Paul Salopek: evaluation

Transcript context

…How do you teach journalism differently than other people do? The model that I’ve been using involves walking. We set up a workspace in somebody’s house in downtown old-city Kolkata. We invite colleagues to come spend a week with us there, and we say, “We want you to go out on foot and find a story within one kilometer of here. ” And you go find it on foot, and you report it on foot. That’s a mechanism to slow people down, to get them off staring at their phones, grazing the internet for information, which is part of the process, but I think we rely on it too much. Start using your body as one of the main instruments for information-gathering. Yes, spoke and wheel, have a hub, and send people out radially to go find their stories, and then work with them throughout the days to deepen and sharpen their vision of what they’re writing about. Do you ever worry that you’ll be somehow overwhelmed by local publicity, like townspeople will start following you? There’ll be a troupe or horde with you everywhere you go, you won’t be able to look at things peacefully anymore, you’ll be too scrutinized. Or is that not in danger of happening?…

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