News Engaging You

News Engagement Day brought to you by UT Journalism students

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Thanks for engaging with us!

Now that the flood of posts from News Engagement Day has died down, the editing team here at newsengagingyou wants to thank you guys for joining us yesterday. Our teams of journalists gained a ton of journalistic experience from interviewing, filming, photographing and polling all of you and getting an insight into how you consume news. By the end of the day, they realized that the more preparation a journalist puts into their projects before the actual field work, the more they can effectively gather valuable information. Also, our journalists learned how to properly approach and pitch questions to possible interview subjects so as to facilitate more willing responses.

My fellow editors and I also had a blast coordinating the information provided by all you lovely students through both social media and live interviews. Like our reporters, we realized that starting our work (specifically, our social media initiatives) earlier would have gotten us more comprehensive information for our blog. However, we still ended up with a wonderfully diverse pool of sources and data to share through multimedia!

In case you didn’t have time to keep tabs on us yesterday, check out a key infographic, podcast and video interview:

Infographic:

https://infogr.am/98a0950b-e7ec-4a9d-8450-aea5fc9af036

Podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/trenton-daeschner/ned-podcast1

Interview:

http://newsengagingyou.tumblr.com/post/151368727536/more-from-the-students-at-ut-on-their-personal

We hope you guys enjoyed our blogging. Don’t forget to always stay engaged!

-Anna Maria Ward

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The Impact of News

On News Engagement Day, my team and I interviewed students at Littlefield Patio Cafe on their interactions with news. We asked random students on what their first memory of interacting with the news was, and our answers where diverse and intriguing. 

The background of each student played a part into each answer. For those who where born in a different country, their news interaction would be from events on other sides of the world.  The age of the student also played a role into what their first memory of news would be. In most cases though, people we interviewed where impacted by their first encounters of remembering news for the rest of their lives. 

With so many different ways of finding news, perceptions can be vastly different. The focus and angles of media networks could shape a person’s opinions. Media speaks on more than current news and issues surrounding society. It has the ability to shape identities and cultures for an entire community. As a news consumer, it is important to know how to read into stories and absorb the context. Be open-minded and aware that its power affects our entire lives, whether we realize it or not.

By Shelby Schreiber

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My reflection

News Engagement Day was a very cool opportunity for our class. We got to work as a team to gather information and make graphs, videos, and pictures out of it. I felt like a part of a real news network. We had smaller teams for specific sections of work, and we each had a particular job to fulfill. For about an hour, my team videoed and interviewed students asking about their first experience of the news and if there was any news that had impacted their lives. 

I used most of my time trying to gather more information from a broader audience using Twitter for polls, interacting with my followers, and Snapchat to try to increase engagement. 

I’ve known that it’s hard to get students to engage to begin with, but when you ask students who aren’t very connected to current events about them it’s even harder. I was glad to find that journalism students, compared to students in other majors, are much more engaged with news. From preparing a poll on social media, I learned that there’s a much higher chance one will receive information when the user is posting anonymously, compared to when a person is asked to publicly post on social media their honest opinions and experiences with the news. Finally, the great thing about video interviews is that you will most likely get an unfiltered, candid answer. 

I’m excited to get more experience in journalism and thankful that News Engagement Day had such an impact on me.

By Hannah Dragomer

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I’m Engaged!

Around lunch time yesterday I should have been in my journalism class, sitting quietly listening to a lecture. Instead, I got to spend an hour doing one of my favorite things -- talking to people!

My team for National News Engagement Day, which also included Hannah and Shelby, used video to capture people reminiscing about life memories. Our question was two-fold: “What is your first memory of hearing the news?” and “What world event has impacted your life the most?”

Some people knew exactly what to answer. Others took some prying. 

In the end we got to know a few total strangers, which I think is totally awesome! It was so satisfying to help people reflect on past times in their lives, and then to put it together as a finish product through video. 

I’d say it was a fantastic use of our class time today!

By Adam Homeyer

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A Reflection

Giselle, Trent, and I experienced journalism within the microcosm of UT Austin during our News Engagement Day.  

After setting up our microphone and preparing our questions, we believed our interviews were going to be fast, painless, and rich in content. 

That’s not how it went. 

For the first 10 or 15 minutes, we received push back from people not wanting to answer our questions, or received answers that didn’t really cut it for our podcast. 

Despite our poor luck, however, we kept trying until we finally found people willing to give us answers, and good ones at that. 

From our interviews, I discovered that most millennials will find their news from social media sources, Facebook being the most popular. While we found some people didn’t follow the news, I was excited to hear most people had a good grasp on what’s happening in our world today. 

With this in mind, I come away with two thoughts from our News Engagement Day, journalism is hard, but worth it. And us, millennials, are not as clueless as the world believes. 

-Robert Larkin

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More from the students at UT on their personal experiences with the news.

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We asked fellow UT students about the impact of news in their lives. Here’s what they said!

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What I Learned Today

What I learned today from doing a podcast for my class, was that you must be persistent when being a reporter. Trenton, Robert, and I received more rejections to our requests for interviews than acceptances, and some of those who agreed needed a little convincing for their time in return. Very few of them said yes without hesitation. While we sought out potential interviewees, we looked for those with no headphones and those who did not seem occupied. Another lesson was how to lead with unexpected answers. A few of the people we asked "What news story captivated your interested today and what source did you use?" simply said "I did not read the news today" or simply flat out "None." This highlights the important issue that some people in our generation fail to engage with daily news. Lastly, a lot of people from our generation seems to find their news off of Facebook. Personally, I do not have a Facebook account, so I am kept out of the loop. However, I have learnt that Facebook has partnered with news sites to publish their content directly into it. This was by far the most popular way to access news.

By Giselle Erazo

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Reflection After News Engagement Day

I had a good time reporting today, taking photos, and speaking with people about their take on the news. It was very interesting and informing to see what everyone thought to be over and under-reported news in the media. We received multiple different responses including foreign affairs, Donald Trump, and recent crime. To my surprise, there were not many people who brought up elections; most of them mentioned the lack of coverage of foreign affairs.

We also had a Twitter poll asking people what where their source of news. Unsurprisingly, social media was the top one. 

After the live blogging and working with my team to gather our interviews, I felt like an actual journalist, and overall really enjoyed this assignment.

By Macy Lou Carter

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Reflection

I found News Engagement Day to be very interesting and enjoyable. I had fun interviewing students with Robert and Giselle. It got us out of our comfort zones and made us feel like we were being real journalists. I thought the people we interviewed gave us some really interesting quotes for the podcast. One student said he gets most of his news from YouTube, which was a first for me. Overall, I thought News Engagement Day was a very cool experience.

By Trenton Daeschner

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News Engagement Day’s Reflection

Today was very informing on what editing entails, even thought I was just on the cusp of it all for a short amount of time. I got to read a lot of quotes going through the photos and interviews from our teams and was intrigued with many of the questions. Unsurprisingly, these confirmed that social media was where many people got their news from the most, but many other answers did surprise me. One person, for example, mentioned The Daily Show as their source of news, and none of them mentioned the old print newspapers. Today I think went well and was educational.

by David Sternberg

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Final Thoughts

Going into our assignment of identifying over and under-reported news topics, I had expected election coverage to be the almost unanimous answer for the former. In reality, responses ran the gamut from violent crime dominating the local news to the Black Lives Matter movement.

One consistent complaint was a lack of coverage for foreign events. Nearly every respondent brought this up.

Lastly, the bus stop turned out to be a double-edged sword for vox pop interviews. If the timing was right, we had sort of a captive audience, other times, our interviewees’ bus would roll up halfway through.

By Zach Caldwell

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The results from my Facebook poll over news consumption.

-By: Amanda Pinney

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News Engagement Day Reflection

I had a wonderful time working with our team of editors as we managed the blog posts and reached out to the public on social media. I really felt like we worked as a team and connected with each other as we gathered the pieces of information everyone collected.

It was interesting for me to see how my Facebook poll asking people how they consume news correlated with the data done by the Pew Research Center in regard to millennial news consumption in 2016. As the data suggests, millennials consume most of their news through social media and news apps, and 66.7% of my poll responses pointed to just that. It was eye-opening to see firsthand just how digital we have become as I watched the numbers for the social media option grow throughout the day.

I think News Engagement Day was most definitely a success. It was awesome to see social media users engaging with our polls and surveys to express their news platform preference. We connected with the public and got people thinking about how they consume news in their everyday lives, and that’s always a victory for a journalist.

-Amanda Pinney

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Interesting results from today’s Twitter poll on where people consume their news! 

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Reflection on Today’s Assignment

Today, my Pictures and Quotes team and I got to go around campus and talk to students about how they consume news. 

Even though it was somewhat early in the day, we still got good feedback from the students we spoke with. It can be intimidating in the beginning to up to a stranger to interview them. But today I’ve learned that it becomes easier the more you do it. We chose a part of campus (East Mall, SAC outdoor seating area) where not everyone was rushing, that way we could get better feedback. 

I really enjoyed meeting new people and learning a little bit about them. Interestingly, from the three people I interviewed, two of them said the news story that caught their attention the most in the past 24 hours, was about the clowns making threats to schools in Texas.

Overall, I enjoyed working with my classmates and feeling like I had a team working towards one goal. It was a great opportunity to grow as a team member and as a professional. 

By Romina Leon 

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A Reflection on Today’s Assignment

This morning/afternoon, I had the opportunity to work with my fellow editors as we managed our news engagement blog.

I had a blast coordinating with our teams of journalists in the field, and the flood of multimedia information they kept sending back to the newsroom was incredible. It was exciting to monitor and consolidate the activity and feedback that took over Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr; unsurprisingly, social media proved to be a key platform for our news consumer subjects and our own team throughout the day. I do wish that there had been less of a disconnect between our lab group and the other groups, however. While we occasionally reblogged/retweeted each other’s posts and tweets, I felt like we didn’t connect as much on a grand scale.

All in all, I would say News Engagement Day was a success! Not to mention the fact that our lovely head editor, Lourdes Cueva Chacón, gave us food while we worked. You just can’t go wrong with free food.

Excellent work, team! The blog looks great!

-Anna Maria Ward