Front Page
Each semester, since Fall of 2006, students of COMM 2320 (Basic Reporting) at East Carolina have put some of their best work for the term in a class web site. Welcome to our site and we welcome any feedback you might have.
The major theme for the Spring 2009 edition of the comm2320.com web site was Social Change. That in turn came out of the ferment and interest in social and economic change stirred up by the Presidential election of Barack Obama and the mandate for social change that came with his election. And the election, in turn, chrystalized a renewed interest in the history of social movements, particularly the civil rights movement, and how it affected the country.
Appropiately, then the Spring 2009 edition of the web site has a section on Civil Rights with background provided by James Cobb, Jr., civil rights activist and historian, Akela Yarn, who interviewed non-profit organization coordinators and workers in terms of the influence of the civil rights movement, and an article by Dr. Timberg on his own experience in a sit-in that occurred during the civil rights movement.
Moving to the present tense, the two sections of basic reporting explored such topics as poverty, child abuse, joblessness, and care for seniors through indepth coverage of nine non-profit organizations in Greenville and Eastern North Carolina. These organizations had formerly volunteered staff time and attention as Community Partners with ECU, and each of them offered to cooperate with the students in the research they were doing to write their stories.
So in addition to the classmate profiles that are produced every semester, and a series of assignments reporting on family legacy items, and documentary film as a powerful form of indepth journalism, both sections of COMM 2320 Basic Reporting reported on the Community Partner organizations and the social problems they were addressing.
One section of the class tackled problems concerning children and the judicial system, unemployment at the start of an economic recession, the concerns of senior citizens, and the work of the boys and girls club in providing activities and a social network for kids after school. The other section focused on homelessness in Greenville, the work of The Human Society of Eastern Carolina with unwanted or mistreated animals, environmental and ecological issues addressed by the Tar-Pamlico River FoundationTar River, and the campaign by citizens of Gates County, NC to oppose an outlying naval landing field that would destroy the environmental, human and historical charactere of their county.
This edition also features special projects that came out of independent studies of the senior editors of the web site on the civil rights movement, photojournalism, and social networking.
Please check out our articles on our community partners and the projects by our senior editors:
8 a.m. Section:
The Humane Society of Eastern Carolina
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11 a.m. Section:
STRIVE
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Projects by our Senior Editors:
From Personal to Professional: Reporting on Community in a Unique Basic Reporting Class at East Carolina University A Look Back on Three Years of the COMM 2320 Basic Reporting Web Site by Travis Ostrander
Profiles of Non-Profit Heros The people behind the organizations the and their personal influences by Akela Yarn
MyFaceSpace:The Story of Facebook, Myspace and A Mostly Fiction Tale about Social Networking by Zachary Karamalegos
Community Photojournalism by Carlton Purvis
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The Web Editors from the 8 a.m. section were: Natalie Pierannunzi, Cecilia Lindsay, Tara Bright, Antje Johnson, Brian Taylor and Jack Hanley
The Web Editors from the 11 a.m. section were: John-Erik Nowell, Liz Darling, Raechel Richards and Whitney Sessoms
The Senior Editors were: Akela Yarn, Travis Ostrander, Carlton Purvis and Zachary Karamalegos