In Class Lab: Stories Sans Print

Think of three different ways—other than print—to tell a story. (We’ll assume that your piece has a print component.) Give a descriptive one-paragraph summary for each. Post idea by the end of class.

1. Charts and Diagrams. Graphically represent relevant information, or bits of interesting trivia that aren't necessarily intrinsic to the story but help flesh out the topic. Maybe a bar chart of how much time it takes on average for a drag queen to get dressed up for a performance versus for their daily life versus a biological woman, or a pie chart of reactions from passersby a drag king says he has experienced when in drag, or xy graph charting number of drag shows and pride events versus gay rights legislation or homophobic attacks. 

2. Audio Clips. Conduct and record interviews, edit for quality soundbites, embed links to digital home of the project in an attractive manner. I'm envisioning maybe photos of various sources and when you click on them you would hear them speak a sentence or two- would emphasize how many different voices -literally- and perspectives there are at play.  Or similarly have the text of an interview question and then below 'What Marcia Said', 'What George Said", etc. and clicking on the sources name would trigger the audio of their response to that question. 

3. A game, of some ilk. I don't know for sure how this would work, and probably don't have the coding skills to make it a reality, but some sort of interactive mini flash game? Could that be a viable method of story-communication? Or some kind of choose-your-own adventure? I don't know how that's really useful or how it could be applied to our topic, but interactive things are so trendy right now. 

I didn't list photo essay because that seems like the most obvious go-to thing but I do think that with this topic it could lend a really neat edge. Maybe like a series of photos interspersed between the text... say after a paragraph about something like what kind of wigs drag queens wear have three shots of the same individual from different angles putting on a wig. 

What If You Put Together A Magazine in 48 Hours? What If You Put Together A Proposal For A Magazine In A Few Minutes?

The answer to the latter question can be found here.


Seceding from Steelers Nation

The edition is a focus on non-Pittsburgh sports fans in Pittsburgh and/or on a distaste for Pittsburgh sports fans. We’d aspire for 20 stories, graphics and pieces of art in total.

· A Shirt of Another Color — A story bundle, talking to fans about experiences they’ve had wearing jerseys of other sports fans
ART:
Photograph portraits of the fans in their shirts

· Black and Yellow Cult — Stories of excessive fandom, stalking, chasing down, crying, mass hysteria over the sports.
ART:
Chart — cost of supporting your team — a break down of the money people spend on season tickets, parking, food, etc.
Poll — How many dates have you gone on to Black & Yellow games?
— Rate these in terms of importance: Food, Shelter, Water, The Steelers, and Beer

· “Fan” Art — Art satirizing black and yellow players either for their physical attributes or for their public personas.

· Diary of a Jersey Chaser — Chronicling the events of a woman’s life as she pursues black and gold clad players.
ART: Girls in craftily cut jerseys converted into “sexy” outfits.

· Photo essay — tackiest Steelers paraphernalia

· Police Records — pull public records of athletes’ police records and compare them to other teams in their leagues.
SIDE BAR: Chronicling fan disturbances.
SIDE BAR: Fans behavior at other stadiums

· Game day eating — a graphic of the caloric intake of popular game day food — complete with recipes.
ART: Photos of the food above each description

· Fan cheers — recordings of popular cheers with an explanation of their origins.
SIDE BAR: Lyrics from the cheers

· Photo Essay — a montage of people with sunburns around their body/face paint

· View from the outside — Talking to people from other cities and people new to Pittsburgh about their opinion of “Steelers Nation” and the Black and Yellow Cult.

· Philosophical analysis of the Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow” — hint: despite it’s prevalence at sporting events the actual words have little to do with Pittsburgh athletics.
ACCOMPANYING: Montage of fans’ videos where they’re singing black and yellow (with permission, of course).

Social Media Pages for Slate and Grantland

Slate Home
Slate Facebook
Slate Twitter 

Grantland Home
Grantland Facebook
Grantland Twitter 


Continued list and links forthcoming, internet connection in Boston is significantly sketchier than one might have hoped.

Digital Research Scavenger Hunt

 Audio of William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. You must include one correct, accurate quote from Faulkner in your post.

"The young man and woman writing today have forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself, which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat." 

January 1, 1644, fell on which day of the week? What was the weather like that day in Philadelphia/Pennsylvania?

Gregorian calendar? Friday. Cloudy and rainy weather, with occasional sunshine and somewhat warm. 

Where and when did the five deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history occur?

Great Galveston Hurricane, Texas 1900, Death toll: 8000

Lake Okeechobee Florida 1928, Death toll: 2500

Katrina 2005, Death toll: 1200

Cheniere Caminada, Louisiana 1893 Death toll: 1100-1400

Sea Islands, South Carolina/Georgia 1893 Death toll: 1000,2000 

A blueprint for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

Ernest Hemingway’s 1923 passport photograph. Make five factual observations about the document.

1. Hemingway's passport number was 359666

2. There appears to be a stamp crookedly applied over the photograph.

3. Hemingway is wearing a suit and tie and not yet sporting his signature beard. 

4. The photograph appears to have been embossed with a circular insignia in the upper lefthand corner.

5. The background paper reads 'United States passport' repe

Facebook, Twitter, and Nonfiction: Useful Interactions?

Find Facebook pages and Twitter streams for one credible nonfiction site and one credible nonfiction writer of your choice. How do the publications/writers interact with readers? Does it work? Why or why not? How much is too much? What is effective and what is noise? Write a short post.


This is the Facebook page for The Atlantic. It currently has 54,308 followers and appears to update regularly, but most posts by the page owner seem to be aggregating Atlantic articles rather than providing any additional content or reader interaction. Likewise with the magazine's Twitter account, which is posts short blurbs and links to its own articles online. The Twitter account could be useful for notifying readers of articles that might interest them if they aren't consistent readers of the magazine, but doesn't seem to do much in the way of engaging with readers or soliciting interaction. 


Malcolm Gladwell has not one but two Facebook pages, neither of which provides any content beyond his wikipedia biography blurb, leading one to suspect Mr. Gladwell himself is likely not actually operating either page. Lacking any additional content or interaction the main function of the pages seems to be enabling FaceBook users to link to an author page, which has limited utility but isn't entirely useless (i.e. A status reading "I'm loving Malcolm Gladwell's new book!" that links to one of the author pages would eliminate doubt as to the identity of Gladwell as an author rather say a friend who had lent said user a book- a trivial application.) While a Twitter account exists for Gladwell it should be noted that it doesn't have Twitter's blue check mark of authenticity and thus cannot be relied upon to be operated by the believed entity. 

Cross Training

My Political Science Capstone class is going to require a mammoth research effort which at this early initial stage means scouring the web for leads on viable sources, consequently compiling a vast array of links I'd like to be able to refer back to.
While I'm still experimenting with the best application for this (Delicious perhaps?) it's definitely going to be a multi-platform endeavor. Why not trace my progress on researching Golan v. Holder while practicing my digital nonfiction writing skills? The end result will hopefully be a storify piece tracking not only the development of this Supreme Court case (dealing with public domain intellectual property rights and thus even more relevant) but my own researching and academic writing process.

Digital Resources: Drag Culture

Less a digital resource than a sort of supplementary resource of places we might go to conduct first person research: http://pittsburgh.gaycities.com/

University of Pittsburgh's Rainbow Alliance website http://www.pitt.edu/~sorc/rainbow/

What's the Facebook community like? http://www.facebook.com/dragqueens