Rodrigues story ideas

• Story Idea:
  Fall/Spring Sports Preview – We do a preview of the upcoming sports season, looking at each of the teams, what their previous season looked like, and if there are any specific expectations of interest for the new season.
• Story Mission and Need: Respond to the interest that exist in high school sports and help build some anticipation for coverage of the upcoming season. Additionally, athletics and athletes are a subsection of our community that doesn’t always see themselves represented authentically in the paper (given some demographic differences between our athletes and our student journalists), so there is a secondary mission to help reach out to a part of our population we are hoping to build readership within.
• Why report it now? This is a perennial story that we run twice a year, every year.
• Essential Questions:
  What sports will participate in the upcoming season?
  What, if any, changes have occurred on the team that might benefit or hinder their upcoming season?
  How did the season go in the previous year, how is it likely to go this year?
• Source to use, live and non-live (expert, authoritative, knowledgeable, bozo): Coaches, players, fans, parents (of athletes), stats from previous season (both for team and individual players; maxpreps), athletic director, director of student activities, schedules
• Potential issues with sources and how to solve them: It is sometimes difficult to connect with coaches who don’t work on campus through the school day, given the busy practice schedule leading to start of season, players are often busy and hard to connect with. Previous athletic director was notoriously difficult to communicate with.  Solutions: Anticipate the coverage we need and who we’d like to contact and try to get ahead of this story since we know it is happening.  This is not an emergency story that came out of the blue.
• Medium/Media to best tell the story? Why this or these choices? Print and web. Given the dynamic nature of sports, doing larger-scale web coverage makes sense with audio interviews and photo packages of athletes, coaches, etc.  Lots of pictures of Buzz (BHS mascot).  Print gives an artifact the features athletes appreciate and a reference for students (web can also provide updated schedules and stats as the season progresses).
• Depending on the media used, what visuals would you suggest? Lots of pictures and video clips of practices for web. Static pictures of practice and athlete profiles for both web and print.  Audio stories with interviews that can be posted to web.  Deeper dive historical analysis with timelines, etc. for web.
• Range of story angles, supporting materials: Given our readership, trying to keep these stories hopeful and positive would be more appropriate, particular with a sport like football which has had a run of tragically bad seasons and some coaching changes. Angle could be how the team intends to turn things around. There might be some interesting additional coverage looking at the challenges of student athletes, the costs associated (both for school and for athletes) with athletics.
• How will the various information pieces be visually, alternatively presented? Lots of opportunity for timelines, smaller scale snapshot athlete profiles. If possible, it’d be cool to do a juxtapose to show the changing demographics of the BHS teams over time (this could also be done with flourish visualizations).
• From infogathering to presentation, what legal, ethical and social responsibility questions might you face and what are some ways they might be handled? The biggest ethical problem we’ve faced with stories like these is ensuring an adequate depth of coverage for all sports (we tend to over cover water polo and soccer as those sports are better represented in our staff) and we tend not to cover football or boys basketball as much. We need to make sure each sport has roughly equal coverage, where possible.  We also need to cover the club sports like Ultimate (Frisbee), crew, mountain bike, etc.  Also, the tone of these stories should be consistent, and as a features piece, somewhat positive and hopeful so there are some ethical considerations on who to put on these stories (someone who knows a bit about sports) and someone who is able to get the tone correct.

• Story idea: Efforts to End Sexual Harassment at BHS
  Berkeley High has (like many schools) had to take a hard look at sexual harassment on campus.  An advocacy group, BHS Stop Harassing formed to address issues of harassment and has been very vocal on campus for the past five years.  This story would look at and evaluate the change to culture they’ve secured.
• Story Mission and Need: This is a huge issue on campus and so there’s a great deal of interest among our readership (and this is a timely topic in general). I think that there would be a service to highlight the effect that the group has had on school culture and see if their efforts have been successful.
• Why Report it Now? It’s been five years and with some rekindled interest in issues of sexual harassment with #metoo and the Kavanaugh hearings, it seems a good time to revisit the organization and see what successes it has had.
• Essential Questions: What impact (if any) has #BHSStopHarassing had on the Berkeley High culture?
• Source to use, live and non-live (expert, authoritative, knowledgeable, bozo): Student leaders of #BHSStopHarassing, parent leaders of the org., BHS Principle, Dean of Students, BUSD School Board, male and female students not involved directly in #BHSStopHarssing.
• Potential issues with sources and how to solve them? The parent community around this issue are very media savvy and have at times tried to push kids to give prior review. Admin (Principle, Dean) may not be able to comment if there are questions of discipline issues.  #BHSStopHarassing has a very high profile on campus so students may not feel comfortable being critical of their efforts (or of commenting at all).
• Medium/media to best tell the story? Why this or these choices? I think this story would work particularly well in print since many students might hesitate to have their photo or voice recorded for the web.  It’s also not a “breaking” story so we can take the time to get it out as a longer form story for the print edition.
• Depending on the media used, what visuals would you suggest? This is tricky as students might be hesitant to be featured in a photo. A photo of the #BHSStopHarassing group would be appropriate and easy to get.  Maybe a photo of one of their planning meetings or of them speaking to the BUSD school board, which they do fairly regularly and wear identifying t-shirts.
• Range of story angles, supporting materials: This really depends on what the writer uncovers. There have been significant surveys done on campus related to sexual harassment and the board changed the language of our district sexual harassment policy, so these documents should be obtainable for evidence.
• How will the various information pieces be visually, alternatively presented? Highlights from the survey can be published and using some infographics could help make them readable.
• From infogathering to presentation, what legal, ethical and social responsibility questions might you face and what are some ways they might be handled? The parent community is very aggressive around this issue and the write writer would need to be assigned to this story that could stand up to some of the pressures they may face by such a high profile and high-status group. Depending on the kinds of interviews and information obtained in the news gathering, care will need to be made to make sure that student anonymity is maintained.

• Story Idea: Look at controversy around block scheduling. BHS has been considering a move to block scheduling (as well as a 7-period day).
• Story Mission and Need: Kids have lots of opinions about this, so there’s a great deal of interest.
• Why report it now? The decision to change the schedule is likely to be decided by November. It’s also a decent start of the year type of story.
• Essential Questions:
  What are the pros/cons of changing to a block schedule?
  What happens when a student gets a teacher they don’t like?
• Sources to use, live and non-live (expert, authoritative, knowledgeable, bozo): Historical record of attempts to implement a block schedule in the past (it’s been talked about for about 10 years. Principle, School Board members, students, teachers, parents.  Research about other schools who use this schedule.  Maybe interviews with local schools that use this schedule (students, teachers, etc.).
• Potential issues with sources and how to solve them: It’d be easy for a student to take one side or the other on the topic and cherry pick sources. Some care would need to be made through coaching and editorial staff to ensure that student is taking objective view.
• Medium/media to best tell the story? Why this or these choices? I’d love for this to be a print story so that it gets into the hands of more students. While elements of this story could also appear online (prospective schedules that are user adjustable for readers), the meat of the discussion should be in print given that our students read our print edition more.
• Depending on the media used, what visuals would you suggest? I really like the idea of a user adjustable schedule on the website. In the print edition, a photo of the principle or school board members that are being interviewed might work.  Or photos of the counseling office where schedules are produced.  Could use an illustration or editorial cartoon.
• Range of story angles, supporting materials: This should be an unbiased look at the discussion with comments from both sides. A quick look at the research on whether block scheduling provides better learning outcomes.  Maybe a look at the cost of the change given those records should be public (or at least public from other schools that have made the transition).
• From infogathering to presentation, what legal, ethical and social responsibility questions might you face and what are some ways they might be handled? From an ethical standing it’ll (again) be important to get a broad, diverse range of comments from the various stakeholders, given how strongly many of the students and parents feel about the potential change.

• Story Idea:
  Parent influence on school programs
  There’s a VERY vocal parent community at Berkeley High and it might be interesting to look at the degree to which they’re able to influence decision making on campus.
• Story Mission and Need: I’m honestly not sure how interested in this story my students would be, but I think there’d be some interest if they started digging into this. The parent community is way more influential than students typically understand and being to put this effect into something digestible by our readership would be eye-opening, I think.
• Why Report it Now? This is a good start of the year story as programs are beginning anew.
• Essential Questions?
  How much influence do parents have on school programs?
  How much influence should parents have on school programs?
  Which parents have influence?  Why?
• Sources to use, live and non-live (expert, authoritative, knowledgeable, bozo): Parent coordinator in front office. Principal (or other administrator), School Board.  B-SEP representative (B-SEP is a board that evaluates programs and makes funding decisions. It includes parents on the board), teachers, parents of color and white parents, maybe.
• Potential issues with sources and how to solve them? If this story ends up developing a racial component, that might be tricky in conversations with any of the above stakeholders. Care will need to be made to make sure questions are asked in as non-offensive way as possible if they relate to racial identity.
• Medium/media to best tell the story? Why this or these choices? I think this story makes the most sense as a web story given there might be more interest in our non-student readership. This wouldn’t necessarily be the story that our students would rip through right after distribution, but their parents would be interested.
• Depending on the media used, what visuals would you suggest? Photos of a parent action group meeting. Any photos of meetings with parents.
• Range of story angles, supporting materials: There are a LOT of ways this story could go.  Depending on what sources students are able to secure, might take this story in a couple of different direction and depending on how it goes might lead to different follow-up interviews.
• How will the various information pieces be visually, alternatively presented? This isn’t a particularly visual story so a nice feature photo and maybe a follow up photo or two for the web.
• From infogathering to presentation, what legal, ethical and social responsibility questions might you face and what are some ways they might be handled? This would be a very tricky story because no parent wants to seem like they are unduly influencing the school, so the reporter needs to be wary of seeming like they’re going to call out any individuals in the story. Given the potential race/class component, there are some hot-button issues that could come out of the story which would possibly lead to some blow-back from the readership.  Admin would not like this story no matter the angle.