This Semester and Another Reporting Trip East New York

This blog began with a focus on the givers in the field of philanthropy. Just look at the bombastic title. I've always been interested in how old institutions fit into this century, so why not explore philanthropy. After all, when has the world ever been so prosperous.

But slowly my project evolved into a journal of my reporting and my multimedia journalism class. It was silly of me to think I could tackle so expansive a subject, but I'm still glad I tried. Even though I wasn't really able to tackle the issue on a more global level, address the state of change in charity, this semester gave me the chance to take a closer look at venture philanthropy, which I had always read about and never really understood. In the end there is nothing particularly revolutionary about it. Still, if nothing else venture philanthropy has helped some families in East New York.

This past Wednesday I went back down to East New York to do some more reporting. I wanted to take some pictures for my audio slideshow and also to record some interviews for a podcast. The weather didn't quite cooperate for photo taking. The sky had been gray all afternoon, and the cold kept many people off the streets. I haven't taken pictures in a long time; I don't have a camera and don't care for pictures anyway. But work is work so I went with my list of sites. For my video I filmed my subject walking about East New York, but the footage was too shaky to use. These pictures would go with the edited audio from that walk and talk. As the only Asian person around taking pictures can be a little daunting. I look like the world's most obvious narc. That's probably another reason my pictures don't have many people in them: I didn't want to antagonize people. This was dumb though, because I had an assignment and I chickened out. But the experience proved valuable. I picked up a camera again, it was kind of fun, and next time I know to make sure I get my shots.

On my way over to East New York, I missed my stop and so had to backtrack, wasting 20 minutes. This left less than 30 minutes to grab all the pictures for the slideshow before my 3:30pm meeting with a Groundwork staff at PS 328, a combined elementary and middle school. Before going Anne Noyes gave me a lesson on how to use the Marantz digital recorders that the radio students use. I'd intended to interview the principal of the school, Groundwork's on site director, some students and also parents. For a podcast, ambient sound like kids talking and laughing or playing sports would be necessary too.

On a quick digression, there's something about walking in the halls of a school as an adult. I've been out of elementary and middle school for a while, but the memories of anxiety over fitting in linger still. Though the kids do treat me better because I'm now an adult.

The Guerilla News class makes us try new tools, like the video camera. This week the challenge involved a digital recorder. It's a different mode of recording information. I have to consider the kinds of questions to ask to get answers I could use in a podcast. I need to think of the sounds I need to tell my story. And the recorder and mic are much more intrusive than the reporters notebook, especially around children, who seem to love to yell into things. Also, kids aren't great interview subjects. They have way of reducing everything to one word. So what do you like about this program? Dodgeball. Why do you come here? It's fun. To be fair though, the kids who gave me these answers haven't yet finished the 2nd grade.

Luckily I got to talk to a parent also. I've been unsure how to find one without going through the non-profit that I'm writing about. That day a parent happened to come in because her daughter had some disciplinary problems. She agreed to speak with me and seemed to really like the program, even saying that it was her daughter and not the program that brought her to campus.

Later I visited a middle school class where the students were in a magazine club. Five kids sat with an adult teacher and talked about putting together a magazine. They debated whether they wanted to do individual magazines or work together on one. The amusing thing was one of the girls would sort of pout and mutter that she wanted to leave but when we stepped outside to do an interview she had nothing but good things to say about both her teacher and the program.
I left the school around 5:30pm. It was dark already. But having visited East New York quite a few times now, I wasn't too worried. The last time I went over I realized that women and children live there and walk those streets. So why shouldn't I be able to also.