Profiled, Questioned, Detained, and Deported - Digital Story Critique Wk 13

I am in my third semester of the graduate program in eLearning Design and Implementation at The University of Colorado, Denver. Each week we critique a digital story.

This week I am critiquing The Worst Job In New York: Immigrant America a digital story related to my theme, social justice.

The Worst Job In New York is an episode of Vice’s Immigrant America. This digital story addresses the human and business toll of our broken immigration system. The story illustrates the results of Congress’s refusal to create a functioning legal immigration system. The undocumented worker, his/her spouse, children, the taxpayer, the businesses, and our economy are all casualties in this ruthless war.

In rural New York the local Immigration Deportation Center drives racial and ethnic bias profiling, harassment, detainment, and deportation of undocumented workers who sustain the areas dairy farms. Milking the cows in upstate NY is a job no one wants. Sloshing through cow manure, tolerating the stench and the tediousness of this low wage job is necessary if the populous wants milk, yogurt, ice cream, and cheese.

I critiqued this digital story on flow, organization and pacing, story, and originality, voice, and creativity.

Flow, Organization, and Pacing

This is the longest digital story I have critiqued so far. Flow, Organization, and Pacing was critical for this longer story to work. This digital story used the right mix of narration, interviews, introduction of characters, and b-roll. The organization of these elements pulls the viewer in and doesn’t let you go. It is only after sitting through this twenty-two minute digital story do you realize the amount of planning that had to go into the sequencing of the scenes, length of interviews, narration, and other assets that combined to produce flow.

Story

This story pulls you in immediately. Establishing sense of place so powerfully you can almost smell the cow manure. There were various appeals to What’s In It For Me (WIIFM). Everything from the importance of your food and food production, to the callousness of the numbers driven system of filling immigration detention centers without regard to the destruction of families, businesses, and dignity. I'm

Originality, Voice, and Creativity

Roy Germano’s narration of this story gives this story a clear voice. He presents the place, facts, and characters in a neutral, matter of fact voice allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusions. The story is original and creative to me because most stories about the criminalization of undocumented people takes place in southern border towns or Arizona. The sense of place, in rural New York State, is an original site to bring attention of our broken immigration system.