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My teammates and I went to different spots at Columbia to find people of different genders, ages, and races. But it is a pity that we didn't find enough people with a negative opinion towards the mask ordinance.
One tip for street interviews: start with "Hi,How are you?" instead of "Hi, I am a reporter from Missourian..."
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Writing this article is also an interesting experience for me.
Going through long and complicated documents and understanding the meanings of various jargons was a challenge during the process. But I still made it and summarized key points in the documents.
I made my first interview with the CEO of Columbia Housing Authority and completed the first draft of my story. But there is still questions remaining to be answered. So I scheduled a second interview.
I draw a lesson from interviewing local residents. When I knocked their doors and conducted the on-site interview, I failed to ask interesting questions related to their living condition. This story is related to low-income families. It will be interesting if I get more information of their lives and open with a paragraph with relevant details. I should think of the frame of my story in advance.
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This is a protest story.
One of the important skills of covering protest story is multi-tasking. As a on-site reporter, you need to take pictures and videos, and post them on your social account to keep your audience updated the story. At the same time, you need to do the interviews and be aware of the progress of the protest. You also need to keep yourself safe.
A challenge for me is to finish writing up a story in a limited time for immediacy rule, which makes me aware that journalists need to think of their story during the process of reporting, or even before setting our to cover the story.
Since there are a lot of protests going on in this period, a reporter also need to find a "point" in the protest story, which means that a reporter should find its news value.