Saturday, April 21, 2007
Students seek to tell the Sago story from a multitude of perspectives.
By RUDI WHITMORE
SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
In January, journalism majors at Youngstown State University got together with our advisers to eat cookies and talk about applying for jobs and internships, and to muse aloud why the Geology majors get to go to Hawaii and look at rocks and go on digs.
We asked why we couldn't do anything like it. We didn't want to look at the rocks as much as we wanted the hands-on learning experience. We told them we would prefer a tropical locale. Our advisers took the question to heart and to administrators.
The Sago project wasn't even meant for this year. Leave it bureaucracy to take leaps and bounds when, for once, we were all counting on a little bit of red tape. Far be it from us, however, to deny manna like funding falling from the sky.
We didn't quite get Hawaii. More like West Virginia. That's not to say we weren't excited. The mining disaster in Sago, W.Va., that left 12 miners dead and one barely alive was an international story with a ton of repercussions in the mining community.
We knew the chances were that we wouldn't be breaking news but we were hoping to do some more in-depth pieces that we had noticed were missing from other papers.
Digging for news
So the 14 of us earnestly researched and dug into newspaper archives, contacted priests, sinners, and union representatives alike. When we hit rock bottom, we even Wiki-ed it, hoping for a scrap of information we had missed, one that could turn us onto a source that could help, or a story we had overlooked the first, second and third times we looked.
It's hard for 14 people to have 14 different stories in a town with one tragedy that was "officially" old news.
So, we diversified, and found that West Virginia in the spring can be inspiring to say the least.
Our stories ranged from the oddity of the female miner, to how linguistics has shaped an Appalachian community and image to college students giving up their spring break to protest unsafe mining practices.
Because someone upstairs took pity on us, a report about the causes of the Sago disaster by the United Mine Workers of America came out while we were down there, so it allowed a few of us an interesting chance to talk to people about their theories of what triggered the explosion.
Different experience
But it wasn't an easy trip for us. Coming from a mainly instructional program to a direct hands-on environment was a shock. While a few of us are on staff at the Jambar, YSU's student newspaper, and some have more experience than others, a few of the people traveling with us had never worked on a deadline, or had never even extensively interviewed anyone.
Even our most experienced writers had trouble. Having doors slammed in our faces isn't something that we've had a chance to get used to.
We had to scrap entire ideas once we reached West Virginia for lack of newsworthiness or sources. So we got creative. Could we do the same story from a different angle? Had we noticed anything on the way down that could give us a good story? We did all that and more. We swapped sources, used contacts of contacts, and Mapquest guided us there.
Socially, the event was a success. It unified us, in a kind of trial-by-fire way. You can't really wind up on some dirt road on a mountain in West Virginia without feeling close to your traveling companions.
Tough times
Unfortunately, not everything on the trip went as smoothly as our dinner parties did. Since one story dealt with Appalachian stereotypes, our reporter had to watch her words carefully. She confessed that asking the townspeople and miners she met about Sago was difficult for her. She hated bringing up something that was obviously so painful to so many people.
Other students couldn't stand the lack of technology. Cell phone reception was poor, and there was no internet in our lodges, so communication with sources proved tough but we did it anyway. We found the one spot in the entire lodge that you could get three bars of reception if you kind of angled your body sideways and did a rain dance.
Avoiding traps
Learning what to say and how to say it was challenging, especially when trying to convey concern without bias. A lot of our group had a hard time using quotes without accidentally altering meaning or dialect.
Not having the home-field advantage made this a tough assignment all around, but we did pick up some useful skills and graces we didn't possess before. We got the interviews and quotes and pictures while keeping our heads in a crowded room full of righteous protesters and armed state police. We can handle a crowd full of strangers that we need to talk to now. We had a makeshift newsroom out of the one-bed kitchenette hotel room -- the only one with internet -- and we worked side-by-side with four laptops and one coffee pot.
We helped each other write, edit, organize and make sure it got done. We can produce quality copy on deadline, and we can lean on each other for the correct way to get rid of misplaced modifiers.
But most importantly, we learned, for better or worse, what's in store for us as journalists, and what we need to do to be able to face that. Fore-warned is fore-armed in any circumstance, and like Winnie, the 87-year-old protester I met said, "The pen is mightier than the sword, and your generation that will shape the world with words." I hope so.