Feb. Story of the Month: How She Got That Story

Jessica Chou, the UCLA Daily Bruin photographer who produced The Underground Students, a package of stories, photos and audio slide shows on undocumented students, shared how she got the story in an e-mail interview this week. The package was named February Story of the Month. Chou is a fourth-year history major.


What inspired you to write the series?

What inspired me to start this series and what inspired me to continue it were two different things. I initially found out about the issue when I was shooting the mock graduation protest IDEAS (a support group for undocumented students) held on campus for the Daily Bruin -- and to be honest, I didn't quite know what was going on. But there were certain things that they said in their testimonials that kind of stuck with me -- and in terms of financial struggles, it was something I was able to relate to. So I started paying attention. And I think I always knew that the overall, general immigration debate never quite made sense to me, I just didn't know why. In retrospect, I think the two came together really well -- here was something I can personally relate to, perhaps now the immigration debate can start making some sense.

But being a photographer, and wanting a great photo essay for my portfolio, I started contacting the only name I remembered from the top of my head, Ernesto Rocha (one of the students I covered in my profiles). I had the whole photo essay imagined in my head, and I was going to do it in a week. It was totally shallow. I finally got a response from him a few weeks later, and he told me about a hearing (for the D.R.E.A.M. Act), a radio show, and some rallies he was going to be a part of, and invited me to come along.

I remember when I was at the hearing on May 19th (2007), I was thinking "whoa...okay, there is something going on here...this is REALLY something..." I felt pretty foolish thinking about trying to get my story in a week -- then I really would've been one of those reporters who just wanted a story but missed the whole point.

But what inspired me to continue the story in the way that I did was this issue in itself. Looking at this as an outsider, embarrassingly enough, I was pretty shocked at how these students are “just like us!” Their individual stories and their collective efforts are incredibly humbling, and it only made me realize what our immigration policies are doing to REAL people, and how much of that isn’t reflected in our current immigration debate. It’s easy to talk about solutions in legal and economic terms, but it’s precisely this human value aspect that has made it really hard. It’s an incredibly multi-dimensional issue, and I think I just really wanted to address that part of it, or if it’s already understood, then I want to make sure it’s not forgotten within any discussion of the issue.

Tell us about how you found your sources and got them to open up to you.

I briefly mentioned how I came upon my sources, and it was really through my introduction with Ernesto…and it just started from there. I met more and more students from a lot the political activities that were going on for the D.R.E.A.M. Act. In terms of them opening up to me, it was easy. They were the ones who were talking about the issue. All I had to do was pay attention. I think they saw that, so they were willing to talk more. But if they weren’t already speaking up, I highly doubt there would’ve been a story for me to pursue. It probably helped that I was in some sort of position to make that recognition a bit more public than to just my immediate friends.

What were some of the difficulties you faced in reporting the story?

I think I was just really concerned with making sure that I wouldn’t be victimizing these students. The stories shared can be so overwhelming sometimes that it can be hard to look past the difficulties they are facing, but the point is that they were doing something about. When you’re reporting about a community of people, you’re not only presenting them to the public, you’re representing them as well, whether you like it or not. I wanted to make sure the story would present and represent them in the most honest light possible, victimizing them wouldn’t have done that.

You shot photos and wrote the stories. Talk about the challenges of doing both.

I think with photos, you’re able to make decisions after you shoot and look at how your story will materialize -- you see the story as you go along. In writing, at least to me, you kind of have to have that ready in your head: observed, digested and ready to explain…totally not me. That was a pretty weird twist trying to do both, but the decision for me to write the stories didn’t come until the end.

It only took me a week to write the stories (in comparison to photographing and interviewing the students for almost a year), but it felt painfully slow. It was also my first time writing, so I was pretty nervous-- thank goodness for my uber-talented editor, Robert Faturechi, who actually wrote the investigative piece on the preferential treatment at UCLA’s orthodontics program which I believed was featured as story of the month on your blog. I think he would be the common denominator for successful stories.

In terms of photographing and interviewing the students during the year…the challenges were really about judgment calls. Do you put your camera down now? Is it appropriate for me to follow this person here? Should I give this person some space before I approach him/her again? You just feel for it as you go I guess. But hands down, I still I like photographing better.

Anything else you'd like to say?

I guess I just want to say that I’m really glad that the story received the attention that it did, and that people are not looking at this issue lightly. There are many other students facing similar challenges, and these were just particular situations of a collective struggle. All the students who I have talked to, but weren’t profiled, helped me immensely in understanding this.

I also don’t think I could’ve have finished this if it weren’t for Robert, my editor, and Alene Tchekmedyian, the online assistance editor -- who stayed up for two days straight helping me produce the audio slideshows. They definitely grounded me in making sure I knew what I wanted out of the package, and it was way more than a one man effort that these stories came out.

Has your newspaper produced a great series, story, photo story, multimedia or interactive graphic you want to share with others. Submit it for Story of the Month consideration by e-mailing it to collegenewspaper@gmail.com. Keep in mind this is not a contest; it's simply a way to highlight examples of innovative, investigative and in-depth student journalism.

February Story of the Month

OK, so we've fallen down on the job of selecting Stories of the Month. We're resurrecting the feature to showcase The Daily Bruin's "The Underground Students" series on undocumented students in higher education.

The series offers a sensitive and nuanced look at undocumented students struggling to survive and get an education at UCLA.

The series includes:
-- Two audio slideshows by Jessica Chou and Alene Tchekmedyian, Part I and Part II

and these stories and photos by Jessica Chou:
-- Deportation of father leaves son challenges
UCLA student has to run family business, pay taxes, take care of brother between classes
-- Struggling with noncitizen status
Hardships of being an undocumented immigrant force student to work long hours to finish school
-- Living the green card dream
Attaining legal citizen status opens educational, vocational doors for UCLA alumna
-- Student sees beyond immigration status

Check it out. We'll try to get an interview with Jessica Chou next week.

Share your thoughts about The Underground Students package by posting a comment here.

October Story of the Month

October's Story of the Month: The Daily Helmsman's coverage of the killing of University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford.

Bradford, a defensive lineman for the University of Memphis Tigers, was shot to death in his car on the Memphis campus Sunday night. The Helmsman had journalists on the scene almost immediately.

The staff did a top-notch job of covering the story -- so good, in fact that several professional news organizations attributed information to the student newspaper. The Helmsman was the first media organization to identify Bradford and it kept up its coverage of the story all through the week. You can read some of the stories here and here.

Mediaverse, an online trade publication that covers the Memphis media, has an interesting interview this week with Editor-in-Chief Trey Heath and Managing Editor Nevin Batiwalla.

Other notable Story of the Month entries:
The Northeastern at Northeastern State University put out a special edition last month to report the Student Senate's "no confidence" vote of the acting university president. "We covered the story, ran back to the newsroom and rushed to send the paper to print that night," writes Editor Dale Denwalt II. The paper publishes weekly and its Web site only has PDFs of the print edition. (The editors showed enterprise in publishing a special edition, but a live Web site would have solved the problem.) Check out The Northeastern's special Sept. 27 edition.

The Miami Hurricane, the twice-weekly paper at the University of Miami, put together a nice package on college roommates with a story on a roommate-matching system the university may put into place next year and a "Roommates from Hell" sidebar. Nice work!
Send your Story of the Month submissions to collegenewspaper@gmail.com.

We'd love to hear more from editors and reporters involved in the Taylor Bradford story. Post a comment here.

Seeking Story of the Month submissions

Did your paper do something this month that you’re particularly proud of? Do you have a recent story (text, slideshow, photo, video, multimedia, whatever) that’s innovative, in-depth, investigative or in some other way inspiring?

Send it to us!

The Student Newspaper Survival Blog is seeking submissions for its Story of the Month feature. This is not a “best of” contest. It’s a way to spotlight work being done by student newspapers that other student journalists can learn from. In addition to showing the piece, we’ll run a How I Got That Story column from the creator(s). Stories needn't be text -- they can be photo stories, video stories, etc.

Previous Stories of the Month included Stu Woo’s profile for the Brown Daily Herald of Reade Seligmann, one of the Duke lacrosse players who was acquitted of sexually assaulting a stripper invited to a team party and The Daily Egyptian's investigative report detailing accusations that Southern Illinois University Carbondale President Glenn Poshard had lifted portions of his 1984 dissertation without proper documentation.

These are the kinds of stories that can inspire student journalists around the world.

To submit a Story of the Month candidate, send an e-mail to collegenewspaper@gmail.com with a link to the story and, if applicable, a PDF, JPG, GIF or TIFF file of the page it appeared on. Please include a 200- to 500-word statement explaining how the story came together. Deadline for this month is Oct. 1, 2007 for work published in September.

In addition to the Story of the Month, the Student Newspaper Survival Blog aims to highlight innovative features, ethical challenges, special projects, experiments in journalism, legal issues, etc., related to college journalism. Help us keep up on the latest by e-mailing collegenewspaper@gmail.com with your tips.

September Story of the Month

Yes, I know we said we’d be accepting nominees for Story of the Month through Sept. 4, but this one was so good and so timely we decided to publish this Story of the Month today. We’ll still review -- and possibly share -- other submissions as they come in!

The Daily Egyptian, the student newspaper at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, got the school year off to a bang with an investigative report detailing allegations that university President Glenn Poshard had lifted portions of his 1984 dissertation without proper documentation.

The package of stories that ran on Aug. 30 (and follow-up stories that ran the following day) was produced by Daily Egyptian staffers Jordan Wilson, Joe Crawford, Brian Feldt and Sean McGahan.

The newspaper's report was based on a copy of Poshard's dissertation that was given to the newspaper by an unnamed source. The manuscript had sentences and paragraphs highlighted to denote potentially plagiarized sections. The source also provided photocopies of source material from which Poshard's dissertation may have been taken. The Daily Egyptian verified the validity of the source's documents by obtaining the originals and even checking with the author of one book. The newspaper published a two-page spread comparing the sections of the dissertation with the other documents.



In addition to stories about the allegations and the graphic representation of the plagiarism charges, the paper ran stories about other instances of plagiarism at the university, a timeline chronicling the “Journey of a President” and a reasoned, carefully worded editorial that avoids judgment, letting readers draw conclusions for themselves.



The story was picked up by professional newspapers around the state and beyond, including the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune and the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Kudos to The Daily Egyptian for its excellent reporting on this story. We’d love to learn how the reporters got the story, but they haven’t responded to our emails yet. Guys, we want to hear from you! Post a comment here or send an email to collegenewspaper@gmail.com.

Seeking Story of the Month submissions

Did your paper do something over the summer or for the start of the school year that you’re particularly proud of? Do you have a recent story (text, slideshow, photo, video, multimedia, whatever) that’s innovative, in-depth, investigative or in some other way inspiring?

Send it to us!

The Student Newspaper Survival Blog is seeking submissions for its Story of the Month feature. This is not a “best of” contest. It’s a way to spotlight work being done by student newspapers that other student journalists can learn from. In addition to showing the piece, we’ll run a How I Got That Story column from the creator(s). Stories needn't be text -- they can be photo stories, video stories, etc.

The first Story of the Month was Stu Woo’s profile for the Brown Daily Herald of Reade Seligmann, one of the Duke lacrosse players who was acquitted of sexually assaulting a stripper invited to a team party. Woo showed great enterprise in tracking down Seligmann, who was planning to transfer to Brown in the fall, and landing an interview. Woo got off work early at his internship with the Providence Journal to drive down to New York City and interview Seligmann. He wrote an in-depth, compelling narrative. Woo shared how he got the story with Student Newspaper Survival Blog readers, providing inspiration for other student journalists.

To submit a Story of the Month candidate, send an e-mail to collegenewspaper@gmail.com with a link, PDF, JPG, GIF or TIFF file. Please include a 200- to 500-word statement explaining how the story came together. Deadline for this month is September 4, 2007 for work published in August.

In addition to the Story of the Month, the Student Newspaper Survival Blog aims to highlight innovative features, ethical challenges, special projects, experiments in journalism, legal issues, etc., related to college journalism. Help us keep up on the latest by e-mailing collegenewspaper@gmail.com with your tips.

How He Got That Story

Story of the Month Winner Stu Wong of the Brown Daily Herald describes how he got the interview with Reade Seligmann, the Duke University lacrosse player who was acquitted of raping an exotic dancer:

About two weeks before our summer issue deadline, one of my editors called me to ask me to track down Seligmann, who had committed to Brown in May.

I didn't know where to start (I figured his lawyer would never forward the request), so I called some of my old bosses at the Chronicle of Higher Education, where I interned last fall. One of them who had been following the case suggested KC Johnson's blog, Durham Wonderland. A history professor at Brooklyn College, Johnson had pretty much the most authoritative blog on the Duke case; he's actually co-authoring a book about it.

I e-mailed Johnson, asking if he would forward an interview request to Seligmann, which kindly he did. Seligmann e-mailed me back the same day from his work account, telling me that he would love to talk to the Brown paper. I e-mailed him back a day later, asking if I could have his phone number. He quickly e-mailed me back from his account at Bear Stearns, a New York investment bank, and asked for my number instead. So I gave him mine, and he e-mailed me again, telling me that he would call me that night, which he didn't.

I e-mailed him back the next day, asking to talk to him, and he said again that he would call me that night. But he didn't, and we again bounced e-mails back and forth for a week, until he stopped e-mailing for a few days.

So finally, the Tuesday before my Saturday deadline, I e-mailed him again, telling him I needed to talk to him before the weekend. He said again that he would call me that night, but he didn't. So finally on Thursday, I asked him if I could just drive down to New York that night and meet him at a cafe. He e-mailed me back, telling me that he had a company dinner in Times Square until 8 p.m., but he could meet me at 8:30. So I suggested the Times Square Starbucks, and he said it was good.

I have an internship at the Providence Journal, so I asked my editor if I could leave early since I was planning on work on Sunday anyway. I got off around 3 p.m. and drove straight to Brooklyn Heights, where I planned to spend the night with a friend. I got caught in rush hour, but somehow didn't manage to get lost and parked in Brooklyn around 7:45 p.m. I scribbled down all my notes in my notepad on the subway (totally prepared, I was not) and read some clips I printed from the New York Times. When I arrived at 8:20, he was already there.

I knew what he looked like from all the photos/mug shots in the paper. So I greeted him, got an iced tea and sat down.

To break the ice, we started talking about Brown. I feel that was the only reason I was able to get the interview — because we were going to be students at the same college. He had declined to give interviews with many media outlets. So I took advantage of what we had in common, and it turned out great because he had many questions about the university.

I really didn't need to prod him at all in my questioning. He is a talker, and he spoke freely about everything. The only things he wouldn't talk about was how he really felt toward Mike Nifong, the Duke case prosecutor, and the woman who accused him of rape. I prodded him on details about what he did when he found out he was accused, and especially about his arrest and his time in jail. I asked him what he did to pass the time in the cell, what he remembered doing, which got him to tell me about about reading the Spanish on the walls. Whenever he mentioned something interesting (about seeing his name on the Bloomberg ticker, for instance), I tried to get him to tell me every single detail: exactly where he was sitting, whom he was with, what was going through his mind, etc.

About the lead: When the lady who asked Seligmann for the psychic reading came up to our table, I was a little flustered at first, but Seligmann totally kept his cool. It was about a minute after she left our table when I realized, Holy shit! That's my lead. Then I looked around the Starbucks and finally found her, and scribble down notes about her appearance. It was a surreal, one-in-a-million perfect-interview experience, and I am just glad I was able to recognize its significance. (I have no idea how; I was pretty scatterbrained all day.)

So that's pretty much it. I interviewed Seligmann's mom the next day during my lunch period, which is where I got some more information about her. I was lucky enough to catch the Brown lacrosse coach, Lars Tiffany, Friday evening. I spent all day Saturday writing and I have to thank my editors — as well as my former editor at the Chronicle, Brad Wolverton, who took time off a vacation to look at it — for making it as polished as it could be.