Pulitzer on the Road, Fierce Mustang Media, Delta College and Stocktonia hosted “Stories That Matter: Award-winning Journalists on Reporting in a New Era,” on Thursday, Feb. 13 in the Tillie Lewis Theatre.
There were two events during the day: a forum session in the Dreamers Success Center during the afternoon open to Multimedia students and a public reception and discussion in the evening.
On the panel was Caitlin Dickerson a staff writer at The Atlantic who won the Pulitzer in 2023 for Explanatory Reporting, Anna Wolfe an Investigative Reporter at Mississippi Today who won a Pulitzer in 2023 for Local Reporting and Nicole Carroll the Executive Director at Newswell who won a Pulitzer in 2018 for Explanatory Reporting.
The event was moderated by Marjorie Miller, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.
The panel covered topics such as sourcing, how to obtain information and what to do when facing adversity in obtaining information.
“I started my process with literally a huge stack of paper that I had printed out and just laid out covering the floor of my apartment in Brooklyn laying them out in chronological order,” said Dickerson.
Dickerson proceeded to talk about how once you can start your interviews for your story you then have to check everything from your interviews with your source material. Once you complete that you finally have your story, she said.
“I think that we have to really pay attention about looking at every level,” said Wolfe.
Journalism isn’t an activity that happens at one level, it’s a nationwide exercise that all people should know about and be able to engage in even if they aren’t journalists themselves.
“Public records requests can take years to do,” said Carroll, “That is a really common tactic for public officials who don’t want the public to know its plans, to immediately deny public records requests to kind of wait journalists out.”
While public records requests are often used by journalists, anyone can file them.
“Social media is actively working to spread disinformation,” said Carroll, “There is a solution it’s trust and transparency. Research shows that media literacy campaigns work.”
Fierce Mustang Media has its own media literacy campaign called Media Decoded, which launched last fall. The project asks the community to examine, question, interpret, and explain with intent to sharpen information processing skills. More information can be found about Media Decoded at bit.ly/fmmdecoded.
