NPR Delivers Educational Multimedia Podcast

NPR landing page for City High Article

Iowa City High’s Football Team Story is Covered After Soldiers in Iraq Name A Mission After the Team

This week my high school was lucky enough to have NPR come and cover a story at Iowa City High.  The story focused on a group of soldiers in Afghanistan that are following the Little Hawk football team’s recent undefeated season and run at the state championship.

After the piece aired, I used it to teach students about how to develop an interesting angle with interviews that are directed towards the angle without leading the story.

In many ways this podcast borrows This American Life’s style and brings it to a morning news show.  NPR layered sounds as the reporter explained the nutgraph with players hitting in the background.  Newspapers can’t use sound, but they can have the verbage that reflects the background noise.

After the lead the story did a great job of developing the angle of how the soldiers used the current team as inspiration in Afghanistan.  The mission accomplished ending is corny, but brought a nice connection between the mission of the football team and the soldiers in Afghanistan.