And, they’re off! NBTB students head to SF for team reporting

T-shirts and tripods — check. Boxed lunch — check. Curiosity and excitement as you begin exploring one of the world’s greatest cities — double check.

Newsroom by the Bay students — 64 strong, plus team leaders and program staff — departed at 7:30 a.m. from the Stanford campus this morning for the annual daylong reporting trip to San Francisco.

Field trips — real-life reporting experiences in which students research, interview, report and produce stories as they visit news organizations, innovators and landmarks in Silicon Valley and San Francisco — are a program highlight every year and a chance for students to design and collaborate on their project websites.

NBTB 2015 students on Stanford’s Marguerite shuttle to the CalTrain station in Palo Alto.

This year, among other activities, they’ll be taking a tour of AT&T Park, meeting with editors at TechCrunch and Al-Jazeera Plus, talking to community leaders at the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, interviewing the director of sustainability at the Academy of Sciences, and eating (and learning about innovation) at Dandelion Chocolate. They’ll also explore Haight Street, Golden Gate Park, and Lombard Street.

Students plan their field trips with their team leaders in line with their reporting themes for the week. Much of the content they develop and publish gets gathered on the field trip, which always leads to unexpected epiphanies and opportunities as students and team leaders travel through the City.

“Being in the field is the best way to learn and to practice empathy — the quality of understanding who people are, where they live, and what impacts their lives,” said NBTB co-director Beatrice Motamedi.

“If we’re serious about journalism, we have to put ourselves into the world so that we can hold up a mirror to what’s working and what needs to change.”

Stay tuned for more updates during the day and also Year 2 team reports on their field trips earlier this week.