Using Project Argo as a Teaching Model

Matt Thompson writes over at Idea Lab about what he’d do differently if he were launching NPR’s Project Argo in 2012. Going through his five points, there’s an awful lot we, as visual journalists, can put to good use.

And I think I shall in my classes.

The big one, the one I’ve been hammering journalism students and journalists on for years, is context. Telling our audience that Fact A happened or exists is great, but if there’s no context – no WHY – surrounding the images we create, than they’re just more noise in our world. There’s a difference between reporting and journalism. One is the presentation of facts, the other is the use of those facts to explain why things happen and what they mean.

Context is king.