Bill Wheeler, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Pulitzer Center journalist Bill Wheeler, whose work includes extensive reporting on water access and sanitation in South Asia, will lead a workshop with students who have participated in the Pulitzer Center’s news literacy/reporting program in the weeks leading up to the News Literacy Summit. The project used the global issue of water as a case study for considering media coverage of systemic crises.
During this program, students worked with Bill and Pulitzer Center staff to explore the global topic of water through a news literacy lens and a hands-on reporting project about water issues at the local level. Addressing when, where, and how the water issue has been covered, the group will explore how underreported stories can gain attention, and how students can identify quality information in an oversaturated media landscape. Participating students will share their work and the lessons learned throughout this process. They will explore and discuss how doing the reporting affected how they understand both the issue and how news is put together, what it takes to engage an audience on underreported issues, the role of news as a public good, the challenges and promises the new media landscape presents, how and why decisions are made in news, fact versus opinion-based reporting, what goes into a quality story, and their role as both active consumers of information and producers of it.
