Investigating Innocence: At the Intersection of Journalism, Law & Narrative
In spring 2018, I took a course through the writing minor that gave me the unique opportunity to investigate ongoing cases of wrongful murder convictions under review by Wake Forest University School of Law's Innocence & Justice Clinic. I reviewed video evidence and court transcripts, wrote summaries of the case for a variety of mediums, conducted phone interviews, traveled to Jacksonville, NC, to meet key witnesses, and even recorded audio to produce my very own mini podcast that would be published online alongside our timeline and written narrative. While I'd never produced a podcast before and formal training wasn't a large part of our course, my audio ultimately became a key part of a podcast produced by Colin Miller, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law. My professor, Journalism Dept. Chair Phoebe Zerwick, said the following of my work: "The final version of the podcast is really strong. Good work. I appreciate so much of what went into it, from learning the editing program to the initiative you took lining up those interviews, to the final execution. I liked the way you set it up in contrast to the Deadly Women series. You kept your journalistic distance even as you provided a human portrait of Pamela. As one of two students in the class with the least journalism experience, your work stands out as the strongest journalism, with the reward of having your interviews aired on Undisclosed."
The Wake Forest Law news story on my podcast audio being used on Undisclosed can be found here, and you can listen to the episode here. You can also listen to the podcast I produced myself for my class assignment here, or simply press play below!
Hunting Culture in Gun Culture 2.0: Where Are the Trucks and Bucks?
During my spring 2018 semester at Wake Forest University, I took the Sociology of Guns with Professor David Yamane. Yamane is a sociologist who has studied the transformation of the rural, hunting- and sport-based rifle culture that dominated most of America's historical relationship with firearms to contemporary "Gun Culture 2.0," which revolves around handgun ownership for self-defense purposes. Though hunting is no longer central to gun culture nor the primary reason most gun owners buy their firearms, I grew up hearing lots of people in my community talking about hunting, so for the course's final paper, I decided to examine how today's hunters fit into Gun Culture 2.0. Each year, Dr. Yamane publishes a small selection of the final papers, which may be on any topic of students' choosing, to his blog, and last spring, mine was one of the pieces selected. I spent an extensive amount of time researching for this paper, so it was extremely affirming to have been recognized by my professor and by the numerous users who commented positively on the post as well.
Dr. Yamane’s basic thesis of his course, and the subject of his online blog, “Gun Culture 2.0,” is that the gun culture that dominated the first four centuries of U.S. history, one of hunting and sustenance and sport with rifles, had now been replaced by a different gun culture of owning hand guns for self-defense, which is the most commonly cited reason for owning a gun in the U.S. today. However, both from growing up in a suburb near a rural part of Virginia and from having family bayou-side in Texas and Louisiana, I knew people still hunted. While hunting culture was no longer the dominant culture, it still existed, and we hadn’t explored it through our course, so I wanted to know how. Before the course, I’d never handled a firearm, and I knew nothing about hunting outside of some stereotypes, so I had to really dive into research to even know what angle to take, and I ultimately ended up reviewing many more sources than the assignment required. Dr. Yamane held a workshop on writing engaging titles, something I’d never worked on so formally and explicitly before, and had research librarian Hu Womack come to class to discuss our papers with us and encourage us to use more databases and books. For this project, I physically went to get books off the stacks in ZSR for only the third time in my college career, immersed myself fully in my research, and I loved it. It all paid off, because I produced a paper that both I and my professor were extremely proud of. It exemplified my ability to weave a compelling narrative and argument through a research paper, become an expert on a new topic through research, and effectively synthesize sources. Of my paper, Professor Yamane said, "The concept of Gun Culture 2.0 suggests that hunting and traditional target shooting have become less central to gun culture over time. But gun culture itself may have also become more pluralized. Hunting, in this view, is still a vibrant part of gun culture but it is more of a niche market than the primary driver (which is self-defense, according to GC2.0).As I have not written much about hunting, I am glad that one of my students, Natalie Wilson, did her Sociology of Guns seminar paper this year on hunting culture (the assignment can be found on the course syllabus)."
Click on the image above to view the published essay on his website, or I've included it below.