COMM 150 and 337: How a UC Davis student got his photo published worldwide ... and a free-lancer got his story on a national magazine website

NOTE TO STUDENTS IN BOTH CLASSES: I've been posting stories about the pepper spray incident at the University of California Davis for COMM 150 students because it relates to your documented essay assignment: "Discuss: How are social media (sometimes hyped as Internet 2.0) changing the face of American culture?" And social media have been all over the UC Davis story. Now I'm posting this one for COMM 337 because the two stories linked below show a lot of enterprise - one on the part of a UC Davis freshman who shoots pictures for the school paper and the other a free-lance writer who reported a couple of very good stories while he was visiting his parents in Davis for Thanksgiving.

One of the pictures of the pepper spray incident at UC Davis was taken by Brian Nguyen, a first-year student and photographer for the school newspaper. He was interviewed for the Atlantic.com magazine website by Andrew Price, a writer based in southern California who was originally from Davis. Nguyen told him:

"I spent that night emailing different photo editors and my contacts in the industry, but at that point it was too late, around 1 a.m., to really get any traction. A couple of news organizations weren't interested. I gained traction on Tumblr first [...]. I suppose that's when it went viral." (emphasis added)

Note the role of social media here.

Nguyen said a student at the scene of the demonstration texted him before the police moved in to break up. "I had a contact here [at the tents] who I asked to notify me if anything happened, because I have classes and things to go to," he said. "When I saw the text, I ran out here and waited for the police raid."

Price wrote up his interview with Nguyen in Q&A format. In it, they addressed the role of social media in getting the story out:
A

When did you first realize your photo was going to get national attention?
I didn't actually realize that it was going to get national attention until it got national attention I suppose. I spent that night emailing different photo editors and my contacts in the industry, but at that point it was too late, around 1 a.m., to really get any traction. A couple of news organizations weren't interested. I gained traction on Tumblr first, submitting my photos to The Political Notebook, then to James Fallows [also of Atlantic.com]. I suppose that's when it went viral. I wasn't thinking much when I took the photo. I was on autopilot. I saw, composed, and shot.

Do you have a sense of how far that image has spread?
Reuters has licensed my photos. I gave The Guardian and a few other news outlets permission to use my photos the day after for web purposes on Saturday because I felt the story had to get out and my photographs could show what happened. Someone on my Flickr commented from the Netherlands. And my cousins in Vietnam have seen the images and they're all supporting the movement so that's pretty cool.

Price also asked Nguyen for his reaction to the Internet "meme" that has seen satirical mashups showing the "pepper spray cop" in works of art from the Smurfs to Picasso's "Guernica." Nguyen said he thinks the social media had a profound impact.

What do you think of the Pepper Spray Cop Tumblr? Does remixing journalistic images trivialize them? Or does it just help them get wider distribution?
Memes like that give the image wider distribution. They only open up the issue to a wider audience.

Do you think the images of Lt. Pike changed the course of Occupy UCD
Those images, along with the video, have galvanized the Occupy UCD movement. Thursday saw maybe 10 to 20 tents on the quad. Today, there were 74 tents on the quad according to some reports. Monday's rally saw over 4,000 students.

Have Twitter and other near-instant media channels changed the power of photography?
With Facebook and Twitter, rather than seeing a photograph like mine in the paper or on some website, it's right on their feed. It's disruptive and it's juxtaposed by the banality of the day-to-day Facebook or Twitter activity. Not only that, but Facebook and Twitter allow for the photograph to be seen by a wider audience, an audience that may not normally be checking news publications daily or even weekly.

How a free-lance writer got a story (two stories, actually) into nationwide circulation while he was home for Thanksgiving vaction

Andrew Price, who interviewed Nguyen for Atlantic.com about his picture, also got a first-person story about UC Davis into the Atlantic Cities section of Atlantic.com titled "Why I'm Still Proud of Davis." The website has a motto right under the logo that says "Place Matters." Price's essay is based on direct reporting, but his hook centers on the fact that he's from Davis. Hence the title, and some background on the place that seems like a tangent - but isn't.

"I live in Los Angeles now, but I’m proud of my hometown’s quirks<" he says. "Many things that seemed eccentric in the 1980s and 1990s - electric cars, fresh, local food, bike-friendly streets - are urban aspirations today. Davis was ahead of the curve." Then he gets into the meat of the story. He backs into it, actually:

Last Friday, when I read that America’s largest energy-neutral housing project had just opened in Davis, I sent out a proud tweet (Davis, CA, leading the charge) and closed my laptop, wondering if the town’s latest small victory would matter to anyone influential.

A few hours later, when I opened my computer again, Davis was everywhere. The video of Lieutenant John Pike nonchalantly pepper spraying seated student protesters had spread like sticky capsicum. You know a piece of media is in the middle of a genuine Gladwellian tipping point when six unconnected Facebook friends all share it within an hour. By Saturday, the pepper spray incident was all over.

COMM 337 students, note the conversational tone and light irony. COMM 150 students, if you're still with us this far into the blog, note his casual reference to Twitter. How are social media changing the world?
Price continues:

I flew up to Davis to visit my parents for Thanksgiving and spent two days visiting the student occupiers, talking to residents, reading the local newspaper, and also, of course, keeping abreast of the conversation on Twitter.

When I first visited the student camp, on Monday, I was struck by how peaceful and organized it was. People were split up into small groups, quietly talking, eating and playing music. Having read tweets comparing the UC Davis quad to Tahrir Square, I was expecting, I suppose, an atmosphere of high anxiety.

I spoke with two protesters who had attended a number of Occupy events in Northern California and liked the UC Davis group because it had a "good vibe." The Sacramento Occupy group, they said, was "too negative." I asked another protester, Andres Estabanez, whether he thought the pepper spray incident would change how the campus police dealt with protesters. "Oh, I’m sure," he says. "I doubt they’re going to come in here and use brutal violence again."

A handful of volunteers were building a large geodesic dome next to the cluster of tents. Was there some strategic purpose for the dome? I asked. Would it make the quad harder to raid next time? "Yeah, 'strategic,'" the volunteer replied, chuckling ironically. "No, I think it was just an idea that happened. People needed a place to sleep."

UC Davis, in other words, does not feel like a war zone.

Good on-the-scene reporting. But look how Price frames the story at the end, and makes his offhand references to the energy-efficient housing project and even the geodesic dome work for him:

was worried Davis’s fundamental character had somehow changed. It hasn't. People are still idealistic, agitating for change, yet oddly reasonable and low-key. It’s unfortunate that my hometown is on a national stage for a police brutality scandal, but I’m proud of the community’s response.

Oh, and the town also has some great new energy-neutral housing.