The Immersion Project

This is not day-to-day, meat and potatoes journalism. This is BIG IDEA journalism. The kind of journalism people want to sit with for awhile and talk to their friends about. The kind of journalism you’ll remember doing in 20 years, and readers will remember seeing and learning from in 20 years. It’s the opposite of butt journalism, and for many of you, it’s what attracted you here in the first place.

YOUR MISSION

Take on a journalistic project focused on a BIG QUESTION.

“How will the baseball team do this season?” is not a big question.

“Which trends are going to be hot this Fall?” is not a big question.

Here are some big questions:

• What role does learning to drive play in transitioning from adolescence to adulthood? The test, the practice permit, driver’s ed classes, the nerves and thrill… is it all part of some right of passage?
• What effect do single-parent households have on the health and success of the children in them? Are the parent-child relationships stronger, more strained, busier?
• Is a student who doesn’t do well academically at MV actually hurt by being in the academically-driven environment? Will it benefit them in the long-run? If so, is it worth it?

This kind of reporting might require what we call IMMERSION JOURNALISM. Intimate relationships with your sources. Earning their trust and telling their stories in the honest, complex way they really are. It’s hard and time consuming but very, very worth it.

THE TIMELINE: Staggered over the year

THE FORMAT: Your choice. Web, video, audio are all possible.

THE REQUIREMENTS: Pitch the project by October, then schedule a publish date. It might be a moving target.