Following is a Q&A with Medill’s Josh Meyer, lead instructor for the Oil Change Project and director of education and outreach for the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative.
Where did the students travel?
The students traveled to the Persian Gulf, the Philippines, Ecuador (the smallest OPEC nation), the U.S. national labs in Berkeley, Calif., the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Louisiana, and other locations.
Over the course of the three months, what did the students do, or discover that surprised you?
I was surprised by their ability to creatively come up with great stories and ways around unhelpful or even obstructive government officials. And I was extremely impressed by their perseverance and ingenuity, especially in coming up creative and innovative ways of telling those stories. We always wanted to have this project be “digitally native,’’ or conceived first and foremost for online, interactive and multimedia presentation. Our National Security Journalism Initiative stresses finding new and innovative ways of doing national security journalism, so we’re very proud of it.
What was your reaction to the students’ work over the course of the three-month project?
Our nine Medill students went to the ends of the earth, literally, to get their stories for this project, and they have delivered an extremely well-reported and well-told examination of an issue that is of huge importance to all Americans. I think it’s a model of the kind of cutting-edge work that students can do that is in demand not only by the public, but by the most prestigious professional media outlets operating today.
How will this experience prepare the students working on the project for life after Medill?
The students learned how to work and act like professional reporters in perhaps the most competitive journalistic environment anywhere – Washington DC – from Day One of the project, an invaluable experience. They also learned how to grapple with an extremely complex subject and do enough reporting and source-building to make sense of it all and tell their stories in compelling ways that will resonate with readers.
How unique do you think this project is, particularly when it comes to the access the students had?
I think this is an extremely unique project, in terms of giving the students such reporting and writing responsibilities, and also in terms of helping conceptualize and execute such innovative multimedia and interactive components.
Is there anything else you would like to add? As the students will attest, this wasn’t easy. It was an incredible amount of hard and sometimes frustrating work, given the nature of the subject and the reluctance of the U.S. government to discuss what they are up to. But the students really rose to the occasion and landed a project that they, Medill and our funder, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, can really be proud of.
