Be prepared

This week’s story was about boy scouts. Our editor e-mailed us and told us that we were good to go with a story about boy scout popcorn fundraising. When we get to class we were told that the professors had switched gears on our story and instead we were supposed to find out if boy scouts are still relevant. After going through 10 interviews, attending a campout and going to a troop meeting we were left with bites that resembled the type of material that would only be of use if we were doing a boy scout PR piece.

Maybe we asked the wrong questions when interviewing. Maybe this week was a result of poor communication. Maybe we just simply mis-understood what we were supposed to focus on in this piece. Whatever the reason, we knew this was a weak piece when we were putting it together … but when your editing your stuff theres no time to go back out and get more interviews. We had to push through with what we had. I feel like this week turned out the way it did because there was little to no communication between our team and the editor as well as the professors.

Only when we got the grade back did I feel like I understood what they were looking for. We should have focused more on the why scouts stay involved despite the criticism the community has of them (that they’re homophobic, old fashioned etc.) Its to bad that only became clear after we got the grade. I could have sworn on the Friday when we pitched this idea we were asked to stay away from topics such as homophobia in boy scouts because those types of things have been covered before. Oh well. Its over. Move on to the next week.