Shelter Crisis - Wk 10 Critique
"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi
Food, clothing, shelter, medical care; unmet basic needs that often underlie our shameful record of homelessness, hunger, abuse, mass incarceration, addiction, crime, and many other social ills. Affronts to human dignity that could be addressed, if as a society, we had the will.
The digital story I chose to critique this week In a high rent world affordable safe housing is hard to come by, tells a story of impact and solution for one of these basic needs; shelter.
I found this story via a link to NPR from the StoryCorps website.
Originality, Voice, and Creativity
Audie Cornish hosts NPR’s Pam Fessler’s podcast describing her study of people and outcomes in rent court. She connects what she uncovered in her research with other researchers of homelessness. Pam’s choices of people to interview and where she chose to inject their experiences and points of view I found to be original, consistent in voice, and creative. Creative because I feel she chose just the right mix of people to report the human cost, data, and solutions.
Audio Grammar/Clarity
This is a new category I found through research into what actually makes a good podcast. This digital story medium, like all mediums require a certain amount of technical acumen to be really good. Audio needs to be clear and free of distractive noise/sounds. Most of the narrative may have been recorded in a sound booth it was so clear. The only ambient noise I picked up was during LaToya Fowlkes’s interview outside of the courthouse after being evicted.
Story
This story worked. I continue to be astounded by message, information, and emotion good digital stories can convey in such a short amount of time. This story was 5:35. Good story grabs the viewer/listener immediately. In this story the estimate of a million families being evicted in America every year was the hook for me. The directness, flow, and pace that followed kept my attention to the end. The story also aligned with my focal theme of social justice. There are 10.4 million extremely low income households in the U.S. and only 3.2 million affordable housing units. According to Matthew Desmond is a Harvard sociologist who was interviewed for this podcast the face of in America is mostly mothers with children.
