At least four times in the past three years, students on my staff have tried to do a story about “friends with benefits.”  Each time the result was the same:  Epic Fail.

It is a good topic.  We know from recent studies that FWB has reached the middle school level, and we already knew about high school students who were practicing this casual lifestyle.  The problem is, if you say it, you gotta prove it.  That’s journalism.  

Reporter Kaley Prier and photographer Kimberly Moore had to overcome the  same obstacles that faced students in the past when they tried to cover this issue.  Getting someone to go on camera to talk about it.  Getting a qualified expert to discuss the ramifications FWB can have on young people.  Getting visuals that help move the story along, without using copyrighted movie scenes, or incriminating shots from school.

They finally found a young man to talk on camera, and Kaley was satisfied he was being honest.  So was I after hearing the sound bites she used.

When it came to finding a female’s perspective, it was extremely difficult.  It took weeks.  Lots of “asking around” and mentioning the topic here and there, hoping to find someone who would talk about it.  In the end, a very credible female who asked that her name, face and voice not be identified, was willing to talk.  Her story was raw and sad.  It was also “too much information.”  That’s right, when the interview finally took place, with just Kaley and Kim in the studio, the girl told us more than we wanted or needed to know about a very traumatic life, and some very troubling decisions.  

While we are always hesitant to hide a source’s identity, we realized after the interview with the 17-year-old female that there were certainly enough extenuating circumstances surrounding her story to justify the backlighting and voice altering.

So the story is the second segment on HTV #197, which can be found at www.htvmagazine.com   Give it a look.  Show it to your students. Discuss.  

It is far from perfect, but it should lead to some nice teaching moments.  Considering how hard it was for us to land this story after all the previous attempts, we felt it was pretty effective, and sheds some light on a troubling aspect of some teenagers’ lives.

Possible discussion questions:

*What does it say about our world that the male was willing to be indentified on camera, and the female was not

*What were the challenges in finding appropriate visuals for this topic?

*Did the expert offer insight you had not considered?

*What other questions would you like to ask the young people in the story>?

*Was there are “moral” to the story?  Is so, what was it?

I love tough topics, and encourage my students to tackle them.  The problem is, some of the stories they want to tell are incredibly challenging to show.  But we are not doing radio here, so we have to have pictures.  Yes, sound is always important, but we know video beats audio.  Interesting visuals trump sounds and words. We remember what we see more than what we hear.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received about covering a visually-challenging topic was to make the most of the simple shots you know you have to have.  You don’t need to get breathtaking visuals every time you shoot a story.  Shoot the obvious if that’s all you have.  The challenge is to shoot the obvious in a creative way.

In a few weeks I will find out if we can do just that.  Two of my students are covering “friends with benefits,” and they already have three people willing to talk about it. I am anxious to see how creatively, and tastefully, they cover the visual side of that story.  

One suggestion you might make to kids who say they have no visuals is to simply watch “Dateline” or “48 Hours” and see how both programs do an amazing job making the most of simple images.  I would especially encourage you to remind students to always ask for still photos when they do features about people.  Those can be extremely powerful, and there are a lot of creative ways to make those photos come to life in a video story.