By Jakob Rodgers, CQS ‘09

With each passing month at the Greeley (Colo.) Daily Tribune, my story assignments have grown ever more challenging. After a year and a half at the paper and about two-thirds of the way through my Chips Quinn internship, I was assigned to a story that would receive the hallowed “Special Report” label that all reporters like to see next to their bylines.

The story involved finding a college-bound student who was living in the United States illegally and interviewing that person at length.

For me, the story was a learning experience — of the type that comes only after realizing what went wrong.

I now understand that not every story goes according to plan. The trick is to learn from whatever mistakes are made.

In this case, there were many lessons.

Finding the story

The story was a complex one. At its heart was a bill making its way through the Colorado General Assembly. The tuition equity bill proposed allowing students who attended three years of high school in Colorado to attend the state’s public colleges at in-state tuition rates — regardless of citizenship status. This meant that students who were in the country illegally could attend college at in-state tuition rates, which ranged at the time from 100 percent to 560 percent less than out-of-state tuition rates.

Greeley is an agricultural town with a large population of undocumented workers. The legislation, which would effectively favor non-citizens over legal residents from other areas of the country, sparked some impassioned opinions.

I was tasked with tackling the story and, in particular, finding a student who would be willing to talk to the paper, preferably not under the veil of anonymity.

It took me two months to find this person. In the process, I learned my first lesson: try every avenue to find the appropriate source.

This meant not relying on public relations personnel to talk to school principals so that they could talk to their staffs and find someone for me. I needed to be more proactive.

I sought advice from my newsroom colleagues. With help from the diversity reporter, I found a student whom the bill would affect. The student was brought to this country at age seven. He showed through his high-school grades and test scores that he had the smarts to go to the college of his choosing and excel.

The student said that the growing racism spurred by the national debate on illegal immigration was taking a toll. And when he realized how much it would cost to attend college at out-of-state rates, he nearly slipped into a depression. His grades and schoolwork suffered.

He finally understood there were options for continuing his education — colleges in New Mexico and Nebraska offered possibilities — and applied himself to his studies again. By the end of his senior year, he was hopeful he would attend college in the United States.

Grappling with sensitive issues

Though the student at first was fine with the paper’s publishing his name, he and his family later had second thoughts. My editors also started to wonder if it would be responsible to print his name.

We’d heard stories. Some anecdotes involved families being deported in Arizona and Los Angeles. Other accounts suggested that immigration authorities would not arrest the student. We were concerned that the more extreme members of our community might call for his arrest or, worse, harm him. Even the thought of a family member losing a job due to the article was tough.

I sat down with two of my editors and the paper’s publisher. We decided to use a pseudonym for the student. In retrospect, I think we did the right thing, and the student was fine with the decision.

Falling down — and getting back up

It was not until after my first stab at writing the story that I learned the most valuable lessons.

They involved the importance of communicating with editors and of organizing my reporting and writing.

There were many facets to reporting the story.

There was the student and his history: how he came to this country; what his schooling was like; what his aspirations were; the complexities of his downfall, followed by his work to get into college.

There was the legislation as it traveled through the General Assembly: what the bill would do; why some people supported it while others opposed it; what were the potential social and economic ramifications; why it eventually failed.

Finally, there were the larger implications of the federal Dream Act, which required seeking the opinions of several advocacy groups on both sides of the immigration debate.

It was hard to organize all these “moving parts” into one story.

The story I turned in was returned to me, bleeding ink. It needed so many revisions that my editors decided to hold it for a week.

I was floored. I’d never had a story held before — much less one that was the A-1 centerpiece for the coming Sunday edition. It was a humbling experience.

My editors were helpful, even coming in at 10 p.m. one Friday to help me work through the information and better report the story after I turned in that fateful first draft.

It finally dawned on me that the best way to tackle the story organization was by using a story board. Doing that allowed me literally to see how I had structured the story and what changing the structure would look like.

In the end, the story came out well — though I still would change some things if given another crack at it. Rather than assembling one long narrative, I could have broken the story into two articles: one focusing on the student’s experience, the other delving into the issues that the legislation brought to light.

The most important lesson from the experience is that I now constantly evaluate myself. I always take a few seconds to reflect on the lessons learned after each story I cover.

And I’m still finding things that I could have done better in my Special Report. I’ve learned that reader comments received online are a great way to start looking for improvements.

I look forward to my next big assignment — this time, with a better handle on the situation.

Jakob Rodgers is a reporter for the Greeley (Colo.) Daily Tribune, his Spring 2009 Chips Quinn Scholar internship newspaper. He is a senior journalism student at the University of Northern Colorado. Rodgers worked as a part-time general assignment reporter at the Greeley Daily Tribune from October 2007 until November 2008, when he became a full-time reporter assigned to the K-12 education beat. He covered sports for The Mirror, the student newspaper, from September 2007 through September 2008. He also covered high school football for prepcolorado.com (fall 2007).