E-Portfolio - My Experience This Semester

    This semester has been several months of pulling my journalism experience together and putting it into practice as well as gaining new insights.  Here is where I have come to understand American political communication process. 
First, we will look at the concept of Framing.

Associated Press photographer David Goldman, left, Getty Images freelance photographer Branden Camp (Me), center back, Reuters freelance photographer Tami Chappell, and New York Times freelance photographer Kevin D. Liles work from the stage as Republican candidate Donald Trump signs autographs for attendees in Atlanta.  Photo by Atlanta Journal-constitution photographer Hyosub Shin

Three Concepts

Framing

Framing is typically a conscience decision by the person disseminating the message.  The frames we focused on were candidate attributes, I knew there was biased in the news. I didn’t know to what extent there was biased writing.  Because I’m a freelance journalist, this was hands down the most important concept I learned this semester.  Many of the articles I read were more biased than I thought they would be.  Now, when I plan to write a story, I make sure to pull together sources from all viewpoints.  It is important that you give the audience the entire message from all viewpoints.

Research

Researching your topic before writing about it is a much bigger and deeper process than I thought.  First of all, knowing who your audience is key.  Secondly, knowing who you are writing for is important.  Different publications such as AJC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times have different expectations.  For example, AJC loves to have a local twist to relate to the local audience.  The New York Times and The Washington Post focus on being more national news.

Narratives

            Another hurdle that political journalist face is that candidates have narratives they create and disseminate to their audience.   Candidates naturally craft their image into a likable person and in most cases even hire people to write the very words they share with the news and their supporters.  In the 2016 presidential run for the presidency we have seen this with every candidate and especially Donald Trump.  Trump has been accused over and over for crafting his image in a way that the most Republicans would like him.  The question remains of how do we as journalist write about this.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at an Atlanta rally.  Branden Camp/Getty Images

Journalism Projects

          

      I do feel I have been able to produce high quality journalism this semester.  My entire college career has been focused on writing news stories.  This class forced me to take it to a different level.  Because of the requirements and amount of writing, I have become more efficient at writing.  I have also learned to write as a team.

           

Delegates Meeting

This was the first story we wrote for the semester.  We interviewed 5 people for this story.  This was our first time out working on a story as a team.  This was the first time I worked along side more than one other person on a story.  Most stories I work on are with one reporter, but most of the time, it’s usually just me by myself.  Learning to work on a story with a team of reporters and photographers is one of the most vital parts of working in a newsroom.  I found this to be great experience, learning to delegate different task to each person.  I helped interview the subjects and co-wrote the story with my group members.

A volunteer sets up a sign before a Marco Rubio campaign rally
in Atlanta.  Branden Camp via ZUMA Press

Marco Rubio comes to Georgia

I photographed Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio in Kennesaw, Ga. and then again in Buckhead, Ga.  I also wrote a story by myself on this story.  I find writing your own story by yourself to be much easier.  However, after studying framing in the news, I found that a story could be more biased if you write yourself.  That being said, most stories are written alone, so steps need to be taken to prevent biased writing.    

Rubio had nearly 7,000 attendees in Kennesaw versus several hundred in Buckhead.   It was interesting to see how a candidate’s rhetoric stays the same for the most part and is scripted.  Rubio did cater his speech according to his audience in Kennesaw, which was predominately Christian versus the more middle to upper-class in Buckhead.  He had South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley speak on his behalf because he lost his voice. During both speeches, he attacked Donald Trump on many occasions.  Looking back on my writing, I found that I joined in with the national publications in writing a story that should have been about Rubio’s campaign and turned it into a story about Donald Trump.

Trump and Kasich visit Georgia

For this story, we faced many more challenges and more advantages.  The advantage was we covered two different political campaigns and had 3 different perspectives, which kept the story unbiased.  The disadvantage was, we struggled to pull together the story into an effective news peice.  Because we essentially wrote several different stories and pulled them together, we had a lot of holes in our story.  However, this was a great learning experience.

Research Projects

            Though I’m not a political science major, I do feel that I’ve gained some new skills of research.  I would not say I gained any new skills of writing a research paper due to the time constraints and no prior experience.  However, I have learned how to do the research, which has been very beneficial.

Graphics I created for content analysis

Content Analysis One

Graphics I created for content analysis

I did a content analysis on Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s campaign website and my group partners examined Hillary Clinton’s website and then we compared them.  Analyzing two campaign websites was very informative.  How politicians present themselves can be a large deciding factor in whether they succeed or not.  Our group compared Fiorina’s more negative strategy versus Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s more positive strategy.  Specifically words that were negative, positive and attack words were analyzed.  Examples were “can’t, defeat, advance, strength, expand, increase.”  Our research found that Hillary was more focused on the people, being more progressive, and employed a more positive strategy.  Fiorina was overwhelming more negative, showed no photos of other people, only her, and was way more on the defensive.

Content Analysis Two

            I pulled together 25 articles from the Washington Post and analyzed each article.  One very big take-away from reading and analyzing major political articles from one of the biggest news organizations in the world is, it is very easy to overlook framing if you just skim without a close eye on the content.   Once you really break down an article and ask questions like, “is there opinions from all sides?,  where did they get their information?,  who are the experts they consulted with or used in their articles?