Our guest speaker on Tuesday is Jim Schachter, vice president for news at WNYC. Here is his bio. Please read before class.

Here are his instructions for class:

Here’s what I’d like to have the students do as prep, because I think we’ll all learn a lot from it:
– Have them go to this list of the finalists for this year’s Online News Assn. awards: http://journalists.org/2016/08/16/2016-online-journalism-awards-finalists-announced/
– Have them each pick a finalist of their choice, watch/listen/look at it closely, and come to my class prepared to talk about that project’s strengths and weaknesses. Did your find it absorbing? Why or why not? Was it worth the effort that went into consuming it? Why or why not? What worked and what didn’t? Would you have approached the subject differently? Did it give you any ideas for a technique you’d like to try or a story you’d like to tell?

I also want to talk about this<http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/pinellas-failure-factories/chart-failing-black-students/> award-winning Tampa Bay Times education project and compare it to Being 12<http://www.wnyc.org/series/being-12>, a WNYC  project. They couldn’t be more different, but they were both very effective and landed with high impact.