AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST Barbara Bradley Hagerty is a correspondent for National Public Radio and the stepmother of Uni subfreshman Vivian Hagerty. On Feb. 15, she made a special visit to the school to share with the subfreshman class how she produces a story for radio.

Her presentation corresponded with what the subbies are currently doing in their oral history project. Her message?

“Through careful reporting,” she said, “through interviews, through creating a compelling narrative that focuses mainly on people's voices and not on the narrator — i.e., me — you can convey very, very important ideas in a way that is so riveting, I hope, so riveting that people who might not care about the [topic] will care desperately about this one case, and it will make them think about the bigger issues.”

This year’s oral history project is about the impact of the women’s rights movement in the Champaign-Urbana area. According to subfreshman social studies teacher Janet Morford, who invited Bradley Hagerty to speak to her students, the project focuses on how the movement has changed the everyday lives of women and men of different ages and backgrounds. The subbies are now working on writing a story in the journalistic sense about their interviewee’s life.

Not surprisingly, the information that Bradley Hagerty shared with the subbies turned out to be extremely relevant to the work they are doing in class.

The veteran journalist, who reported for the Christian Science Monitor for 11 years before joining NPR in 1995, explained the process of producing an NPR story by using one of her previously aired pieces on how DNA evidence was used to release two innocent men who had been wrongly convicted of murder.

The story was originally broadcast on Dec. 28, 2000, when Bradley Hagerty was NPR's Justice Department correspondent. In 2003 she became the network's religion correspondent and recently completed a book on science and spirituality, tentatively titled “Evidence of God: The Science of Neurotheology.”

She stressed that practicing journalism is both a privilege and a responsibility, because what is written or broadcast can harm someone’s reputation. She recommended that before releasing a story to the public, writers should ask themselves if the people mentioned in the story would find the portrayal of themselves fair, even if they didn’t like it.

“What I was trying to convey to [the] kids today was that you have this ability, this opportunity, to do interviews, get yourself into people's lives, ask questions and put together a narrative that can actually make a difference,” she said.

After Bradley Hagerty shared her method of creating a story for radio, she stayed to listen to three of the subfreshman oral history teams share some of the things they learned during their interviews.

Each team first shared a little bit of background information about the life of their interviewee. Then they played a short clip from their interview and explained why the clip was important in the life experiences of the interviewee and the broader experiences of women during that time.

Bradley Hagerty said she was very impressed with the attentiveness of the audience.

“These kids are so engaged, and they are so quick,” she said afterward. “The questions that they asked me were really, really perceptive after my talk. And I was incredibly impressed. In fact, my husband [Devin Hagerty], who is a college professor, said he is envious because he wished that his lectures could get such insightful questions, and he teaches college-age kids!”

Sarah Joy Yockey is a Uni High subfreshman. If you are interested in contributing to the Gargoyle, contact us through this form.