Audience Shapes Story Focus

One of the long-standing policies of the Publications class has been that, in order for a student to receive credit for their stories, at least one must have some angle pertaining to HCC.

The policy does not necessarily determine whether a story gets into the newspaper; that is a decision made by the editors. It does, however, influence the student’s grade.

We have tweaked this rule so to mean slightly different things over the years. When I first came to the paper, we were told we had to incorporate at least one source from HCC into the story. Students sometimes worked around the mandate by inserting a random quote from a student into a story that had nothing to do with them. You’d end up with something like this:

The Wildcat roller coaster at Lake Compounce was built in 1927, making it one of the world’s oldest operating coasters.

“I enjoy riding roller coasters,” said HCC student Adam Adamson.

The amusement park’s newest coaster, called “Boulder Dash,” was built with the natural terrain in mind…

The standard changed while I was editor-in-chief. The program’s advisor, Steve Mark, and I decided it would be clearer to students if we told them to incorporate an angle relevant to HCC.

An article might talk about Bridgeport’s Board of Education without using any source from inside HCC, but would show why the story would matter to HCC students (in this case, many of them come through the public school system).

When Professor Karyn Smith took the reins this semester, she changed the formula ever-so-slightly again. Previously we had only pushed students to cover one HCC-specific story. Now she wanted all students’ stories for grading purposes to lean that direction.

From a journalistic standpoint, her change made immense sense. The entire justification for Horizons’ existence is to serve the college community. It is, quite naturally, our turf. No one needs us to tell them what’s happening in Bridgeport’s government - the Connecticut Post is right up the street and already does that, as do half a dozen other papers in town.

We can’t compete with them for the city. But they can’t compete with us for the college.

Nevertheless, there was some pushback about the policy from students. Throughout the semester, several voiced frustration at the idea they would be limited to events inside the college.

That was never Smith’s point. The idea was to get students to consider their audience and incorporate that into all their stories.

We realized, though, that there was a gap in understanding, even as proposals for the third and final issue of the semester were getting underway.

Smith attempted to demonstrate the concept of audience in class. She asked the students to think about North Korea’s recent threats aimed at South Korea and the U.S.

“If you live in South Korea,” she told students, “the story is going to be about preparation – what you should do to be ready in case something happens.” Then she asked students what a story might focus on if it was written for residents of Austin, Texas - one of the sites marked on a North Korean map of bombing targets.

“Why Austin?” one student asked.

“Exactly,” replied Smith.

She next asked them to make the story appropriate for the HCC community.

People had numerous suggestions. If the North Koreans could hit Washington, D.C., they could hit Bridgeport. There were Korean international students. There were members of the military stationed there who had families in the area. Some students at the college had expressed fear and confusion about the situation. Others simply didn’t know what was going on.

At the end of this exercise, I pointed out that there was yet another way to approach the story: there are political science and history professors at HCC. They could offer insight.

A college campus should be one of the easiest places in the world to find expertise and context for a story. Yet students sometimes underappreciate this resource. They think of professors and other professionals at the college only in their roles as teachers and staff.

Some students still resisted restricting their audience to their classmates. A few said they thought they should be expanding to the broader community.

Smith countered that they would not have a hook for anyone outside the school unless they could reach the class next door.

I added that they could think more broadly about the college community: professors, alumni, members of the Housatonic Community College Foundation and others with ties to the college are also part of their core audience.

Finally, the students were asked to write down a few ideas and work the audience into their proposals. Some students were clearly inspired; one proposed a story revealing the different prices that nearby Dunkin’ Donuts stores charged, and how the establishments closest to the college were not necessarily the cheapest.

In the end, most of the proposals were strictly about campus affairs. When Smith and I talked about the discussion later, we could not decide whether it had actually introduced more creativity into the proposals.