21
May

Project 573 2013: None of the Above

Here it is, a semester’s work of 10 Missouri School of Journalism seniors (including myself): Project 573 2013.

Our topic this year was the rise of people with no religious affiliation, since more people (particularly young people) are considering themselves atheists, agnostics, secular humanists or deists rather than adhering to a particular religion.

Reporting on religion isn’t easy, and neither is building your own institutional framework for your publication. We cut some stories, revamped some stories and even had some stories come out the way they were pitched. We plucked up our courage and got interviews at all costs:

(No, the woman Liz and Blake were talking to wasn’t used in the final publication, but apparently she was interesting in her own right.)

My main contribution was a piece of reflections from members of older generations. It touches on where this trend may be coming from and how older people feel about it, but most of all it is to show the role religion has played in the lives of people so we can better understand the difference a lack of religion may or may not make.

It’s the third piece of the Faith and Families section, but I’d recommend reading to it rather than skipping ahead. The entire project is incredibly interesting, and though it was a tumultuous process, we’re all very proud of our work. And when you’re done, we’d all love to hear your thoughts!

1 note religion / atheism / Mizzou / long reads / journalism / my work /
27
Mar
It’s taken a few years and my mom’s attendance at seminars hosted by better minds than mine, but my family’s papers are now tweeting.  Of course, the page is starting off small. Tweeting when the papers come in was an idea I told my mother over three years ago, when I was working over Christmas break my freshman year and mentioned how it could be a solution to getting dozens of calls every Wednesday night asking if the papers had arrived. Since then, there’ve been additional ideas thrown around, starting with when there were two tornadoes in Odessa the next summer and I mentioned how helpful it would be if we could get the information we had from the police scanners out to everyone else, since there were three siren blasts and it was two days after the Joplin tornado. More recently, my mom has gone to workshops on social media for weekly newspapers, and I even drafted her a page-long social media strategy.  So far, it seems we’re sticking with letting people know when the papers are in town. But that’s okay. It’s going to be challenging enough to make this work, since most people who pick up their papers on Wednesday nights are far, far beyond the average Twitter user’s age.  And then maybe soon we’ll start with the news and teases on the stories in the paper. I have a feeling that in the fall it might host some football scores. But for now, I’ll say we have a start.

It’s taken a few years and my mom’s attendance at seminars hosted by better minds than mine, but my family’s papers are now tweeting. 

Of course, the page is starting off small. Tweeting when the papers come in was an idea I told my mother over three years ago, when I was working over Christmas break my freshman year and mentioned how it could be a solution to getting dozens of calls every Wednesday night asking if the papers had arrived.

Since then, there’ve been additional ideas thrown around, starting with when there were two tornadoes in Odessa the next summer and I mentioned how helpful it would be if we could get the information we had from the police scanners out to everyone else, since there were three siren blasts and it was two days after the Joplin tornado. More recently, my mom has gone to workshops on social media for weekly newspapers, and I even drafted her a page-long social media strategy. 

So far, it seems we’re sticking with letting people know when the papers are in town. But that’s okay. It’s going to be challenging enough to make this work, since most people who pick up their papers on Wednesday nights are far, far beyond the average Twitter user’s age. 

And then maybe soon we’ll start with the news and teases on the stories in the paper. I have a feeling that in the fall it might host some football scores. But for now, I’ll say we have a start.

my work /
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