Boyer Presentation

Brian Boyer speaks to University of Oklahoma students Monday, at Gaylord, about data journalism and how he is trying to make people care and better the world through his work.

Brian Boyer, news applications editor of NPR, visited the University of Oklahoma Monday to expose students to new technologies and reveal why he chose this line of work.

            Boyer has worked with all sorts of technologies but he does it for a specific reason.

            “We are trying to make people care,” Boyer said. “ I am really into democracy. We really want to impact and make change in this world.”

            Boyer elaborated on this by saying, “I love accountability journalism. We start by demystifying the unknown. We used to end up throwing people in jail!”

            Some people in journalism start by wanting to be famous and seen or something along those lines; however, Boyer wanted to make a difference.

            One example of how he, and the people he works with, are trying to make a difference is the documentary People. In People, The lives of workers who make our shirts, they followed around different workers who make shirts for a living. This goes beyond just research and showing how shirts are made, it also exposes the hard lives that some workers experience. They pull back the cotton curtain to go deeper and change the way people think about where their clothes come from.

            They spent days and weeks just identifying who their target audience would be, why they would care and what their specific needs were.

            Dillon Hollingsworth, student at the University of Oklahoma, watched Boyer’s presentation over data journalism. “It’s really interesting to see everything that’s going on. It gives you the opportunity to feel things that you wouldn’t necessarily get with just a text story. It’s very cool to hear someone talk about it from the perspective of somebody who’s shaping it.”

            He is even thinking outside the box as far as how to affect people and make the biggest impact possible.

            “Everyone has a smartphone now, so if it doesn’t work on a mobile (phone) it doesn’t work,” Boyer said.

            In the years to come they want to attract younger audiences because most of their audience is the same audience who “reads newspapers.”

            When asked about future plans he is involved in, Boyer said, “I can’t say too much but we are doing stuff with televisions. We are trying to put radio on TV because the TV is the last box everyone has in their living rooms and bedrooms.

Dillan Hollingsworth, student at OU, attended the Brian Boyer Presentation over data journalism.
"It's really interesting to see..."


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