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UM students create website to document historical 2008 elections
Photo: Kim Grinfeder
UM students work hard in the makeshift newsroom at the Coconut Grove Collaborative on Grand Ave.
About 40 University of Miami students went to the West Grove on Election Day to document a historic moment, where a predominantly African American community was voting for Democrat Barack Obama, a presidential candidate they hoped would bring change to their lives.
The students involved in this multimedia project, worked all day on Nov. 4 collecting narratives with digital still and video cameras and audio recorders, and continued on for two more days, without sleep, building the website www.westgrove2008.org.
"I think working on the election project gave me, as a student, a hands-on, trial-by-fire of covering breaking news and reaching out to communities different from my own," said Matt Byrnes, a graduate student and new media designer with the Knight Center for International Media. "It was really hard work and, at times, it was a little overwhelming. But in the end, I completely appreciated the entire experience."
The students worked in teams, led by three visual journalism faculty members Kim Grinfeder, Jim Virga and Rich Beckman.
"It was a wonderful opportunity for students to work together, to take what they learned in the classroom and apply their storytelling skills to one of the major news events of the year in a challenging local geographic environment where many of them have never worked or even visited before," said Beckman, Knight Chair in Visual Journalism. "It was great fun to have students working on an important project and to have them working all night to meet their deadline."
Posted on November 12, 2008
