Words and Light

Our first assignment in Advanced Reporting was to partner up with a fellow classmate and complete the following assignment:

You will spend time in talking in select communities in the Columbia area to explore the immediate world in which you live, and to discover issues of significance to your neighbors.

These discussions should take you outside your usual environment and introduce you to a part of the community you are unfamiliar with or know only through assumption and generalization.

The goal is to discover issues or topics of most relevance to people’s daily lives, and to learn a bit about their media needs and habits.

The following is what I reported to our Advanced Reporting instructor, Tom Warhover:

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This morning at 9:30 a.m., Valerie Insinna and I went door-to-door on Rose Drive in northwest Columbia. It’s a relatively small neighborhood consisting of homes built in the mid-70s. We weren’t sure who would be home on Friday morning — our original plan was to talk to people at the Greyhound bus stop, which we couldn’t find — but here are the five people we talked to.

• Heather Creamer

Heather Creamer is a stay-at-home mom who also works as a massage therapist (in others’ homes) and volunteers with Evangelical Free Church. We interviewed her in her house’s living room, accompanied by her young children and family dog.

Creamer homeschools her son and daughter — a choice she made before they were born. She said several members of her church homeschool their children, which is how she was inspired to want to spend more time with her children.

“I wanted a slower-pace life,” Creamer said. “To have my own choices, make my own choices with them.

“It’s definitely beneficial that I can tie in Christ to whatever we’re doing,” Creamer also said. However, she said even if she weren’t a practicing Christian, she would still have chosen to homeschool her children.

Regarding journalism and news-gathering, Creamer said she does not read the newspaper, peruse the Internet or watch TV to get her news. Instead, she gets most of her news from her husband. When asked how her husband filters what news he tells her, Creamer said most topics are social trends or politics — and are usually good starting points for conversation.

Creamer’s biggest complaint about journalism and its role in everyday people’s lives was its accessibility. She sees the presentation of facts as repetitive, and wants the news to be “dumbed down” (her words).

• Esta Vaughn

We found Esta Vaughn sweeping dead leaves into a dustbin, which she then emptied into a trashbag, on her driveway. Because she was wearing a red “World’s Best Grandma” sweatshirt, we were surprised to find that Vaughn — who has lived on Rose Drive since 1976 — has six great-grandchildren.

Regarding the Columbia community and the world at large, Vaughn said the following:

• She wants more progress made in the medical field. She supports stem-cell research, and is disappointed that no major advances have been made in muscular dystrophy research despite millions of dollars’ worth of research.
• She wants the city to put its electric lines underground so that storms won’t knock out power by downing lines.
• She is upset with the Columbia Board of Education because of rising taxes in that sector and sees a lot of waste in that system.

Despite her complaints about the Board of Education, Vaughn said that education and, more recently, the medical field are the best of what Columbia has to offer.

Vaughn watches the news broadcast to get her news, and quit subscribing to the newspaper several years ago. She said that newspaper journalists tend to focus on the negative, dramatic news and that she would rather read about who has graduated with honors from Hickman High and Rock Bridge High.

• Matthew Acra

Matthew Acra, who lives with his parents on Rose Drive, was the only student we interviewed. He was also the youngest person we talked to. An MU student, he said school is what matters most to him right now. Acra is currently studying to get into the pharmaceuticals program but is prepared to major in mechanical engineering if that does not work out. His family is highly involved in the medical and engineering fields in Columbia.

Regarding the community in which he lives, Acra described it as “mostly old people.” Regarding the Columbia area at large, Acra said he wants to see improvement in the recreational parks — namely, more features for people to enjoy, such as tennis courts.

“Probably it’s the responsibility of the community to take care of them (the parks),” Acra said.

Acra does not actively read the news. His default home page on his Internet browser is MSN.com, which he scans occasionally for big headlines “if it’s interesting.” He relies on his friends and family to provide him with information in his daily life, as well as the news.

“My friends and family are more interested in the news than I am, honestly,” Acra said.

However, his biggest complaint about the media today is bias. He said journalists need to realize that there is more than one side to every story, and to be sure to cover all the bases.

Acra’s major goals for the next five years are to do well in school and move out of his parents’ house.

• Ryan Kagiwada

Ryan Kagiwada moved to Columbia in 2004 because the cost of living was drastically less expensive than San Diego, Calif., where he previously lived with his parents. We talked to him as he finished a cigarette in bare feet outside on his porch.

Kagiwada works at Missouri Furniture as a delivery man. He is the only one in the company, so he’s sure of his job security even though several people in the showroom have already been laid off in these downward economic times. However, he is looking for another warehouse job, but has found the job listings to be fewer both in the classifieds and on CraigsList.

Kagiwada did not have much to say about the Columbia community. Having lived in San Diego and New York City, he finds the pace of Columbia to be remarkably slower but enjoyable. He went to Columbia College for two years and plans to go back, as well as fix up his house, in the next five years.

He also did not have much to say about journalism. He receives the newspaper, but gets most of his news from AOL.com.

• Harley Jamison

Harley Jamison opened the door right after we finished knocking on it. Jamison, who lives with his sister and her family on Rose Drive, has been in Columbia for only a few months since moving from Portland, Ore.

Of the five people Valerie and I spoke with this morning, he had the most to say and was the most eager to share. He has a masters in English and a seminary degree, and has taught at the university level. He is also familiar with existentialism — that is the secular philosophical approach with which he most agrees — and epistemology, which is the study of how we know what we know. He believes that what matters most is small acts of kindness on a daily basis — such as helping out two journalism students on a cold morning by allowing them inside and talking to them (his example).

An avid runner, hiker and bicyclist, Jamison is dissatisfied with accessibility in Columbia. Despite Mayor Darwin Hindman’s efforts to make Columbia a friendlier town for pedestrians and bicyclists, Jamison has not seen any improvements outside of the central Columbia area.

Regarding the Columbia community, Jamison called the area “an anomaly in the Midwest,” due to its higher “sophistication” (thanks to the strong educational background) and politically left leanings. Jamison is a fiscal conservative, and was very vocal about the media’s coverage of the presidential campaigns and election.

Journalism has become biased, Jamison said. He cited FOX News’ slogan — “We report, you decide” — as a standard journalists should follow (and implied that FOX itself may not live up to its own slogan). He wants to see more objectivity in reporting, and called the recent political coverage a “lovefest with Obama.”

Jamison said he listens to talk radio shows — including Rush Limbaugh’s program — for their entertainment and information value.

“They bring up issues and arguments,” Jamison said. He then informed us that he can separate the actual news content from the show hosts’ commentary.

Overall, it was a good morning. After talking to Heather Creamer, Valerie and I anticipated that most of the people we’d find would be stay-at-home parents, but that was certainly not the case. There was more diversity on Rose Drive than we expected.

With the exception of Harley Jamison, everyone we talked to seemed indifferent to the news and journalism, to some degree. Community involvement was not especially high — Heather Creamer seemed to be the only person actively involved in some kind of organization (her church) — and everyone except for Esta Vaughn said they did not know their neighbors very well.

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I personally did not know what to expect, when Valerie and I first started out this morning, besides talking to a lot more stay-at-home parents than we actually did. I hoped to find that many Columbia residents actively keep up-to-date on the news, but at least according to our very small sample/survey, that was not the case. It was, however, refreshing to get out of the MU/journalism cocoon, get into the community and talk with people who don’t necessarily share the same background, ideals, beliefs and perspectives.