News Literacy
I make it a point for all my sources to have their contact information in the event I needed to corroborate a story detail, and have always been careful to keep bias out of my writing. Here are some stories where I had to carefully select the best sources.
Fire Chief
When a fire broke out that threatened the homes of many Hagerty students, I knew it was something I had to cover. In order to get the best source, however, I knew I had to contact Oviedo Fire Chief Lars White for an interview. It took a few days notice, but I landed the interview, and the information he provided allowed me add sound bytes of the interview as a multimedia element. It also provided great fact-checking material for witness stories as well.
Phil Ziglar
With a story that covers a vast amount of time, there will be a lot of fact and source checking. Phil Ziglar was a coach for 43 years at five schools. Getting interviews from those who worked with him and pictures from archived yearbooks of the schools he coached at took a significant amount of fact-checking and vetting of sources. This was one of the most massive projects I've taken on as a journalist.
Just Don't
This editorial was the second story I did involving Colin Kaepernick. The first was an editorial I wrote about kneeling for the national anthem, a trend that Kaepernick started. I disagreed with Kaepernick's actions. I knew I had an anti-Kaepernick bias before witing this editorial. When Kaepernick was featured in Nike's "Just Do It" campaign, I originally thought of writing about how the ad overglorified Kaepernick and his situation with the NFL, but after some time to think it over, I realized how my bias was affecting the story. Instead of talking about the ad, I was just railing about Colin Kaepernick. So, the story was retooled to focus more on Nike and corporations as a whole that use political and social messages to promote their brand. I addressed my own bias, and in the end, the story ended up stronger.