News Gathering
One of the personally enriching aspects of being a journalist is learning about your subject. Whether it's stories or statistics, gathering all pertinent information is the first key step to make a journalistic piece great.
Sterling Creek Fire Still A Concern
In this story, I was covering a fire that broke out near a neighborhood where many Hagerty students lived. There were two perspectives I needed, the students and the experts. For the student perspective, I used Twitter to find that several students posted pictures about the fire. With that covered, I contacted Oviedo Fire Chief Lars White. I had never done an interview with a city official before, so I wanted to make sure I covered all of my bases. The interview ended up clocking in at 35 minutes long, and it held the record for my longest interview for nearly two years.
And that's the Key
WIth our football coach's retirement after 43 seasons, I wanted to do a story that looked back on his career and impact on those who worked with him. This included former players and Assistant coaches. While contacting numerous former assistant coaches for interviews and yearbook advisors for archive photos was a massive undertaking, contacting and getting a quote from one of his former players was an entirely different matter. Cody Allen, a top Major League Baseball pitcher, used to play football for Ziglar at Boone. So, I contacted the sports agency that represented him, Meister Sports Management. They were very cooperative and agreed to get a quote for me from him, and after a few days (because Allen was on vacation at the time), I received the quote via email.
The Death of Cable?
In this story, I used the Internet to get the data I needed. This included looking up an article that had statistics demonstrating the increase in cord-cutting and looking up information about alternatives people have been using, such as Netflix, Hulu and Sling TV.
Crash Course
This story required more than just an Internet search. While I did research CDC statistics, I wanted a more local perspective. So, I contacted the City of Oviedo Police Department, and after a few calls and emails, I was connected to the Public Information Officer who was able to retrieve the data I needed.
