A team of 11 student journalists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were recently awarded one of college journalism’s top honors from the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation for Human Rights.
Several students will travel to Washington, D.C., later this month to accept the award for their “Wounds of Whiteclay,†a multimedia project detailing the issues surrounding the Nebraska town of roughly a dozen people that sells 3.5 million cans of beer annually.
Most of that beer is sold to residents of the neighboring Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which has banned alcohol.
The UNL students spent nine months traveling to Whiteclay to document residents, as well as the rampant alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome, poverty and the suicide rate.
Their work can be found at .
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“This is an opportunity to celebrate the summit of collegiate journalism excellence,†said Joe Starita, the College of Journalism and Mass Communications professor who led the project. “We are very excited; they’ve worked like no other depth-reporting class I’ve ever had.â€
Leaving after class on Fridays, the team would drive 400 miles to Whiteclay to spend the weekend interviewing residents of the town and nearby reservation, as well as shoot photos and video, before leaving at 5 p.m. on Sunday evening to make the long trek back to Lincoln.
Many of the students would get back in town just in time for an 8:30 a.m. class on Monday.
Starita said the class made more than a dozen trips west this school year.
“That kind of tenacity and love of subject matter is the envy of other journalism colleges,†he said. “We had to lasso them and chain them to the back of the van to get them home.â€
Finding a way to present its findings created a new opportunity for the depth-reporting class to explore as well, Starita said.
Previous classes have focused on the role Native American women play in sustaining Native culture through a 150-page magazine dedicated to a single topic, for example.
Documenting the ills of Whiteclay was more of a moving target, Starita said.
Hearings took place earlier this year to strip the liquor stores’ licenses, and the issue moved into the court system, which created a constantly changing topic.
“We knew we couldn’t wait a year to put out a magazine,†he said.
So the team enlisted the help of a website designer to funnel its “live ammo†reports, photos and videos to its audience in an engaging way, catching a wave of change that took place in Whiteclay this year.
“We knew we had to have a very fluid delivery system for a very fluid story and it turned out to be a pretty fine marriage between delivery and content,†Starita said.
The end result was praised by the New York Times, as well as Esquire and Economist magazines.
Team members were Alyssa Mae Ranard, Natasha Rausch, Chris Bowling, Jake Crandall, Lauren Brown-Hulme, Amber Baesler, Vanessa Daves, Matt Hanson, Marcella Mercer, James Wooldridge and Calla Kessler. In addition to Starita, Bill Frakes and Rebekka Schlicting led the class.
Bowling, Crandall, Baesler, Daves, Wooldridge and Kessler are former or current Journal Star interns.
Five team members will put summer internships in places such as Detroit, Tampa, Florida, and Springfield, Missouri, on hold briefly to attend the May 23 award banquet in Washington, D.C.Â
There, they will receive the award from 89-year-old Ethel Kennedy at a ceremony hosted by the Newseum.