7 minute read
Section-specific goals and recommendations
News
The News section should pursue more investigative reporting and data stories relating to police accountability among both the Department of Public Safety and the Syracuse Police Department. Reporters should prioritize seeking the perspectives of community members when doing this work rather than relying solely on statistics and information from the police.
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The section should accompany stories about community members with visuals of these community members when possible, rather than relying only on file photos of general locations.
The News section’s content diversity tracker was not fully complete for any of the weeks during the spring 2021 semester. To ensure that all sections are filling out the trackers for their stories, the management team will enforce filling out the trackers as a mandatory job responsibility among all sections and will check in with each section editor and section’s staff every week or every two weeks if there are missing stories for that week.
News should broaden its coverage of the city of Syracuse and should pursue more stories that examine the relationship between the university and the city, such as this story about SU’s Steam Station, which is located in a community bordering Interstate 81 and provides heat to all buildings on the university’s Main Campus. In order to tell such stories thoroughly and with context, reporters should develop an understanding of Syracuse’s history and build trust with Syracuse residents.
Opinion
The Opinion section should continue its International Voice, Black Voices and Absence of Light projects, building relationships with those involved in the projects and coming up with new ideas.
For International Voice, which highlights the perspectives of International students through a collaboration with the student organization WeMedia Lab, new Opinion staffers should meet with members of WeMedia Lab to introduce themselves and seek feedback on how The D.O.’s Opinion section can better support the project and improve the editing and publication process.
In continuing its Black Voices project, the Opinion section should periodically put out calls on social media for personal essays from Black students and community members. Social media calls should emphasize that the Black Voices project would like to highlight the voices of Black Syracuse residents, in addition to Black SU and SUNY-ESF students. In addition to social media calls, Opinion staff should also reach out to organizations at SU and in Syracuse that focus on the Black community to see if members would be interested in contributing to the project. The staff should also reach out to people who have contributed stories in the past and ask for feedback on how The D.O. can improve the editing process and the reach of the project.
Opinion staff should reach out to Absence of Light contributors for their thoughts and suggestions on how we can improve the editing and publication process and include more contributors. The current staff should also meet with past editors who have worked on the project to brainstorm ideas for expanding and adding new elements to the project.
Culture
The Culture section should work to partner with campus magazines to tell stories that highlight the experiences of people from marginalized communities. The Culture section, which lends itself to long-form and visual-focused projects, can pursue creative forms of storytelling that correspond with the visions of magazines on campus such as Renegade and The OutCrowd.
Of the 11 reported corrections on stories during the spring 2021 semester, eight were on stories that focused on marginalized communities. The Culture section should take care to ensure that it is reporting on marginalized communities with thoroughness, accuracy and care.
Reporters should go to the places they are reporting on when possible and should get to know the communities they are reporting on outside of campus. To build trust and relationship with readers and to do thorough and nuanced reporting, they should consistently be present in the community.
The section should pursue more profiles of community members and organizations in Syracuse and should expand its coverage beyond the SU community.
Culture should continue to highlight artists, entrepreneurs and leaders of color and artists from marginalized communities, including those whose work focuses on the experiences of members of these communities. Examples of stories from the spring 2021 semester include this story about the Black Artist Collective and this story about two SU students who launched a mentorship program for middle and high school students of color in Syracuse.
The section should also feature more people of color in its primary visuals, particularly in the visuals that accompany its leading stories in print. (Of 35 Culture front pages and spec pages over the course of the spring 2021 semester, 27 featured people in the primary visual, and eight did not feature people in the primary visual. Of these 27 photos featuring people, 10 prominently featured a person of color, and 17 did not prominently feature people of color.)
Sports
The Sports section should pursue more enterprise and feature stories on topics relevant to marginalized communities, such as this story about LGBTQ athletes and this coverage of a march for equality for Black athletes.
The section should feature more stories on women’s sports on the sports back page, including the leading stories and featured photos. (Of the 28 regular edition issues from the spring 2021 semester, 17 featured a sports back page with a leading story and corresponding photo about a men’s sport, six featured a leading story and corresponding photo about a women’s sport, and five featured a leading story and corresponding photo about both a women’s and men’s sport or neither.)
Video
The Video section should create videos that highlight topics relevant to marginalized communities.
In addition to explainers and student reaction videos, the section should produce videos of events and breaking news, as well as videos that focus on a specific person, place or organization.
The section should create more videos that feature the greater Syracuse community, not only events and topics related to the university.
Writers and photographers should collaborate with video editors and videographers when reporting to tell stories cohesively in multiple formats and to increase representation of the Syracuse community in the Video section’s coverage.
The section should make sure that it is creating a balanced number of videos for each section (News, Opinion, Culture and Sports). These videos can accompany a story in the respective section or stand alone.
All videos should have subtitles to be more accessible.
Podcast
The Podcast section should strive to further engage with the community and encourage listeners of the podcasts to send in feedback and ideas for future episodes, with potential calls for feedback in episode outros and on social media. Engaging with and receiving feedback from the community is particularly important for the Peeling it Back podcast as it develops and produces episodes with original audio reporting that reflect the diversity of the community.
The Sportscast should feature more reporters of color and should increase the gender diversity of those featured. To do so, The D.O., and the Sports section in particular, must become a welcoming place for people of color, women, and nonbinary and transgender people.
Daily Orange Podcast episodes should feature more out-of-house contributors, including contributing writers, staff writers and beat writers who don’t hold an editing position.
To be more accessible, all podcast episodes should have transcripts (on all streaming platforms and on the link to the episode on The D.O.’s website).
The Podcast section should feature sound bites with the voices of sources themselves instead of solely relying on reporters to explain the story.
The D.O. mainly uses three social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Digital editors post every story on Twitter and Facebook but only posts a select few on Instagram. Instagram is one way The D.O. promotes stories, and The D.O. must take care in deciding which stories are shared on Instagram and which stories are left out.
written or have great visuals, but also based on factors such as which stories our audience wants to see more of and which stories highlight voices that are often left out of the narrative. Additionally, The D.O. should use Instagram to share more stories from contributing writers, who may feel disconnected from The D.O. and less recognized by its editors.
The D.O. should make sure that it is creating a balanced number of Instagram posts for each section (News, Opinion, Culture and Sports). The D.O. should also highlight more content from the Video and Podcast sections.
The D.O. should also begin adding alt text to posts on Instagram.
