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One joy of the Desk is the opportunity to work with student-journalists. Our executive director, Sara Shipley Hiles, teaches a capstone reporting class at the Missouri School of Journalism each spring, and the students’ main task is to dig deep into a timely, newsworthy topic. When they succeed, we share their work with newsrooms via the Desk.
This past spring, Sara’s students didn’t just succeed. They knocked the assignment out of the park.
Sara asked them to come up with stories that scrutinize the national push for more data centers. Many newsrooms have taken up the topic, but she believed much of the coverage scratches the surface.
“I wanted to get away from angry meeting coverage,” Sara told me. “I felt like that was shallow. … It doesn’t help anybody.”
She and her class went beyond the one-off coverage that journalists are often criticized for. They told the story of how a handful of ordinary people in central Missouri are filling the information gap left by that coverage, attending government meetings, filing public records requests at their own expense and setting up online forums to keep their neighbors informed. Her students pulled back the curtain on the middlemen who broker data center deals — often after having been hired by the communities themselves. They explained how state legislatures have failed to act on data centers, leaving local governments to fend for themselves. And they put together a community toolkit that’s full of expert advice on how to shape data center proposals so they’re beneficial to all.
Already, these stories are resonating. Within a week after being released by the Desk, the community toolkit appeared in close to 100 publications nationwide, from Florida to Washington state.
I had the privilege of serving as a guest editor on these stories. They are as thoroughly reported and well written as any that I’ve edited. It’s been a pleasure to see how a solutions-oriented approach, grounded in intimate storytelling, can connect people.
If you haven’t read these stories yet, please check them out at Missouri Business Alert, one of our sister news organizations at Mizzou. And if you’re an editor, please feel free to republish them.
People have a deep desire for journalism that doesn’t just chronicle conflict, but points audiences toward solutions. We at the Desk aim to help satisfy that hunger.
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