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.

November Story of the Month

OK, we've been a little behind on the Story of the Month, but we've got a doozy for you now. This week the Daily Bruin at UCLA broke a major investigative story on preferential admission practices by the university's prestigious orthodontics residency program.

In an investigation that took more than four months, Robert Faturechi, the newspaper's enterprise editor, found that the residency program had violated University of California policy and standards governing public schools by giving special admissions consideration to relatives of major donors.

"In this unprecedented practice within the School of Dentistry, applicants related to donors giving six-figure gifts were automatically advanced over other students despite their lower test scores and grades," the story said.

"This was definitely the hardest story I’ve ever done," said Faturechi, a senior who has worked on the Daily Bruin since his freshman year. "It was several months of really hard work."

The university had already investigated the allegations and found “no credible and convincing evidence that deals were made or understandings reached to admit an applicant in return for donating money to the school,” according to an internal audit.

But the Daily Bruin found evidence, including e-mail messages and internal documents, showing that the orthodontics program had systematically advanced applicants related to major donors over more qualified students.

The Daily Bruin Web site included links to documents, including the audit and a letter of resignation from a faculty member who quit in protest of the university’s inaction on the allegations of admissions impropriety. It also included graphs depicting the university's increasing reliance on private donations.

No-Hee Park, dean of the School of Dentistry, said in a prepared statement that the admissions program was fair and based on merit.

"While an independent investigation requested by Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams found no credible and convincing evidence to support allegations of a legacy program in the orthodontics admissions process," Park said, "it did provide us with an opportunity to review our admissions policies and procedures and make improvements in the areas of oversight and transparency."

The story was picked up by several major media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and even The Drudge Report.

Faturechi said he first learned about the story from an e-mail tip.

"Most of the time when you get e-mails like that there’s nothing to them," he said. "I gave the guy a call and he sounded fairly legitimate so I drove out to his house. He had some documents to support what he was saying."

Faturechi said it was a difficult story to report, because many of the key sources declined to be interviewed or were hesitant to talk. "I had to be persistent," he said. Others, however, were outraged and willing to share their views.

"Some of the folks I talked to take great pride in the program and they were frustrated with what they had seen had happen. They wanted to clean things up."

Faturechi said investigative stories like this one renew his faith that journalism is alive and well.

"A lot of folks say good print journalism is dying," he said. "If my friends are any indication, that’s not true. My editors and fellow reporters at the Daily Bruin are incredibly committed to covering our community well. There is still a passion for print journalism."

Student newspapers cover SoCal wildfires

I'm always curious how student newspapers handle big stories so I thought I'd take a look at how some Southern California student newspapers are covering the fires there.

Here are some links to the newspapers' coverage:

• The Graphic at Pepperdine University, where classes were cancelled Monday and Tuesday as a result of the fires, is running a slide show of fire photos on its home page. The weekly newspaper has several breaking news stories on its Web site about the firefighting efforts, the evacuation of students from the campus and the cancellation of classes.
  
  
• The Daily Bruin at UCLA is also covering the Malibu fire. Today's story includes a statistics box on the fire, a map of the fire zone that shows its proximity to the university and an infographic detailing which schools and streets are closed.
  
  
• The Daily Aztec at San Diego State University has packaged its fire stories together on a special Web page. The newspaper has reports on evacuation of local residents and the cancellation of classes.
  
  
  
• The Guardian at UC San Diego is keeping readers up to date with a blog. The newspaper also has an animated map showing the spread of the fire.
  
  

Is your student newspaper covering the Southern California fires? Do you have suggestions for what other newspapers can be doing with their Web sites? Post a comment here.

Integrated college media sites

There’s been a lot of discussion at college media conventions and on the College Media Advisers listserv about what we should do to compete with sites like BigLickU, SwoCol.com and The Loop that target our readers and advertisers.

Before we start trying to reinvent the wheel, let’s look at some college media sites that already take an integrated approach.

One of the oldest and yet still among the best is bruinwalk, a campus portal for UCLA. In addition to providing links to The Daily Bruin, UCLA TV, UCLA radio and several campus magazines, it offers social and academic networking, a campus calendar, professor reviews, student-to-student book trading, online file storage, and a marketplace of goods and services.

The site is run by Student Media UCLA and governed by a communications board representing a broad cross-section of the campus community, including undergraduate and graduate students, the administration, faculty, alumni and the media professions. According to the bruinwalk About page, the board “is entirely self-supporting. It receives no registration fees or other forms of public support. All of its revenues come from advertising sales in the media.”

Amazingly, it’s been around since 1998, long before Facebook and MySpace!

Another one to look at is InsideVandy at Vanderbilt University. In addition to offering news, features, commentary, photos, videos and other content produced by Vanderbilt student media, it allows members of the Vanderbilt community to create content and interact with one another.

"InsideVandy is built for community participation," the site explains on its About page. "Use it to debate, discuss and connect. Start a blog, post your photos, submit items to the community calendar. Comment on other people's content and create some of your own."

Though not as extensive, the Northern Star has long gone beyond the typical student newspaper Web site with a dining guide, a housing guide and free online marketplace. The Northern Star is also doing some neat stuff with video.

Is your college media organization doing something innovative? What other sites do you look to as models? Tell us about them by posting a comment.