Record, Write, Rewind.
This week at The Venice Wave, students prepared for their last issue of 2009. Reporter Cesar Guajardo utilized two voice recorders-an ancient cassette tape one (reminiscent of the first “Home Alone” film), and a crazy new-age digital recorder. For his important interview with Dr. Michael Marquez, Cesar decided to stick with the more trustworthy digital recorder. We called Dr. Marquez at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, a half hour after journalism class started in the Venice writing lab. Before the interview, We thought of tough questions to ask the doctor about the H1N1 vaccine, like “Does it protect you from becoming a zombie?” (We really didn’t ask that, but we should have). Instead, Cesar asked about the shortage of vaccines in Los Angeles, and who is the mostly likely to contract the virus (students are high on the list!).
“The government wants 250 million doses. So far, only 40 million have been produced and distributed. It’s in high demand. People really want it now. The vaccine should be coming, but it’s a slow process,” said Marquez in the phone interview.
Hopefully, more reporters on The Venice Wave will learn that a recording device is their best friend when interviewing a source.
Read more about Cesar’s H1N1 story on the 826LA Blog.