Digital Journalism

While my bachelor's degree is in journalism, I had an amazing opportunity to learn journalistic writing techniques under the direction of Melissa Fay Greene. While my bachelor's degree focused on vetting sources, parts of writing journalistically and press releases, Greene's class focused more on the components of a feature story. What makes a story compelling and makes the reader want to keep reading until the end (which is a skill not taught in normal journalism schools with an emphasis on the inverted pyramid). Greene taught us how we can combine creative storytelling with factual stories to make it engaging and interesting.

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Below is a feature story I wrote on my grandfather, Dr. Seth Leibler, and Dr. Cay Holbrook on a project they completed in the late 1980s during the Tiananmen Square Protest for the Chinese Federation of Disabled People. This project was contracted by The Carter Center and President Jimmy Carter.

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The "Connected by the Moon" title is inspired by Dr. Holbrook talking about how we, in the United States, are looking at the same moon that she saw in China. But, the moon in China seemed ancient with wisdom.

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The most influential quote from this piece is from Dr. Bill Foege: "It's not people that come between people, it's governments that come between people."

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Download the PDF version of this feature piece here.