When dealing with journalism grad students, don't forget the "basics."

APR welcomed its latest batch of journalism grad students this week. We’ll put them through our newscast writing “boot camp,” and then help each student focus on their major radio project so they can graduate. APR swaps students halfway through the term with our colleagues at UA commercial TV station WVUA23-TV, so students get to experience both styles of news.

Building “good reporting habits” is job #1 when APR works with these young people. I’d had a ZOOM with our latest group, which I used to start the “breaking in” process before they work in the newsroom. I brought my laptop when they first pitched their story ideas.??While they talked, I emailed them links to articles, surveys, and background materials to beef up their angles. What I wanted to avoid is a repeat of the “lively” 20 minute long discussion I had one time with a grad student. His story idea was about changing Alabama state law, based solely on that student’s “opinion” with no verifiable facts. “Somebody’s been watching a little too much late night cable TV news,” I thought at the time!

At APR, we also teach our interns “the pivot.” Not every story is going to go as planned. We explain how doing the “pivot” can make a story work when problems occur. Case in point— APR did a national award-winning 14 month investigation of human trafficking in Alabama. One angle I covered was “familial” trafficking, where adult family members sell their younger children (it’s prevalent in Alabama.) A contact arranged interviews for me with two “familial” trafficking victims, one in her late teens, and the other in her earlier 60’s.??Both told harrowing stories of being sex trafficked, but it turned out neither was victimized by a family member. Rather than junk the interviews, I did a “pivot,” and used the material to produce a story on two generations of trafficking victims, and how “it happened” to them. The angle focused on how the younger victim met her trafficker online, and how the older person was drawn into the sex trade after face-to-face meetings at the café where she worked. I did the familial angle with other interviews.?APR works to make that situation a "teaching moment."

I’d have killed for this level of instruction when I was their age! Onward!