Info on my stories:
I have sent out 10 or so emails to students who have gone to London over the past 3 years asking them about their experience, relationship with professor, if its easier to get away with things while abroad, if they felt safe and if it was worth it. No replies yet.
I have Diane's info and emailed prof. Henry AGAIN and asked him questions and still haven't heard back. I am going to try to call him after I post this.
I also emailed and called President Eastman and haven't heard back about the 25 mil gift. I have the info from the intranet post and thats about it. I am tryign to track down the donors phone number to interview him on the phone. Hopefully i will have one of these done by today.... I am really trying. I am really fired up about the whole ECOS cutting our funds thing and want to print a BIG STORY about freedom of the press so Eckerd can see what we mean when we tell them they can't control us! What do you think?
I hope to have a first draft story to you tonight. I hope SOMEone emails me back or calls me back.
posted by Krista @ 12:43 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Krista,
From now on let's talk about stories by e-mail, but I'll post some thoughts here, and then you can erase them if you want to.
It sounds like you have a lot of student sources (hopefully on the record), which is great. It might be that Prof. Henry chooses not to speak to the press, but now we've at least given him enough time to decide that he doesn't want to comment. That's fair enough -- let him know the story will run regardless, and that we'd like his comments to balance the story out, and leave the door open in case he changes his mind and decides to talk (if not for this article, perhaps for a follow-up one down the road). That's fair enough.
In the meantime, we do need more than student comments to round out the story. Who else can we talk to to get a full picture of what it's like to be a professor at London House? You have Diane, which is great, but perhaps you could also talk to some other professors who've been at London House about their experiences there.
I would also offer the suggestion: I can't remember why the students who needed to go to the hospital were "sick" but wasn't at least one case alcohol-related? Do we have this as a fact? If so, Prof. Henry perhaps should have been there, but the student should have been responsible enough to not get that sick. You're all adults. It's an angle that should be considered.
You don't have a draft of either story to me yet, and you've had weeks to work on them. Not getting a source isn't good enough -- you need to think of who else you can talk to, where else the information is available. Trust me, when you work for a newspaper, which is holding a hole in the paper for you to fill with copy, your editor won't accept a shrug and a "sorry, no one called me back yet." You GOTTA get that information. You call sources the second you know you have the story, and when they don't call back, you call them again. You call their friends and family and work associates to get their quotes, and to let the source know you're looking for them. There's a fine line between being persistent and being a pain -- and while you try to merely be persistent and kind, sometimes you cross the line to get the story.
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