Kelli Solomkin (right), playing the character of the fire chief of Anytown, provides information to reporters during a role-playing exercise during the Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at Arizona State University on Monday, June 13. The reporters are high school journalism teachers from around the country who are participating in the two-week institute.
For the exercise, the participants were split up into groups, and were tasked with interviewing a series of officials about a breaking news story (the scenario involved an explosion at a federal courthouse). After rotating among the different stations, the groups came up with informative leads for their breaking news stories. Among the lessons learned: not all sources are reliable, some people need to be asked in different ways, and reporters need to be persistent, and not jump to conclusions. Also, it's important to verify information and confirm facts before including them in a story. The role-players all portrayed their respective characters well, and each did provided bits of bonus information if they were asked certain questions or in a certain way. The exercise illustrated the challenges of spot news reporting and the importance of proper attribution, and of independently verifying information received from sources.
Jeff Richards
Grand County High School
Moab, Utah
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