So much energy and attention goes into covering an election campaign that reporters are sometimes caught up short on the stories that inevitably follow Election Night victory — particularly those that deal with complex policy issues like immigration and energy.
For example, while immigration didn’t come up much during the fall presidential campaigns (both candidates favored comprehensive immigration reform,), the topic has hardly gone away. In fact, it cropped up in numerous local and congressional races. Now that the election is over, this topic could well explode in the new Congress — especially given the extra stress of an economic recession.
That’s the working premise of a fascinating news experiment I’ve been involved in for the past several months — one that could provide valuable fodder for journalists planning their post-election coverage.
Four teams of young journalists have been working throughout the U.S. to cover what’s at stake in the 2008 election, as part of the Knight/Carnegie-funded News21 project. (Fellow Tidbits contributor Rich Gordon has written about News21 before here and here.) This year, each school focused on a different aspect of “What’s at Stake? Election 2008.”
Here’s what we did, and how our work can serve journalists in this post-election world.
The News21 team I helped head at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism sent a selective group of post-grad reporters around the country to look at the ways in which a massive new wave of immigrants — legal and illegal — is transforming our lives and politics, as well as engendering an occasional backlash of fear and resentment.
The result was our highly interactive multimedia project: New Voters, Old Fears. It offers reporting and resources that even seasoned immigration reporters might find useful in coming months, including:
- New Latin American immigrants are transforming Cuban-dominated Miami
- Anti-immigration politicians on the rise in Pennsylvania
- Texas and California border communities taking immigration into their ownhands
- States like Arizona passing voter registration laws making it tougher even for legal immigrants to vote.
- Video montages examine how immigrants view Barack Obama, and their perspectives on immigration.
- A highly visual timeline/mashupexplores historical U.S. immigration waves, with some surprising results.
- An extensive immigration resource page
- How and where did immigration emerge, stealth-like, in campaigns and communities around the country this fall? One News 21 team member has been blogging immigration news and doing original reporting in a fascinating, if unheralded, manner. (Part of the News21 blog.)
And that’s just what the Columbia team accomplished. Other News 21 teams around the country focused on:
