Today, The Nevada Sagebrush — the gorgeously-designed student paper of the University of Nevada at Reno — took a huge step into public journalism.
Our good friend Michael Higdon, the design editor of The Sagebrush, fills us in:
The whole thing started when we realized crime on campus has hit an all-time high this semester with rapes, kidnappings and other notables. What’s more is the recent Brianna Denison case has somehow made it to national attention from CNN to America’s Most Wanted. All over city (and even in Lake Tahoe area) you can find posters, lawn signs and missing-person flyers.
Brianna Denison, 19, missing
since Jan. 20. The Reno native
was on winter break from Santa
Barbara City College, Calif.
—Because of the constant media attention and frankly because of the way media naturally — and unfortunately — treats these stories students’ alertness has risen to the point where people randomly discuss their safety in class and our “Campus Escort” service has received an excess of 100 calls per night since - many of who are first time callers.
Therefore, with such safety concerns prevalent on campus, we decided to do the obligatory safety on campus story. However, we did it the Public journalism way.
Together, Editor in chief Brian Duggan, Assistant News Editors Rebecca Chase, Jessica Fryman and me (design editor and unofficial public journalism advisor), worked toward finding a narrative style, design approach and editorial stance to help our fellow students rather than continue to scare them and leave them helpless.
Clockwise, from upper left: Editor in chief Brian
Duggan, Assistant News Editor Rebecca Chase,
Design Editor Michael Higdon and Assistant
News Editor Jessica Fryman. Photo from The
Nevada Sagebrush.
—
Find today’s main story here. Find the editorial here. Find the paper’s guide to proactive protection here. Find a story about the campus escort service here.
Here are a few print samples, with design comments from Michael:
This was an extremely hard cover for me to do because of the lack of art. The lack of art is on purpose to draw attention to the need for people to do something. Any art would end up being sensational or miss the point.
We used quotes of students vs. officials to create a dialogue and an extremely investigated piece to hopefully get students involved with safety on campus. It’s grey, literally and design wise. But I think the text is set up in a way that helps people through the page. Do you think this works?
This is the jump page with a map of “possible locations for emergency boxes” and a timeline of events that have taken forever to come through. Even the advertisement on the page is related to the package.
Our weekly update was a list of all the ways you can get involved and people you can call to be proactive about safety on campus. There’s a note to cut this article out and put it in your wallet.
The light and broken light photos are a bit weak. I wonder if they’re confusing.
They point there is literally that most people say lighting is a problem and lights on campus are outdated and often broken, so it’s a tad literal. Metaphorically the light is supposed to also represent a good idea. I’m not sure how well it works.
This was designed by Jessica Fryman and I just helped finish it up.
For larger versions, click on the thumbnails:
There’s also a video posted on YouTube:
Michael’s quite fired up about this public journalism thing. He spoke with me at length a couple weeks ago, which was when I asked him to send me samples to post:
The definition of Public journalism is something often realized by accident and even Jay Rosen — academic leader of the movement throughout the ’90s — had trouble defining it but easily documented its execution when he found it. But at the Sagebrush we aimed very deliberately to invent the language and purpose for Public journalism based on my readings of the movement, politics and the political body.
Following in the footsteps of Public journalism champions, such as Cole Campbell, The Gazette, The Indianapolis Star, The Virginian-Pilot, Dennis Foley (who helped by offering comments to the idea through e-mail) and my independent study teacher Dr. David Ryfe, we executed our main goal: to give students the tools of the press by providing them with information and access to officials they can deliberately use in order to make a difference by asking questions and offering solutions.
The language of Public journalism then takes the form of:
* Intensely investigated main news stories broken into separate parts showing the problem but — and this is where Public journalism differs from traditional journalism — focusing specifically on opportunities for change and possible solutions while avoiding the finger of blame that takes legitimacy from the governing body and causes cynicism within the public mind;
* A dialogue displayed prominently in display text juxtaposing students thoughts with officials’ thoughts — reporting done to exact this purpose;
* An editorial describing the newspapers positions as well as emphasizing the point that the power is now in the students’ hands;
* A short-form guide describing how to use this information - who to contact, where to look, etc.;
* Breaking the fourth wall but telling readers to literally cut out the article and drop it off at the student president’s office to show their enthusiasm for permanent action.
* Finally, the design of the paper pieces everything together. An artless and purely functional cover emphasizing the point without sensationalizing or clouding the issue, careful attention to information architecture and juxtaposition, graphics, breakout, numbers and timeline to help break down the information into memorable - according to Poynter - and digestable pieces someone can use.
Now we sit back and watch, continue to cover the issue in a proactive way and wait for things to happen while carefully encouraging and even pushing in a direction for change through news coverage.
As a second note, the paper’s continuing effort to become more Public minded has already led us to thinking of stories in different ways.
I’d also like it noted that the two girls’ ball-busting reporting and peer-editing is what made this story a solid journalistic piece.
Great job, Michael! Thanks for sharing!
Find more of Michael Higdon’s work in his NewsPageDesigner portfolio.
A pretty nice job. I especially liked the editorial’s call to action — a departure from most newspaper editorials that are so bland that the board seems almost afraid to take a stand even though it’s a forum for doing exactly that. I also like the call for readers to send copies of the article to the student association president — getting people to actually USE the paper in some way. I also like the video and Google map on the web site (btw, I really like the overall look and feel of their site. Wish more professional papers would go in that direction).
I really like Michael’s definition of public journalism, in particular the part about focusing on solutions and avoiding placing blame. Of course, I would say that’s a characteristic of any responsible and smart journalism, be it “public” or “traditional”. However, after reading the main story, while I believe it does a pretty good job of investigating why call boxes haven’t been installed, I don’t know if it really fits the standards of not placing blame. In fact, the first two-thirds of the story seems to be mostly placing blame on the university and quoting the officials all saying basically “It’s not my fault; and this is expensive.” And if I were a student and read that the student association approved a bill for more call boxes, yet 9 months later they still haven’t done anything, that would make me cynical about the effectiveness of any student association action and question whether I should really bother to heed the paper’s call to express my opinions to the student association. After all, what irate reader calls up the newspaper to complain to the agate clerk? You want to talk to the editor
Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong in placing blame (or, if we want a better-sounding phrase, pinpointing where the problem lies) as long as you also offer solutions; and this overall package certainly does some of that. I think the reporting, the call to action, and the “information you can use”-type tips could go further and deeper though. Some thoughts:
Everybody says these safety measures are expensive, and the president only approved enough money for little more than half the call box project. What pot does that money come out of? How big is the pot? Who fills the pot? Where is the rest of it going to? What about other sources of financing the project? That’s information people need to know. Telling the administration “I want more money for safety” is not as effective as telling them “I want more money for safety and here is where I think you should divert funds from.” It’s part of providing possible solutions.
What has the student association done in the past nine months to push the university on the project? From the story, I gathered that they passed the bill, nothing has been done, and the approved budget is well under what is needed. Again, based on that information alone, it’s hard for a reader to think that complaining to the student association would do much good, especially since the association agreed with the stance that more safety measures were needed, yet haven’t gotten it done. So are they really the right/only avenue to effect action?
Aside from contacting the student association, which campus officials can readers contact to voice their concerns and displeasure with campus safety?
Context: How do the number of call boxes compare to the number on other similar-sized campuses? The graphic says there were 78 assaults in 2007 in parking garages (where the 77 call boxes are). Is that high or low? How many assaults were there in other areas of campus? How do the high-crime areas correspond to the planned locations for the call boxes? They replaced 19 burnt out lights. How many lights were there total? 20? 200? One of the stated concerns was that the media coverage has made people think campus isn’t safe. Simply providing these numbers without context doesn’t help to change or substantiate that perception.
This one almost seems too obvious: What do these call boxes look like and where are they in the garages? The story quoted a student saying he doesn’t even know there were call boxes in the garages. If that’s representative of your readership, then it would serve them to know where these things are and whether that thing in the corner is a call box or a circuit breaker, especially when they are running away from an assaulter and looking to call for help.
The police say cameras are expensive and raise the privacy issue. What kind of privacy issues are we talking about with cameras in parking garages (not dorms)? What lawful thing would you do in a garage that you would worry about cameras picking up? It’d be helpful to follow up on this statement to see if there’s any truth in it or if it’s just an excuse to justify not spending money for student safety. And what about the effectiveness of cameras? Any statistics from other colleges on this?
I like the Weekly Update page of tips to improve safety. However, I think it’s a bit unrealistic to ask people to cut out 3/4th of a broadsheet and fold it five times to fit into a wallet. If you want people to cut something out and keep it on them, condense the info down to the size of two credit cards so that they can fold once and have it fit in their wallets. You can even try positioning a box at the same spot on both sides of that sheet and print info on the front and back.
The front page design: I’m not sure I share Michael’s stance that any art would be sensationalizing the story. You can always approach art from the standpoint of “take action, improve safety” rather than “crime is rampant”. The right image would be no more sensational than, say, a student’s quote saying it’s unsafe to live by campus. I think the design works fine for the most part, though the top half feels a bit cluttered for my taste. I like the fact that the hed actively calls readers to action, but I’m not sure if the subhed accurately reflects the information conveyed in that main story. Isn’t the story saying that the university officials are lagging behind and NOT getting the job done? They haven’t put up call boxes; they don’t have the money to put up but about half of the number approved; and they are saying security cameras likely won’t happen.
I think this is a strong package overall and a great start to a good journalistic project. And I hope that that’s all it is — a start, and not the end, because there seems to be a lot more angles to this story to investigate rather than sit back and wait for reactions and new developments before digging deeper.
I absolutely agree with you, Zhu, on every point and greatly appreciate the comments. This seems to be the general response from other professionals. The story is very complicated and some of the issues you brought up or some of the things I and other editors felt were missing but that also are mucky and need even more reporting.
So in that vein, this is definitely the beginning. I meant watching as more than just watching the pigeons eat the bread. I hope to encourage our writers to follow up on a lot of those concerns because students will likely have similar ones. The ideal I have in mind is that we opened the forum for the safety conversation already happening on campus and that people will respond - likely with your questions - and we will respond back to them with the answers (with good journalism of course). We’re acting as the string between the two tin cups being held by students and officials (god that was contrived but it works).
I suppose my response then is: stay tuned for an update.