Victoria Estrada and Ed Carter, School of Communications
The world of journalism is ever changing as technology continues to advance and the world evolves. As an aspiring journalist, it is important to know what is relevant. Journalists are employed by the people, we have a duty to tell society what they should know while also keeping them intrigued by being aware of what they want to know and how they want to know it. That was the point of this project. To find an issue that we feel people should be informed about. We hoped to express why they needed to know it, give it to them in a way that they could appreciate it, and in benefit from real life journalism experiences that would give us a plethora of knowledge and experience. For our topic, we chose to focus on the Chilean economy and culture. The hope was to highlight BYU’s role in alleviating the level of poverty the country faces. We felt this was an interesting topic for our audience, it is an example of goodness, something the world could always use a little more of and we hoped it would be inspiring.
The way that we accomplished all this, was by first researching what potential stories we had. We obviously planned to travel to Chile to get real footage and stories, but we hoped to go in their with at least a couple options. We eventually settled on three main areas of study. We hoped to learn about entrepreneurship, the education system, and local nonprofits. We were able to connect with some people before hand and have interview scheduled, but a good portion of our time was spent doing man on the street interviews and just talking to people to try to find stories. Then when we got back from our trip we created the pages for the topic with which we were assigned. My particular topic was entrepreneurship. I was able to edit conduct the interviews for all the information on the page. I conducted all the interviews for our videos and I edit the videos for the site.
We got plenty of interviews, took lots of beautiful pictures and ended up with a website that we are very proud of. It showcases a wide variety of talents and strengths. We had to find the right people, ask the right questions, get the right footage, edit it all and we continued to tell the stories with beautiful photography and strong writing. It showcases everything that BYU Journalism is. There is a reason our program is number four in the country and I believe projects like this prove that we have rightfully earned that spot. Our site has been entered in some competitions and is publicly published for anyone who wants to look at it. I have personally shared the link on my own social media and received some great feedback. You can check it out yourself at changeforchile.com
My favorite part of the trip was a breaking news opportunity that we accidentally stumbled upon. While taking a nice hike to view the mountains, since it had rained the day before and the smog had cleared, we were able to see some commotion down in town at the top of the hill. We went down to check it out and found a massive taxi protest happening. Taxi drivers had parked their calls in the middle of street, blocking off the road and refusing to work. This protest was supposed to draw attention to the presence of Uber in the country. We found out that this American company came in, and wasn’t forced to follow the government regulations to work; yet they were working and taking money away from the Chilean taxi drivers. These workers shared how this affected them, their families and the economy. It was so eye opening to see how America was negatively affecting the economy of another country. I loved the perseverance, passion and love with which the Chileans handled themselves.
Growing up, my dad told me I could be whatever I want and to do what I love. I’ve thought since I was 12 that I’ve wanted to be a journalist, but what a great feeling it has been to come to BYU and not only have the reassurance of enjoying my classes and loving what I study, but really having real life opportunities to learn and to grow. This trip has completely solidified that journalism is everything I hoped it would be. It’s hard work and weird hours, but it’s travelling and learning fascinating stuff about great people. It’s having a voice and working to make a difference. This trip gave me the chance to see a new part of the world, to speak a language that I love, to learn new things about my field of study and I made some great friends and lots of wonderful memories. I am so grateful for this opportunity. It was a highlight of my year.