A high school is like a small city, teeming with diversity. There are the cheerleaders, the band members, the gothics. There
are the theatre kids, and the English-as-a-second-language kids, and
the track team. The list is endless.
Can you tell their stories?
National Geographic's multimedia piece "Hip-Hop Planet" might illustrate how. The work, a recent Morning Meeting multimedia item (March 30),
traces hip-hop culture from its African roots to the boys on the street to the stars it made famous. It examines hip-hop as a global phenomenon, from New
York to Paris
and Israel. Tompkins writes about the project:
"The piece takes a wide-angle look at the story, before
zooming in on some local talent, and working through the big names in hip-hop.
I like the mix of video, stills, music, and narration."
"Hip-Hop Planet" is not only valuable for what it teaches
about producing multimedia but for what it shows us about the scope of journalism. Journalists don't just cover news, they cover
people. They cover cultures.
Make sure you read the actual
narrative in "Hip-Hop Planet". Notice that the
creators, writer James McBride and photographer David Alan Harvey,
didn't just stick themselves into a group of nameless faces; they
focused on a couple individuals and told the story of the group through
their eyes.
Have you ever covered the hip-hop beat? Have you thought about
getting inside the cultures of your high school and revealing them to
your readers? Use "Hip-Hop Planet" to get you started.
Off the Radar, an award-winning story from The Gazette of Granite Bay High School, is another example of covering cultures, this one the drug beat.
Tell us if this gives you any ideas. Send us the work you've done along a similar
vein. How have you reported on the
cultures of your school?
For more story ideas from Al Tompkins, see this list we've compiled of Morning Meeting items that are relevant to scholastic journalists.
--Jacky Hicks
