Newark Day Four - A guest and digging in on projects

Chris Broussard was a guest at the camp today. He is a Senior Writer for ESPN the Magazine, an NBA columnist for ESPN.com, and an NBA analyst for the ESPN network. This is the second year in row that Chris has visited us. Fresh off breaking the LeBron James story, Chris was able to talk about how he gets his job done when a big story is happening - many nights with next to no sleep, plenty of phone calls to his various sources, and an ability to separate his emotions from the job he has to do as a reporter.

We watched a video of Chris talking to Vince Carter, conducted a short model interview, and then turned the floor over the students.  Students asked him about his decision to become a journalist, if there were stories he regretted having written (answer: no), and what the biggest story was he ever worked on (answer: the most recent series of stories about LeBron James and the Miami Heat.)

After the open question and answer period, the students went into Locker Room mode to get the quotes and answers they wanted.

Chris reiterated some of his key themes: you need to study hard, act responsibly, and keep your eyes on the larger picture. He noted that the decisions and actions that students take at this point of their lives will have lasting ramifications, and that they don't want to look back at this time and think about the opportunities that they missed or threw away.

The audience was definitely listening.

Later in the afternoon students got to work on their big projects - print features for the collection and video stories. Print began by brainstorming ideas, narrowing them down, and refining the pitch - why somebody would be interested in reading the story. Once they had a sense of their topic, students started to do background research.

Working with a graphic organizer, students first write down what they think they know about their topic,  then go about confirming those assertions. In the process, the students note any misconceptions they had, new pieces of information they have gained, and what kind of questions they have now.

This student below is working on a story about cheerleading.

In the other group, students started working on their video projects. As with the print feature, they have to narrow down their ideas, this time in pairs.

These students are working on a idea about competitive cooking, which I'm looking forward to.


















This student has already started to draft a storyboard that will detail each scene - what questions will be addressed, any narration, titles, music, and what images might be necessary. This story is about the fans' perspective on the rivalry between LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Many students working on the storyboard noticed for themselves how they really need to identify what questions each part of the video is going to address.

Here a student argues for his vision.