I remember a friend of mine shared her story of how her father’s sushi restaurant was one of the many local businesses in Los Angeles that were looted and vandalized during the Black Lives Matter protests. She shared that her family was burdened by this and since they were a small, local business, they would be struggling to repair and to continue opening their store during the pandemic. With this in mind, I originally wanted to pitch a story focused on how Cal Poly students whose families own small businesses have been facing hardships. However, I noticed a trend where many students were using Instagram as a platform to share their hobbies and talents with their communities, as well as using it as a way to financially support themselves during this time. Tony Farias and I wanted to explore this topic and began looking within our friend groups for individuals who have started their own businesses during the pandemic.
I interviewed Cal Poly students Sirina Law, Justin Chan and Deisha Kelsey over Zoom. One of the main questions we wanted to ask was why they started the business and whether the business was created because of the pandemic. A common mission or purpose statement all three students share was that they hoped to be able to use their talents to bring their community happiness during these difficult times. Law really wanted her small business to be focused on sustainability and educating individuals on conscious living.
“This is something I wanted to do to help people be happy, with people not being able to go to the salon,” Kelsey said.
Since all three students were staying at home, we were unable to get the necessary B-roll footage for the video, so Tony and I relied a lot on Instagram photos and videos sent in from the three interviewees. We really wanted to include Chan’s personal cooking Instagram account which had a lot of compelling videos of him cooking. However, it did not fit the narrative of our story so we ended up omitting it.
“The biggest challenge was taking three different interviews and forming one cohesive story,” Farias said. “What it really came down to was finding what they all have in common and showcasing that as best as I could.”
After the interview, I felt that the article would work best if written as a feature story. I originally wrote the piece in a Q&A format but after a peer-review session, I determined that it was difficult to write all three perspectives in that format.
“When it was in a Q&A format, the article did not flow well and it was hard to label who was speaking in response to the question,” Lee said.
I ended up writing a feature story that effectively communicated all perspectives without making the article feel too cluttered or confusing. We wrapped up the project by sharing our respective tasks with each other and then submitting the final article to Trello and WordPress.
In conclusion, Tony and I wanted to make sure this news story was an encouraging and uplifting story for readers—specifically Cal Poly students or alumni—who are looking to support small businesses during the pandemic. We brought in stories of how COVID changed these studentss’ everyday lives to keep the story relevant and newsworthy. We are proud of the way this story finally came together.