Continuing the Narrative

Finding the tools to move past Aftermath

By Caleb Sigmon

As of yesterday our initiative has a name: Isla de Fuerza.

It is a tentative name, but I don’t see it ceding its role to another with the heavy favor it tallied on our recent naming-vote.

Like Aftermath – the name of the last UNC trip to Puerto Rico – Isla de Fuerza promises brushstroke themes that any journalist should be excited to paint. I find this frankly intimidating. How can we represent something so large and important, or even hope to understand a part of the strength Puerto Rico encapsulates? I come from a background of privilege and ignorance.

But the name Isla de Fuerza is just as encouraging as it is intimidating. If the people of Puerto Rico can live through the worst, the absolute least we can do is work and attempt to tell their stories.

But How?

I am on this project as a developer. Though I have a few coding classes on my résumé, I have no trouble feeling daunted. Intro to Interactive Media may have taught me how to code basic websites but if I ever want to build something like Aftermath, there are still several things to master, and so many new things to learn.

Aftermath incorporated impressive and aesthetically simple interactives into a professional site with rewarding user experience. Even matching that, let alone making the project our own, will require a serious amount of effort. But I am very lucky to be working with two great developers and several experienced UX designers.

We are planning to use Gatsby with WordPress as a headless CMS to build the site. I did not know what that meant until recently. In fact, many of the tools I will be using will be for the first time. I mean, just a couple weeks ago I made my first ever API call in JavaScript. But on the bright side, now I can spout off more industry names and jargon to confuse and/or impress people.

On the Ground

My story team is covering healthcare in Puerto Rico, and with the help of investigative reporter Hermes Ayala, has already picked out some pretty great sources. One I’m very excited about has a program called La Móvil, which involves driving a van around the island to replace used needles with clean ones. This is to prevent infections that are common with opioid users – since opioids in Puerto Rico is our story focus.

This story could literally take us anywhere. And that’s what’s exciting.

But it also makes everything feel very surreal, and adds an extra challenge in knowing what to prepare.

Reinforcing the Fuerza

One thing I do know is I am super grateful for the people that have been helping us in this process. We are immeasurably fortunate to have a journalist like Hermes helping every story team to come up with ideas and sources and provide general counsel. We have also had a Huffington Post reporter spend nearly a full 2 hours of class time giving us a rundown on covering Puerto Rico. On top of that all, we should soon be paired with some university students from Puerto Rico who voluntarily chose to lend us their time.

A classmate and I were joking recently how popular the idea of “synergy” is in many companies today (synergy being the way work as a team has greater effect than just the sum of its parts). But even with half of this class’ potential put together, I’m confident this project will be the greatest I will have the privilege to work on in my time here at UNC.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RELATED POSTS