Storytelling 101 with United Way, J-School students
Journalism 202 students gain real world experience

For young journalists, perfecting the art of storytelling is a process imperative to future success. However, good material doesn't always come along as often as one would like.

For United Way, uniting people and resources to improve the quality of life in the Midlands is a process that requires a great deal of effort by a relatively small number of people.  Providing information to the community about these people’s work is important.  However, there are simply too many people and too many stories for the staff to tell.

Fortunately, the 17 students in Bertram Rantin’s Journalism 202 course in the University of South Carolina School of Journalism & Mass Communications were in need of stories to tell for their semester-ending reporting project, and United Way of the Midlands was more than happy to oblige.

“Each semester, I look for a way to offer the students a practical, hands-on reporting experience that they can’t get from a book,” Rantin said.

United Way of the Midlands (UWM) impacted 69,771 people in Richland, Lexington, Orangeburg, Calhoun, Fairfield and Newberry counties in 2006 alone. That doesn't include the hundreds of volunteers, staff members and United Way supporters who helped them.

“Those people all have stories, and the opportunity to have even a handful of them told by these journalism students was something that seemed too good to be true,” said Claudia Brooks, UWM vice president for communications. “We simply don’t have the resources to tell all of these stories ourselves.  These students have helped us compile more stories in a few weeks than we can do over several months.”

The project was also an ideal opportunity for the students to get out of the classroom and grow accustomed to a reporter’s routine.

“This has been a great exercise because they’ve learned about making contacts, preparing their questions, conducting interviews and mapping out their stories,” Rantin said. “The real reward is that they’ll get to see their work in print for a real-life publication, which is what it’s all about.”

Not only did the students gain professional knowledge from the exercise, but they also learned about fundraising and volunteer work by doing some themselves.

“We tend to think it’s just money,” said Kaitlin Bennett, one of Rantin’s students.  “But I didn’t realize just how many things United Way does. So when you actually go there and see for yourself what goes on—the work people do and what the money goes towards—it’s amazing.”

Bennett was assigned to write about United Way of the Midlands’ 2006-2007 Campaign, which raised a record $10.9 million.

Another student, Brad Maxwell, was assigned to cover the 2007 UPS Tug-A-Plane event. For 10 years, UPS has teamed up with UWM to sponsor the event that brings together teams from different companies and organizations to compete in a race to literally tug a 200,000 pound UPS-A300 down a runway. The event has raised more than $140,000 for United Way of the Midlands.

“You hear that people give because it’s ‘for a good cause,’ but it was nice to find out firsthand what the good cause really is,” Maxwell said.

One of those causes is the Midlands Reading Consortium (MRC), a story that was assigned to Lauren Smith. The MRC is a volunteer initiative targeting kindergarten through second grade students which focuses on increasing language development and reading proficiency. It supports the efforts of the schools to close the achievement gap and ensure that all students perform at the proficient level.

Smith wrote about the variety of program activities, which include tutoring, mentoring, lunch buddies and classroom assistance for elementary students. The MRC has had several local authors come to speak to students in the schools and have also provided opportunities for the students to come into the community to meet authors.

The experience left United Way with an invaluable tool in recognizing the efforts of its volunteers and contributors and the students with an exceptional body of work.

“They’ve worked hard, and they should be proud,” Rantin said. “I know I am. I hope we get to do this again.”

Photo and article by United Way of the Midlands