Comm 2320
Basic Reporting for the School of Communication at ECU

Introduction

The Communications 2320 course at East Carolina University focuses on basic reporting. This includes the fundamentals of journalism, whether through print or the multimedia. The course is taught by Bernard Timberg and his evolution of the course has seen community benefit through service-learning and the development of students’ self-awareness and community awareness through personal and professional reporting.

Service Learning

The service learning portion of the Basic Reporting class has evolved and progressed over the last six semesters. In the early stages of the project, service learning was a suggested topic amongst many others dealing with personal interest, the East Carolina University community and the Greenville community as a whole. Through the semesters, the service learning aspect has gained a head of steam leading up to the present semester where each student is working with Jessica Cloutier, ECU’s service-learning coordinator, in an effort to better an organization in need of volunteers.

In the fall of 2006, the class was in its infancy under the direction of Bernard Timberg. Timberg taught several talented writers, some of whom were published for various stories concerning music, sports, and opinion. The students were asked to report on a relevant community issue and it was suggested that it should be of some gain to both the writer and those about which the story was written. Several students chose to concern their writing with issues that are closely-related to being a college student and preparing one’s self for life’s next step. Some of the stories featured on the class website, http://www.freewebs.com/comm2320, include learning to find strength in personal abilities, relationships, and life after college. Some of the more powerful and effective articles, however, concerned pieces that would be of consequence to readers who are not current students.

Scott Spragins wrote an article about East Carolina’s ROTC program. He consulted with several reserves of the corps as well as their officers to highlight the impact they will have upon completing their education and how they may affect the area and the world through their military obligations. It is an organization who impacts the lives of those they proudly serve. The article shares the experiences had and commitments made by members of our community.

Spragins also told the story of a local artist by the name of Steve Chilingirian. Chilingirian is a metal artist who, along with the town of Grifton, opened “The Art of Steeling and The Grifton Gallery of Fine Art.” The gallery is a public destination that showcases dozens of local pieces of art in its 10,000-square foot building located a half-hour from Greenville. This article details a local gallery in which many residents of Eastern North Carolina, and even visitors from other areas, would be interested.

The article from this semester which put the most emphasis on service learning was written by Tricia Ben-Davies. Ben-Davies chronicled the Gulu Walk of Greenville. The walk, which is one of many of its kind, raised nearly four-thousand dollars for the children of Uganda and garnered community-wide interest for the Gulu children. Ben-Davies attended the event and interviewed several people, including ECU students, to gauge their thoughts on the event. It was not a proactive piece in the sense that she made people aware of the event prior to it taking place, but she did allude to future Gulu Walks in Greenville and set the ball in motion for the service-learning portion of the Basic Reporting class.

The spring 2007 edition of Basic Reporting continued to put a strong emphasis on the ECU community and directed many of its articles to students and peers. Several articles dealt with typical, and fairly overused, college topics. There were the usual pieces dealing with Greek organizations on college campuses, underage drinking, and sex. However, there were also a few that were more time-specific and of note for the current semester.

On a national level, Allison Query reported on the tainted peanut butter that made national news because of a salmonella outbreak. She localized her article by speaking of ECU students who had found one of the recalled Peter Pan brand peanut butter jars. Her article referenced workers at the Pitt County Memorial Hospital and advised everyone to be cognizant of the products they buy and consume.

There were also several articles dealing with the East Carolina community. One article, written by Stephen Lupton, told of the identity theft scare through East Carolina’s OneStop website in the early weeks of January 2007. His article expressed the concerns surrounding students’ personal information being exposed and how the university was dealing with the situation. Another article dealt with both East Carolina University and the state of North Carolina following a dorm fire in March of 2007. Anna Sawyer provided personal accounts of the blaze, statistics surrounding the extent of the damage, and plans for future renovations imposed by state law. Through her research, she was able to describe a new law and a university plan that would require sprinklers for all dorms on the East Carolina campus by 2014.

While this semester did not focus as much on service learning, its students’ articles were of service to its readers by enlightening them to the dangers of consumerism and important events across the university’s campus.

The class returned to its focus on service learning during the fall semester of 2007. It also got a new look for its publication of the articles by beginning to use a new website, http://www.comm2320.com, hosted by WordPress. The web site was designed by Steven Maguire, an advanced student who was a professional web designer, and hosted his own server. In Fall 2007, there were still community-based articles dealing with East Carolina University and its surrounding towns. Such articles included the renovation of Mendenhall on the campus of ECU, the closing of Washington Street in Greenville, and the Currituck Bridge Project. However, two journalistic pieces that encompassed the movement towards service learning concerned service organizations in the form of fraternities and sororities.

Lauren Tsoilkas submitted her reporting through a PowerPoint presentation detailing the benefits of social fraternities and sororities. While articles in previous semesters presented opinions on the benefits or disadvantages of being a member of Greek life, Tsoilkas showed the service aspects of ECU’s Greek organizations and the way they impacted the community. Tsoilkas highlighted several organizations in particular and told of the groups they affect and how individuals, outside of the fraternities or sororities mentioned, can get involved. Tsoilkas referred to Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s Bounce-A-Thon which raised over two-thousand dollars. She also explained Delta Zeta’s Jump-A-Thon for the hearing and speech impaired, Sigma Phi Epsilon’s time spent contributing to Brain Cancer Research, and Zeta Tau Alpha’s efforts put forth for breast cancer awareness and research. Another student, Joel Banjo-Johnson, spoke to Charla Hodges of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and their efforts with the March of Dimes.

Both articles helped shift the focus of the course back to service-learning. Through their exposure of non-profit organizations and the good that they do for the community, these articles helped spark interest in volunteer work for those reading or viewing the reports.

Once again, two articles stood above the rest on the web site in spring 2008.

Katrissa Bennett reported on the Kasey E. Frye Memorial Benefit Ride. Frye was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident in February 2008. Bennett reported on the Benefit Ride that was sponsored in Frye’s honor, an event hosted by local motor sports dealer, Ron Ayers. The report called attention to local news coverage as well as publicity and donations provided to the community by local businesses and those who took part in the ride.

Along the lines of community service, John Vaughn reported on the new trend of going green in an effort to preserve our environment. While he did not directly deal with a service organization, he was able to highlight the importance of maintaining a healthy environment for our community and how his student audience could do just that. Through attending to its environment, Vaughn explained how the community as a whole may prosper.

In an ever so dynamic course, the students in the fall 2008 semester were once again asked to focus on their local community as well as the national community as one of the most important elections in United States history rapidly approached. The semester began with a focus on the elections and their impact on communities on local, state, and national levels. Students reported on candidates, the issues at hand, how the media presented race, and culminated with a look at a reaction to the elections seen on ECU’s campus and Greenville as a whole.

Through reporting on the issues surrounding the election, students were able to showcase what their interviewees knew and dispel some myths regarding each candidate. Reports on how the media was portraying each candidate provided a glimpse into underlying themes and trends surrounding the election and the public’s perception of it. Furthermore, there were reports regarding new ways in which the media was attempting to attract their audience. The report made it clear that the internet was a huge factor in the amount of knowledge that individuals had received about the candidates and the election. While not working with specific organizations, the service to the local community helped engage the readers and students in an effort to generate interest and educate community members on such an important event. The web site provided a service to the community by generating interest and helping educate community members on the importance and states involved in the national elections.

A major change occurred in spring 2009. During this current spring 2009 semester, the class is completely geared towards service learning and working with local community organizations. Through the help of Jessica Cloutier, ECU’s service-learning coordinator, all of the students in the class—working in groups of three or four—have contacted and begun working with and reporting on local organizations that volunteered as community partners.

At the beginning of the semester, several ambitious students volunteered to be liaisons to community partners as well as editors of the web site. The community partners included the Pamlico Tar River Foundation, the Humane Society of Eastern North Carolina, Greenville Community Shelter, Communities in Schools of Pitt County, and Gates County Citizens Against OLF. Early in the semester, the representatives from each group came to the class in order to explain the goals and functions of their non-profit organizations.

The student liaisons generally developed a more in-depth and personal relationship to their community partner and its representative, and played a leadership role in the group’s work. The website is seen and visited by students across the East Carolina campus and the world. Many of the subjects for presentations and reports were actual ECU students and professors. Students, faculty, and general readers all benefitted through the reports of the COMM 2320 class.

Shifting from Personal to Professional Reporting

One of the main lessons taught during the class is how to transition from personal to professional reporting. At the beginning of each semester, students are asked to produce classmate profiles in which they briefly detail the life of a classmate they had not previously known. The information used in this article is based on a personal account of the student’s life. It is given through a one-on-one interview and then compiled into a succinct biography.

Once that is complete and the author has learned about their classmate, there is a slight transition regarding how the information is gathered. The author, now with background information on their subject, contacts at least three people who have impacted their subject’s life. It is common for students to choose a family member, friend, and a significant other in the form of a boyfriend or girlfriend. The knowledge acquired through the personal interview helps model the ensuing interviews. After all of the interviews are complete, another article about the same subject is written. However, there is an extenuating premise. The information that the author learned through the original interview with his/her subject should not be used during the newer article. The resulting article should only include bits of information that were given by the three acquaintances of the subject. It is a longer article and requires more proactive thinking. The reporter must generate enough questions to fill an article and be sure to ask the correct questions so that his interviewee may provide open, detailed responses. The reporter must then collaborate the interviews in such a fashion that they will appear to flow and provide a vivid image of the subject and their life.

The writing is then critiqued by the course’s professor, Dr. Timberg. He meets with each student in an effort to further teach the idea of column space and journalistic writing. This is also a way in which the student and professor can personally discuss issues that may have risen during the interviewing or reporting process. This meeting serves multiple purposes. It allows for further direction and teaching, a forum for questions, and a preparation for the second half of the course.

Most of the articles show the writer how much their family and personal lives have affected them as individuals. This helps define a path and direction to pursue as a writer and shapes the way a writer may approach professional reporting.

The second half of the course strictly deals with professional reporting. It has been shown through the service-learning articles, community involvement articles, national election presentations, and articles concerning East Carolina University and its students.

Professional reporting has been exhibited through several mediums. There have been students such as John Bosco, Kellen Holtzman, and Akela Yarn who have had their written reports published in school newspapers as well as the website. This form of print journalism has been the more common form of reporting shown by students spanning the semesters but it has certainly not been the only outlet. As the semesters have gone by, there has been a shift towards multimedia productions in the form of MP3 files and PowerPoint presentations. The vast majority of the reports on the November 2008 elections were in the form of slide shows, using Microsoft’s PowerPoint, that were organized by groups of students rather than individuals. The group aspect of reporting allows for the class members to recognize new and creative ways to report and acquire information that they may have otherwise not known. One of the more inventive ways of reporting shown by a COMM 2320 student was the photojournalistic efforts of Carlton Purvis from the fall 2008 semester. He chronicled the events leading up to the election as well as the events surrounding election night on the campus of East Carolina University.

The transition from personal reporting to professional reporting is neither a quick nor easy skill to learn. However by bridging the gap using skills learned by interviewing individuals, and de-emphasizing grades in a manner of treating students as professionals in the making, the course is designed to help the student succeed.

How Students View Themselves

The opening project for each semester of the course has been a self-introduction. This introduction is a personal reflection of the individual. The students prepare a thirty second monologue, titled “30 Seconds of Me,” which explains as much as they can in the given time period. The report is filmed while the students speak into a microphone. This project fulfills multiple agendas. First and foremost, it allows the student to introduce themselves to the class and bring the group of young reporters closer together through the knowledge gained. Secondly, it prepares the student by helping teach how long thirty seconds of air time is and how much information may be given in that time frame. Finally, it allows the student to begin the course by reporting on something that is comfortable and familiar.

In addition to the students presenting their stories, they must show and explain a prop that is pertinent to their report and their life. The vast array of props have been charted throughout the semester and broken into four categories. Those categories include anything related to sports, friends, family, or the all-encompassing “other” category. They have also been divided into subgroups based on gender.

The most even category in terms of male and female participation was the “other” category. However, this was the most convoluted category as well. There were dozens of different types of props and reasoning behind them but there were not many common themes and few subgroups into which it could be split. Examples of props falling under this category include pillows, MP3 players, jewelry, and clothing. One possible theme could be that of intended professions. This was a trend among six females, but just three males. Of those six females, four used fashion magazines because they planned on being fashion journalists upon completing their graduation requirements. One male who focused on work was a student from spring 2007 who told of his aspirations to become an architect like his father by showing a project on which his father had worked. Other male students focusing on careers brought in a movie script, from an aspiring script-writer, and media credentials, from a student focusing on a career in sports journalism. Another possible theme could be that of religion. A few students showed their faith by presenting cross necklaces or a bible. The most common item in this category was the MP3 player comprising nearly ten percent of the entries in this category.

There was a common thread holding together the personal categories of friends and family. More than eighty-five percent of the students who brought in a prop dealing with their friends or family were females. The majority of the props in this category were photographs. However, within the “friends” category, sorority symbols such as pins, paddles, and lavalieres were included. While the “other” category was fairly proportionate to the male-female ratio, the friends and family categories were dominated by the female population. It is interesting to speculate as to why that may have happened. It is possible that they hold the relationships in their life dearer or it is also possible that the males wanted to seem more masculine and independent by defining themselves with sports or personal belongings.

The sports category was swayed in the completely opposite direction from the friends and family categories. While males have made up less than forty percent of the student population in the COMM 2320 courses, they make up over seventy-five percent of the sports representatives. Students have shown jerseys, equipment, and newspaper clippings as ways of describing themselves in their “30 Seconds of Me” introductions.

Conclusion

The COMM 2320 course, taught by Bernard Timberg, at East Carolina University has merit in its dealings with several levels of community and the way it allows reporters to progress in their acquisition of journalistic skills and tendencies. The students are able to introduce themselves to their classmates and then begin personal reporting. This involves getting to know fellow students and reporting on what they learn. It transitions from personal reporting to professional reporting with a segue involving outside interviews related to the original personal report. Henceforth, the course focuses on professional reporting and community. In the context of the course, community may be defined as East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, or even the United States of America. As the course has advanced, it has moved from community-focused to service-focused. It has always incorporated service into some aspects of the journalism. But, as the development of the course has continued, the shift towards service-learning is catamount to the overall foundation of the class. Through helping the community and each other, service organizations will benefit and the students may become better journalists.

Filed under: 2009 Spring, Community Partners