Four-hour reporting

This weekend, I revived my journalism chops from my time at The Wellesley News when I, with my partner, reported on an event and “filed” a story within four hours as a challenge for my Future of News course.

My internal monologue at the beginning of this assignment: Four hours? _Please. _ I did this all the time at The News, covering events last minute and rushing to get copy in a couple hours later for the copy editors. What I’d done before could be done again, right?

Well, not exactly. Wendi, my partner, is a print journalist, and so both of us decided to go outside our comfort zone and report using video.

For our assignment, we chose to cover the Chinese Progressive Association’s Against Gentrification Paint-In event, which is a community response against gentrification in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood. In addition to luxury housing displacing longtime residents, we also learned that Chinatown hasn’t had steady access to a public library since 1952, which was heartbreaking to hear.

We interviewed a few of the people at the event and put together a short video using iMovie (is it clear that neither of us are video producers?). Four hours to go to an event and  sift through footage and  edit wasn’t adequate, but I suppose that was the point, wasn’t it?

Here’s the video, with my note that I wish I had just a few more minutes to edit the audio!