a good amount and quality of interviews in the amount of time we were given. Our topic of money and how it was affecting students at Biola could have been a very touchy subject. I was unsure if people would be willing to open up and be honest in such a short amount of time and with people they did not know. Surprisingly, every person I approached was willing to be interviewed and quoted for the story, with the exception of one person who said they would have loved to help out, but had to get to class. As soon as the introduction was made and the initial question opened up the topic, the interviewees gave in depth answers and were willing to expand on their ideas; very different than how I had imagined the interviewing process would go.
One thing I noticed about myself was how I was able to engage in interviews. Although I have had some experience with interviewing, I was unsure how I would handle asking a complete stranger such a personal question and truly be able to capture not only their words, but also their emotion and body language. What I found was that when I am put in a situation where something needs to get done and there is a deadline to meet, interviewing came very naturally. I enjoyed asking questions and letting their answers turn into another question, resulting in a good flow of useable, interesting quotes for the story.
Something I can work on for the next time I interview is to be more prepared with the exact questions I want to ask. I saw how easy it was to get sidetracked or led a bit off topic during an interview. Also, I changed my initial question almost every time I talked to a new person. I was able to get the topic going, but struggled with whether I should begin with asking how the economy has hurt the student personally, or how the economy ties in with the pressure of a high school tuition.
